This is a “tables-turned” exercise.

Imagine if 700 years after Mohammed’s death, Christian military forces had invaded the Arabian Peninsula, captured Mecca, and forced the majority of Muslims to convert to Christianity at the point of a sword.

The only mercy shown would consist of the new Christian rulers allowing Muslims to journey to Mecca for their pilgrimage, a religious requirement of Islam.

Then imagine after 400 years of Christian occupation, a new group of Christian invaders arrived who shut down access to Mecca, thereby depriving Muslims worldwide of the ability to fulfill their religion’s most sacred duty.

Imagine further if Christian forces continued beyond Mecca and were slowly but surely conquering previously Muslim lands from Morocco to Pakistan and preaching forced conversion of the entire known world.

What, pray tell, do you think the reaction of Muslims would be? Seeing their holy city desecrated and closed off by infidels and the seemingly unstoppable advances of Christian forces, I think one would expect Muslims to fight back.

Indeed, I believe you could argue that fighting back by first retaking Mecca and then focusing on pushing back some of the Christian advances would be seen as an entirely justifiable and noble endeavor.

Conversion to Islam would not even be a goal. Rather, the Muslim forces would simply be trying to restore the status quo ante, the way things were before those infernal, blood-thirsty, intolerant Christians came and forcibly took away their most holy city and their lands.

Well, this is essentially what happened with the Crusades of the 12th through 14th centuries. Muslims had conquered and converted all of North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and almost all of Asia Minor.

They were knocking on the door of Constantinople and a newly emerged nation, the Seljuk Turks, had captured Jerusalem and forbidden Christian pilgrimages, something the previous Muslim occupiers had allowed.

Christians in the areas conquered had done little to fight back. There had been skirmishes between Muslim forces and those of the Eastern Roman Empire (whose capital was Constantinople), but those were not “wars of religion” so much as the Byzantine Romans fighting to preserve their lands, which in the end were indeed taken by the Muslim forces.

So, finally, the Christian nations of western Europe, at the behest of the pope, mounted an army to take back Jerusalem and thereby, it was hoped, weaken the Muslim’s ability to wage war in the East by removing from their control the central route to Europe from Arabia and points East.

The Crusades were NOT undertaken to impose Christianity on the Muslims. That is a grand historical falsehood. Christianity, unlike Islam, had spread not by the sword, but by the cross. Christianity was primarily spread by persuasion and the powerful witness of martyrs who died for their faith.

The Crusaders went on to have modest success, although their enterprise eventually failed and Jerusalem was retaken by Muslim forces. Atrocities were committed and many of the Crusaders were not always so pure in their motivations or conduct. But overall, the endeavor was understandable if not justifiable given the aggressive Muslim onslaught that had been going on since the end of the 7th century.

So, when Muslim critics and extremists call President Bush and the Pope Benedict XVI “Crusaders” as an epithet, and when a large proportion, if not a majority, if Westerners agree with them, they are engaging in ahistorical, hysterical propaganda of the worst sort.

They are propagating a lie in order to cow us into submission, because nowadays we are more afraid of being perceived as aggressors than in actually defending ourselves.

God bless the Pope for finally having the courage to question the concept of jihad and openly condemn the notion of spreading religion by violence.

The violent reaction of Muslims shows they are not even willing to discuss the aspect of their faith which has caused us and them the most trouble.

They must know that if they were to admit that spreading Islam by the sword is wrong, their whole history of bloody conquest for Allah and continued efforts in the guise of terrorist attacks would be discredited. Talk about a bitter pill to swallow.

Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.

login to post comments