Modern trashing of the Crusades, Christianity, and Western civilization
We began Part I with President Obama’s description of ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) as a distorted and deviant form of Islam. But he immediately suggests a moral equivalency of Christianity with ISIL, slavery in America, and past racism in the South.[1] But the President’s denigration of Christianity and the Crusades are not a new phenomenon.
The historical explanations of how and why the first Crusade began have been perverted by historians, academia, liberal politicians, and others hostile to Christianity for three hundred years. Their new interpretation is much more sinister and contemptuous. This cynical view of the Crusades has been widely disseminated by the progressive education movement in America which wrested education from the influence of the church in the late 1800s. The progressive educational establishment is a bitter enemy of the biblical worldview and much of Western civilization in general. The tenets of progressive education stem from the Enlightenment and its humanistic influence. Therefore, the Crusades have become a convenient tit-for-tat when defending Islam and denigrating Christianity through claims of moral equivalency.
Typical of the charges against the Crusades are that they are the cause of modern Muslim bitterness and Islamic fury at their mistreatment by the Christian Crusaders. The Crusaders were motivated by lands, spoils, and power, not piety and safety of Christian pilgrims going to the Holy Land. Crusaders were barbarians that attacked, brutalized, and destroyed “the enlightened Muslim culture.” Even the New York Times compared the Crusades to Hitler’s atrocities. Others charge that the Crusades were “…an expression of Catholic bigotry and cruelty.” These recurrent themes flow from the halls of academia, media, liberal politicians, and an assortment of humanist intellectuals, and their stanzas have been condensed to a single chorus by Rodney Stark, “…during the Crusades, an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant and peaceful Islam.”[2]
Although time does not allow a point by point refutation of the charges against Christianity and the Crusades, the remainder of this article summarizes and overwhelmingly exposes the absurd claims of the cultural and moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam.
Comparison of the tenets of Christian and Islamic Faiths
When one compares the tenets of Islam with those of Christianity, the two religions are worlds apart in their treatment of humanity. Islam is a militant theocracy with a stated purpose of subduing the entire world under an Islamic caliphate. But Christians obedient to the Bible cannot compel conversion nor punish those who do not convert as do the faithful followers of Islam. Numerous verses in the Quran speak of the subjugation or killing of non-Muslims. Perhaps the most telling difference between the tenets of Christianity and Islam is their respective records of persecution. Forty-one of the top fifty countries with the worst records for persecution are headed by Muslim governments substantially ruled or heavily influenced by Islamic theocracies. When one compares the tenets and the resultant actions of the faithful followers of the Qur’an compared to the faithful followers of Christ and the Bible, the superiority of the Christian faith is irrefutable.
Geographical extent, duration, and severity of Muslim aggression as compared to the Crusades
Disregarding motive and morality, there is a remarkable disparity in time, extent, and severity of conquest and brutality when comparing Muslim and Crusader aggression. In Part III it was noted that the twelve centuries of consistent and concerted Muslim aggression over three continents far outweighs the sporadic Crusades that occurred over two centuries and confined to a relatively small area. The historical record reveals that Muslim aggression lasted a millennium longer than the Crusades. Widespread accounts from various lands invaded and conquered reveal a consistent pattern of Muslim conquest and brutality that was far more frequent and harsh than the misdeeds of various Crusaders during the five campaigns to free and protect the Holy Land.
Motives and morality of Christians and Muslims
As stated in Part III, we must first clarify that good motives do not in themselves excuse immoral actions, but an examination of motives (good and bad) can determine if moral equivalency exists between Christianity and Islam. Stated simply, the motives of Muslims faithful to the Quran are to ultimately subdue the entire world under an Islamic caliphate. But in accordance with Christ’s command, the principle motive of Christians is to share their relationship with God as they interact with humanity. Perhaps the best description of a Christian’s motivation is described in that well-known verse found in John’s gospel, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” [John 3:16. RSV] This message is based on freedom to choose Christianity as opposed to Muslim coercion to convert. From the perspective of morality and motive, the superiority of Christianity is undeniable when compared to Islam.
