(This Article used by permission of "History of Jihad.Com.")

Our generation should realize that the Crusaders saved us from a bleak and gory fate of being subjugated by the murderous and beastlike Muslims. We owe the Crusaders our gratitude and need to take inspiration from their spirit, grit, determination and ruthless bravery for completing their unfinished task. It is no wonder that in a spontaneous expression of his mindset President Bush called the war on Terror – "a Crusade".

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Mahathir Mohammad, former president of Malaysia declared at the opening of the 10th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference at Putrajaya on Oct 16, 2003: "We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships. We may want to recreate the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. .1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do."

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Differences between the Saracens (Jihadis) and the Crusaders

Today we see the terrorists referring to the American and British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as Crusaders. How we wish that was true, since the express aim of the Crusaders of yore was to liberate the Holy land and eject all Muslims, or convert them to Christianity. The American marines hardly deserve to be addressed by the hallowed title "Crusaders", as they are not even a pale shadow of our visionary and valiant Crusader forebears.

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Because of such valiant peasants who left their fields and villages across Europe and heeded the Pope’s command and followed Peter the Hermit in the Peoples’ Crusade, that the Kings of Europe were shamed in to sending regular troops to fight the infidels and liberate the Holy Land from the Saracen occupiers. A spirit sorely lacking in the marines and troops and in our Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors today!

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The fight against evil requires that those wanting to destroy evil, need to have the grit and determination to be calmly determined to take evil to the stillness of its death. Just the way a hunter is not ferocious as the man-eater tiger that he hunts down, but is calm and unruffled in his hunt to succeed in which he puts the bullets right between the tiger’s eyes to reduce him to dead meat. The hunter bears no passionate hatred for the tiger, but still is dispassionately efficient in making dead meat of the beast. The American Marines and the British troops need to have this spirit in them to be successful!

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In their methods the Crusaders were no different from the Jihadis. But there still was one important difference.

The Jihadis had attacked Christendom in 629 at the battle of Mu’ta without provocation, and had continued attacking Christians, as they still do. The Crusade was to roll back in some measure this unprovoked Muslim attack. The Jihadis were aggressors, while the Crusaders were defenders. We Should remember this difference!

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The crusaders of yore were not like the hunter that we describe here, they were as ferocious and passionate and driven by relentless hate for the infidel and blind faith in their own religious beliefs as were, and still today are, the beastlike Jihadis. The Crusaders nursed and expressed a burning hatred of the Jihadis. They slaughtered the Jihadis with the same blood-curdling yells of hate that the Jihadis were used to. In their methods of treating the defeated Jihadis, the Crusaders were no different from the Jihadis. But there still was one important difference.

The Jihadis had attacked Christendom, without provocation and had continued attacking Christians, as they still do. The Crusade was to roll back in some measure this unprovoked Muslim attack. The Jihadis were aggressors, while the Crusaders were defenders, although both were as savage with each other.

Similarities between the Saracens (Jihadis) and the Crusaders

The Crusaders are said to have gone one step further, they roasted and ate the Jihadis they slaughtered in Anatolia on the way to the Holy Land. The Seljuk Turks had followed a scorched earth policy to stem the advance of the crusaders. So the roasting of the enemy is something they obviously did to obviate the scarcity of food supplies in a hostile land.

With the Crusaders advancing in to knocked down villages surrounded by burnt down fields without any cattle or poultry, with the wells sanded over, the Crusaders were ingenious in deciding to make a sustaining and appetizing meal of the enemy they vanquished on the battlefield. In addition to this, scorched earth policy of the Turks, the Crusaders also faced famine conditions.

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A Crusader at liberated Jerusalem.

There is a custom amongst the Arabs to traditionally paint the doors of their houses blue to this day? To ward off the evil eye – they say. Why blue? One explanation is that it was the color of the blue-eyed northern Europeans that came to slay them.

