Eugene Robinson, neither a Republican shill nor enemy of the president, explains the shortcomings of the president’s controversial remarks that the prayer breakfast:
By reaching so far back into history, Obama seemed to echo those who argue that today’s turmoil and terrorism are taking place because Islam has not yet had a Reformation or the Muslim world an Enlightenment. I won’t put words in the president’s mouth. But I will say that, whatever he meant, to compare the depredations of the Islamic State with those of the Crusaders is patronizing in the extreme.
Why? Because Muslims are not slow learners who can be held to only a medieval moral standard. Everyone in the world can be expected to know that it is wrong to burn a helpless human being alive, as Islamic State murderers did to a captive Jordanian pilot. The fact that Joan of Arc met a similar fate in 1431 does not make it improper to “get on our high horse†about unspeakable acts being committed in our time, which makes them our responsibility.
We need to enlist the support of the Muslim community and we won’t do that by absolving them, patronizing them, or trying to insulate them. Anything that allows the greater Muslim community, particularly in Western countries, to remain neutral in the war against DAESH is a strategic error.
The other issue is that the Islamicists use these past “sins” of the West, often in a very conspiratorial or anachronistic fashioning, to justify innovations and expansions of religious doctrine to redress the wrongs. These description of wrongs are often draped in a Marxist / Soviet sense of the sins of Western imperialism. The Crusades, a relatively obscure event in the Near East in which another tribal group wanders into the Levant seeking to claim land amidst other tribal groups that invaded earlier becomes is supposed to tell us something about the West today, but not their Seljuk contemporaries of yesterday.
Not to mention that the Turks were enormously rougher on the inhabitants of MENA than the Franks ever were. The Crusades only went on for 150 years. The Turks ruled the Arabs for four times that.
And then, of course, Americans are neither Europeans nor Turks. We stopped being Europeans a half millennium ago. We never colonized the Middle East or North Africa. As I’ve said before, throwing our lot in with our European cousins has been a mistake. It looked good when the Soviet Union was looming over our heads but it doesn’t look nearly as good now.
He was commenting upon religion being coopted to justify political aims. For those of us educated in the West it is difficult to think of a better historical example than the Crusades. I think it has just become right wing PC that you can’t ever mention the Crusades.
Steve
Other than possibly the first, the Crusades were about political and economic issues. The Ottoman empire was political and economic entity.
Running anything other than a commune with true believers is difficult. Once you eliminate the non-true believers, the survivors must now do 100% of the work, and anything not conforming to the ideals would be purged. A flourishing society will quickly become less so, and a power based ruler will take charge.
The use of religion is overblown. It cannot sustain itself.
I suspect those who use the Crusades as an example are not that stupid.
We Latin Americans of the Southern Cone (Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil) have not forgotten Amerika’s Cold War support of killings and desaparecidos of the Operation Condor. Henry Kissinger is still considered a war criminal and will no doubt be arrested (or summarily executed) if he ever sets foot here. The “religion” in Kissinger’s case was suppression of Communism.
@Dave, right. The proximate cause of the Crusades was the fall of Fatimid (Shi’ite) control over Syria/Palestine, which was relatively tolerant of Jews and Christians, who held high offices, and protected the Holy Sites. The Seljuk Turks (Sunni) were closer to a loose ban of competing militias that wrought havoc on the region for everyone.
@Tastybits, I think the Crusades were largely idealistic, but the implementation suffered from poor leadership and lack of financing, which led to sacking cities and looting people. Pope Innocent III wrote scathing reprimands of the Fourth Crusade, threatening excommunication if the behavior continued, but his letters were kept secret from the men at arms. He, who initiated the Crusade, later wrote that the sacking of Constantinople was “an example of perdition and the works of darkness.”
@PD Shaw
The goal of the First Crusade was ostensibly to retake the Holy Lands. The remaining were about re-establishing trade routes or domestic political power. One ploy was to get rid of a rival or restless military men. The rulers supplying the military had varying reasons for doing so. The Church had different reasons.
If you cannot hold onto what you consider your holy places, the other guy’s god must be stronger, and people will lose faith in yours. This is a simple power calculation. It has nothing to do with religion. Substitute fried chicken or iPhone app. If you want to stay in business, you crush the competition.
Apple is battling Android for the smartphone holy lands, and they are using the app makers to convert users. The app makers are only after power and money. Substitute Christianity and Islam.