Cultural superiority of Christianity over Islam – Making a better world
Not only do history’s revisionists attempt to find moral equivalency between the Crusades and Muslim aggression, they also attempt to elevate Muslim culture in comparison with Western civilization. Arab claims of a sophisticated and superior culture are not the result of Arab development but are the results of what they learned from the cultures of their subject peoples, the dhimmi populations which included the Byzantium (Judeo-Christian-Greek cultures); Egyptian (the Copts and Nestorians), Persian (Zoroastrian), and Hindu. Most Arab science and learning was originated with and translated into Arabic by these assimilated dhimmis.[3]
Claims of a superior and advanced Muslim culture were enhanced by comparison with a supposed backwardness of Christendom as a result of the Dark Ages. Moderns often describe the Dark Ages as a time of intellectual darkness and barbarity during the five or six centuries following the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire during the fifth century.[4]
From the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to well-known historians of the twentieth century, Western intellectuals consistently describe life in Europe during this era as a time of “…barbarism, superstition, [and] ignorance…” (Voltaire 1694-1778). Rousseau (1712-1778) stated that, “Europe had lapsed into the barbarism of the earliest ages.” Historian William Manchester (1922-2004) labeled the period as an era “…of incessant warfare, corruption, lawlessness, obsession with strange myths, and an almost impenetrable mindlessness…The Dark Ages were stark in every dimension.”[5]
Only recently has the myth of the Dark Ages been recognized. This recognition was noted in the Fifteenth Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1981). The “Dark Ages” are no longer recognized as “… a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity.” This period is now acknowledged as “…one of the great innovative eras of mankind” in which Europe’s technological advances placed it well ahead of the rest of the world.[6]
In spite of the humanists’ fiction of intellectual darkness and barbarity during Christendom’s first five centuries in Europe, the influence of those Christian refugees from fallen Rome would ultimately influence and change the world as no other people ever had. But this story is little known or acknowledged in the midst of a hostile humanistic and secular culture that has ascended within America over the last three generations. We are indebted to Alvin Schmidt for giving us a definitive and unapologetic understanding of the unparalleled importance of Christianity in the history of the world. The following is merely a brief mention of the major themes outlined in Paul Maier’s Foreword to Professor Schmidt’s book, How Christianity Changed the World.
…many of our [America’s] institutions and values reflect a Christian origin.
Not only countless individual lives but civilization itself was transformed by Jesus Christ. In the ancient world, his teaching elevated brutish standards of morality, halted infanticide, enhanced human life, emancipated women, abolished slavery, inspired charities and relief organizations, created hospitals, established orphanages, and founded schools.
In the modern era, Christian teaching, properly expressed, advanced science, instilled concepts of political and social and economic freedom, fostered justice, and provided the greatest single source of inspiration for the magnificent achievements in art, architecture, music, and literature…
No other religion, philosophy, teaching, nation, movement—whatever—has so changed the world for the better as Christianity has done.[7]
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The fiction of moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam has been utterly demolished by the facts as shown in these four articles. However, Christians and others who revere truth must understand that such attempts to find moral equivalency by President Obama and others is but one small battle in the much larger war of ideas and worldviews occurring between humanism and Christianity in America. It is in this battle that Christians must continually be engaged and vigilant for its outcome will determine if we, our children, and our grandchildren will live in freedom or slavery.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] President Barak Obama, “Remarks of the President at the National Prayer Breakfast,” The White House – Office of the Press Secretary, February 1, 2015. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/05/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast (accessed March 30, 2015).
[2] Rodney Stark, God’s Battalions-The Case for the Crusades, (New York: Harper One, 2009), p. 8.
[3] Ibid., pp. 56-57.
[4] Ibid., p. 65.
[5] Ibid., pp. 65-66.
[6] Ibid., P. 66
[7] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001, 2004), pp. 8-9.