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Narration in the medieval chronicles of the Saracens (Jihadis) being made a meal of by the Crusaders

Following the fall of Antioch, the Crusaders raided the surrounding countryside in the lean winter months failing to bring in anything like sufficient supplies to feed their large numbers. They laid siege on the town of Ma’arra al-Numan. As many as 20,000 of its Muslim inhabitants are reported to have been massacred, despite assurances that their lives would be spared. But if such events were common during those times, what is alleged to have happened next was certainly not. The Christian soldiers started to cannibalize Muslim Men, Women and Children. Men and Women were boiled then eaten.

In a letter to the Pope one of the Crusader commanders, Radulph of Caen wrote: "In Ma’arra our troops boiled pagan adults alive in cooking-pots; they impaled Muslims on spits and devoured them grilled."

According to a Muslim account, in 1098 A Christian state was established in Edessa by the Crusader king, Baldwin I. In December of this year, Crusader forces led by Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of Toulousse, and Bohemond, the Frankish governor of Antioch massacred the entire population of the Syrian town of Ma’arra al-Numan. The starving Crusaders cannibalized some of their victims (quoted in Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, translated by Jon Rothschild, News York: Schocken Books, 1984, 39). "The vanquished Muslims were barbequed on spits, somewhat like a shish-kabob."

For centuries afterwards, the image of the Crusaders as fanatical cannibals lived on in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature. Some Arab commentators have even suggested that the behavior of the Crusaders was born not of necessity, but rather out of fanaticism, their religious fervor.

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The Crusaders storm Edessa – a town near Anatolian (Turkish) and Syrian border. Edessa was the first major town to fall to the First Crusade.

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But if fanaticism and religious fervor were common feelings on both sides during those times, what happened next was certainly out of necessity and not due to fanaticism, or religious fervor. It was in desperation, the starving Crusaders appear to have resorted to cannibalism. In a letter to the Pope one of the Crusader commanders wrote; "A terrible famine racked the army in Ma’arra, and placed it in the cruel necessity of feeding itself upon the bodies of the Saracens."

A line from another Crusader chronicler and soldier who fought at Ma’arra, Albert of Aix, convinced many Arabs from those times to the present that the Franks cannibalized not out of hunger but out of dogmatic fanaticism.

But then the Crusaders were not head-hunting cannibals when they set about the crusade from the various kingdoms of Europe! This practice was forced upon them, by the scorched earth policy of the Turks and the famines that afflicted the lands they overran.

Applying military logic, and the morals of those times, the question still remains, did the Crusaders make an excellently practical choice ten centuries before our time in making a meal of their vanquished enemies? A choice that would appear gruesome today. We can never imagine having menu cards in restaurants in New York, London, Paris, Moscow or Berlin that read "A Roasted Egyptian 500 (Dollars, Pounds, Francs)", "A Grilled Saudi 800", "A Poached Iranian 650".

This is unimaginable, because we in the West have changed. But have the Muslims changed? They still behead others as they did one thousand years back. Muslims still stone the accused to death as they did then (which Jesus prevented when the lady was about to be stoned – remember his words – "He who has committed no crime, shall cast the first stone."), but Muslims still cut off the limbs as they did one thousand years back, they still persecute those who carry the bible and the crucifix, as they were ordered to by their accused false prophet (yimach shmo. ). So although we cannot be as gruesome as the Muslims, we need to revive our Cowboy spirit of the Wild West days and become hunters, if we are to succeed in doing what President Bush says, "We shall hunt him down" when referring to Osama Bin Laden.

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An Islamic view of the other religions – Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism.

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All in all, the crusades turned out to be a failure in their military objective of liberating the holy land, as Jerusalem fell once again to the Jihadis, within a century of its liberation from its infidel Saracen occupiers. This has lead the Jihadis to boast that they can destroy Israel as they destroyed the Crusader kingdom, and eventually defeat the West!

The reason for the Jihadis’ boast that they will finally destroy America and Europe and convert the Americans and Europeans to Islam.

The Jihadis today can boast that within 91 years, they drove out the Crusaders from Jerusalem. The Jihadis live in an illusion when they say that they will drive out the Americans and British from Iraq, after a similar bloodied struggle and finally destroy America and Europe and convert the Americans and Europeans to Islam.

Why the Jihadis could defeat the Persian Sassanids and the Christian Byzantines in their palmy days

When the Jihadis burst upon a world in the 7th century, it was a world that had never till then experienced the savagery that the Jihadis practiced and completely overran Zoroastrian Persia in a mere seventeen years and totally Islamized it.

This victory was followed by a fierce struggle with Christendom’s Byzantine Empire, which the Muslims eventually overcame after Eight Hundred years. But the Jihadis overcame both their rivals – the Zoroastrian Persians and the Christian Byzantines – both of whom were at war with each other, before the Muslims burst upon both and defeated them both.

The Jihadis fantasize that they will defeat America after having defeated the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) – as they defeated the Byzantines, after having defeated the Persians

The Jihadis boast that in the 20th century, they faced two adversaries – The USSR and the USA both of whom were at war with each other during the Cold War. In the 1980’s the Muslims burst upon the Soviets in Afghanistan and defeated the USSR (drove it out of Afghanistan). In less than twenty years of that, the USSR fell apart, although it was not Islamized as was Zoroastrian Persia.

For the Jihadis the USSR is like Zoroastrian Persia, while the USA is like Christian Byzantine, both of whom the Jihadis boast they would eventually defeat and Islamize as they did with Persia and Byzantine. This historical parallel is the reason for the Jihadis boast that they will defeat the USA, after having "defeated" the USSR.

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The Crusaders assemble at Constantinople for their onward march to liberate the Holy Land from the infidel Sarascens.

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We need to recollect that in spite of early reverses of the World War 2, the Western allies united against the Nazis to destroy them utterly, similarly despite reverses suffered by the Non-Muslim world at the hands of the Jihad for 1400 years, the entire world today is uniting and will destroy Islam utterly.

Little do the Jihadis realize that their history is going to be like the other historic parallel, when the Nazis defeated Poland in a mere three weeks, but took eight months to defeat France, and kept attacking Britain and Russia unsuccessfully, till all the Western powers united to not just defeat, but to destroy the Nazis utterly.

The swift Muslim defeat of Persia is like the swift Nazis defeat of Poland, while the long Muslim aggression of Byzantine is like the long Nazi attack on France. And the Jihadi attacks starting with 9/11 are like the Nazi attacks on Britain, Russia, and America (Pearl Harbor).

The Nazis won, as did the Muslims, in both their initial attacks. Now comes the crunch. The way the Western allies united against the Nazis to destroy them utterly, the entire world today is uniting and will destroy Islam utterly. The way the Allied forces joined up at Berlin, signaling the end of Nazism, the allied forces will join up at Mecca signaling the end of Islam. Just watch out!

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Saint Francis of Assisi blesses the Holy Warriors.

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The Muslims need to remember the eventuality which will be the culmination of the modern crusade launched by against their barbarism after 9/11. Now well in to his second term, President George Bush has announced in his swearing in ceremony that the freedom of America depends on the rest of the world being free. (Free from Islam, is what the President did not say, but that is his message). The Muslims need to realize that their day of reckoning (Qayamat) is nearing.

Empty boasts that draw from historic occurrences can give the Muslims temporary comfort, but no f
or too long. The Muslim boast that the medieval crusades failed as the Muslims remained rulers of the Holy Land, the same way as Saddam had remained the ruler after 1991, war of the liberation of Kuwait, but the American marines eventually withdrew from Iraq in 1991, is similar to the Crusaders withdrawal from the Holy Land in 1187, after Saladin invaded Jerusalem.

But in 2003, the Saddam regime was fought to a finish, with the boastful despot fished out of a foxhole! Similarly, while the medieval Crusades of 1096 briefly liberated the Holy Land, but then withdrew, as did the Western forces from Iraq in 1991; the modern crusade launched after 9/11 will lead the boastful bullies – the Jihadis to their complete destruction, as did the second Western attack on Saddam’s Iraq in 2003. The world today has realized that it is caught up in a battle to death with Islam – a battle that will lead to either the death of freedom or the death of Islam.

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Western Civilization fought off the death grip which Islam imposed on that part of the non-Muslim world it overran. The crusades did not liberate the holy land for long, but halted the Muslims in their tracks, slowed down their advance and saved Europe from Islam.

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There were altogether ten Crusades covering a swath of time between the 11th through the 13th centuries

The First Crusade, 1095-1097, saw the taking of Jerusalem from the Muslims, the slaughter of the Muslim population of the city, and the establishment of the Crusader-run Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (which lasted until 1187).

• The Second Crusade, 1147-1149, was organized to help the Christians to recover the town of Edessa and other lands which they lost to the Turks, but it ended in dismal failure.
• The Third Crusade 1189-1192 was organized after Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, recaptured Jerusalem. This is the Crusade in which King Richard the Lionheart figured. It failed to retake Jerusalem, but struck fear of the crusaders in the hearts of the Jihadis.
• The Fourth Crusade, 1202-1204, saw the capture of Constantinople, which at the time was occupied by Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox Christians, who did not recognize the authority of the Roman Pope.
• The Children’s Crusade, 1212, sent thousands of children for the Holy Land, where they were captured by Muslims only to be sold as slaves or to die of hunger or disease.
• The Fifth Crusade, 1217-21, was aimed at Egypt, but failed.

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The story of the Crusades begins with the relentless tyranny unleashed by the Muslims on all non-Muslims in the lands they overran. The Zoroastrian Persians who were the first to be subjected to this barbaric Islamic savagery, decided to save themselves by embracing Islam and so Iran is a Muslim country today. Many Christians from the Levant (Middle East) and Anatolia, North Africa also decided to follow suit and became Muslims. But the Christians of Europe decided to fight back in an attempt called the Crusades

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• Four more Crusades mounted in the 13th century failed to reverse the Muslim gains. In 1291 the last Crusader stronghold at Acco (Acre) fell.

That’s the picture in a nutshell. Now we can look in greater detail at different aspects of the Crusade.

(For anyone interested in knowing more about specific Crusades, an authoritative source is a book by H.E. Mayer, called The Crusades, published by Oxford University Press.)

So we can see how Western Civilization fought of the death grip which Islam seeks to impose on the entire non-Muslim world. The crusades did not liberate the holy land for long, but halted the Muslims in their tracks, slowed down their advance and saved Europe from Islam.

The story of the Crusades begins with the relentless tyranny unleashed by the Muslims on all non-Muslims in the lands they overran. The Zoroastrian Persians who were the first to be subjected to this barbaric Islamic savagery, decided to save themselves by embracing Islam and so Iran is a Muslim country today. Many Christians from the Levant (Middle East) and Anatolia (Turkey), North Africa also decided to follow suit and became Muslims. But the Christians of Europe decided to fight back. This fightback are the Crusades.. The first to defeat the Muslims decisively was the Frankish Emperor Charles Martel (Karl the Hammer) who slaughtered about two hundred thousand Jihadis at the battle of Tours (Poitiers).

The Spanish Reconquista was the next example of a successful non-Muslim attack to defeat the Muslim invaders. When the Jihadi Seljuk Turks attacked and defeated the Byzantine Christians at the battle of Manzikert in 1071, and threatened to overrun Constantinople, the Byzantine Christians led by their Emperor Alexis appealed to the Pope to come to their aid.

It was in response to this plea, that Pope Urban II mounted the first campaign, to liberate the Holy Land, while helping the Christians in Constantinople who were besieged by the Muslims and also to end once and for all the threat of the Muslims to the Christian kingdoms of Europe. Its aim was to beat back the "infidels" (as Christians called the Muslims) to recapture the Holy Land and save Europe from Islam.

In doing this Pope Urban, also diverted the Christian kings and princes from their struggles with each other, and saw an opportunity to reunite the Eastern and Western churches. He called for a "Truce of God" among the rulers of Europe and urged them to take the Holy Land from the Muslims.

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Meeting the enemy head on.

The Crusaders returned every barbarity of the Muslim with a correspondingly upgraded barbarity. This is what lead to the success of the First Crusade. After liberating Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitalers brought in Christian Arab tribes to help populate the city with Christians and made Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, in to Christian majority towns. A technique used by the Serbs in Kosovo, where they were stupidly stopped by the Anglo-American forces. It is high time that we Westerners learn from these tactics of our Crusader forebears. As against this today we call Islam a religion of peace(sic) and keep saying that we are not at war with Islam, when facts fly in the face of this claim. It is the Western pusillanimity today that pushes the Christian Arabs (Assyrian and Palestinian) in to the Muslim camp, as they are not reassured that we would defend them against the Muslim tyranny which they have to live through day in and day out.

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But as the Crusaders ultimately had to withdraw from the Holy land, hence to Arab historians, the Crusaders were a minor irritant, their invasion one more barbarian incursion, not nearly as serious a threat as the Mongols were to prove in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

To encourage the people of Europe to join the Crusades, the
Pope promised those who signed up that there would be plenty of booty, not to mention the spiritual benefit of having all their sins forgiven by God. This is a tactic the Muslims have used and still use today, a technique that has been given up by the Western World. This kind of a motivation was the impelling factor for many Christians to join the Crusade. If not using this tactic today, the West needs to motivate our youth to the dangers of Islam to a civilized way of life. Only when we wake up to the danger, can we have the will to fight it and destroy it utterly.

The Pope received an enthusiastic response. An armed cavalry force of 15,000 — including 5,000 knights and the rest infantry — set off wearing a large red cross on their outer garments (hence their name Crusaders from the Latin word meaning "cross," though they called themselves "pilgrims"). A peasant force also joined in. In their enthusiasm, these peasants started marching through Europe in advance of the knights. This was the Peoples’ Crusade lead by a peasant-monk named Peter the Hermit that preceded the First Crusade

Considered dispassionately, the Crusades was a seemingly impossible venture. The volunteers – a mixed assemblage of kings, nobles, mercenaries, and adventurers – had to cross thousands of miles of unfamiliar and hostile country and conquer lands of whose strength they had no conception about. Yet so great was their fervor that in 1097 they took Jerusalem, establishing along the way principalities in Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli. Although unable to fend off the Crusaders at first – even offering the Crusaders access to Jerusalem if they would come as pilgrims rather than invaders – the Muslims eventually began to mount effective counterattacks. They eventually recaptured Aleppo and besieged Edessa, thus starting their Jihad against the Crusade.

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The spread of the Crusader Kingdom broadly corresponded with present day Israel. And as they hate the Israelis today, the Jihadis hated the Crusaders with a fierce passion.

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Hip Hip Horray originated from the Latin term Jerusalem has fallen"

(Incidentally, the Crusader cry of "HEP! HEP!" originated at this time. It was an acronym for the Latin of "Jerusalem Has Fallen." With time it became "Hip, Hip, Hooray!" — a cheer phrase that we use till today , but not many of us know its origins lie in the Crusader war cry "Jerusalem Has Fallen.".)

How the Crusaders converted the Al Aqsa Mosque into a Church

The Crusaders, once they conquered Jerusalem, embarked on a vast building effort all over the Holy Land. The ruins of the many fortresses and churches they built can be visited today. (Most of these were destroyed by the Muslims after they reclaimed their earlier holdings, in fear that the Crusaders would return.)

The Crusaders established special orders of knights to look after this kingdom. Those that interest us in particular are the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitalers.

The Knights Templars were stationed on the Temple Mount (hence their name). Interestingly, Knights Templars did not destroy the Dome of the Rock (though the Crusaders did destroy all the mosques that they did not turn into churches).

Why did the Crusaders not destroy the Golden Dome of the Rock Mosque?

They thought it was the "Temple of Solomon," and that the nearby Al Aksa mosque was the "Palace of Solomon." (See Jerusalem: An Archeological Biography by Hershel Shanks, p. 238-239.)

So what did they do? They removed the crescent from the top of the Dome of the Rock, replaced it with a cross, and called the place Templum Domini, "Temple of God." They turned the El Aksa mosque, as well as the vaulted space below the mosque, into a monastery. They called this space, which had originally been built by Herod — "Solomon’s Stables."

These so-called stables have recently been excavated by the Muslim Wakf and transformed into another mosque amid enormous archeological devastation, which the government of Israel felt powerless to stop.)

The Knights Hospitalers were supposed to provide hospitality to the large numbers of Christian pilgrims who would come down and visit the Christian holy sites, and to care for the sick among them. (Thus we see how the word for hospitality became synonymous with a place of care for the sick — hospice or hospital.)

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A Crusader of yore. It was their ruthless bravery that helped Europe remain a civilized continent and enjoy a millennium of relative peace and progress with our Renaissance, Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Reason. Had it not been for the Crusaders, we would have all been yelling blood-curdling slogans like "Death to this" and "Death to that" as do the Muslims all over the Muslim world till today.

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The Knights Hospitalers built their main complex near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a logical place for it. Another complex — consisting of church, hospice and hospital.

What can we learn from the Crusaders as we embark on a war with the same enemies which the Crusaders fought against?

The Knights Hospitalers brought in Christian Arab tribes from Jordan and Syria to help populate the cities with Christians and made Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jericho Christian majority cities. A technique used by the Serbs in Kosovo, but in which they were stupidly stopped by the Anglo-American forces. It is high time that we Westerners learn from the tactics of our Crusader forebears.

As against this today we call "Islam a religion of peace(sic)" and keep saying that "we are not at war with Islam", when facts fly in the face of this claim. As against this, the Crusaders had utter contempt for the Saracens, and hated them with a passion, matching and outmatching the Muslims’ hatred for the Christians. This is what we need to learn to emulate today, if we are to win the War on Terror, within our minds before we win it on the battlefield!

It is the Western pusillanimity today that pushes the Christian Arabs (Maronite, Nestorian, Coptic, Assyrian and Palestinian) into the Muslim camp, as they are not reassured that we would defend them against the Muslim tyranny which they have to live through daily.

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The Crusaders thirsting for water before the battle of hattin.

Saladin chose his time at the height of the merciless Middle Eastern summer. In the midst of the burning heat, the Crusader Armies left their fortified position at Jerusalem and Antioch and marched across the hot and dry desert of Northern Israel towards Lake Tiberas. Saladin had sanded up all the wells along the way and had destroyed the villages of the Maronite Christians who would have supplied the Christian army with water.

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Going back to the Crusades, after liberating Jerusalem, the Crusaders – or Ferenghees (Franks), as the Arabs called them – had extended their reach to the borders of Egypt, where the Fatimids had fallen after two hundred years. There they faced a young man called Salah al-Din (Saladin) who had founded a new dynasty, the Ayyubids, and who was destined to blunt the thrust of the Crusader
s’ attack. In 1187 Saladin counterattacked the Crusaders, eventually recapturing Jerusalem.

The Europeans mounted a series of further crusading expeditions against the Muslims over the next hundred years or so, but the Crusaders never again recovered the initiative. Confined to the coast, they ruled small areas until their final defeat at the hands of the Egyptian Mamluks at the end of the thirteenth century in 1297

How Saladin beat the Crusaders using subterfuge with a replica of the True Cross as a bait

In 1187 the Crusaders had been ruling Jerusalem for more than nine decades since having liberated it in 1097. They had fortified it by raising the height of its ramparts, dug a moat around it and made their position unassailable. The same was the case with Tyre, Sidon, Cæsarea and other crusader towns. The Muslims had tried to storm many of these fortresses, but failed. Knowing fully well that he would face defeat at the hands of the Crusaders, the Muslim chieftain Saladin used subterfuge, as the Muslims consistently had for almost than a century.

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In the Muslim-Christian war, "who has been the victim and who the aggressor?" When Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem in 634, the city had been Christian for over three centuries. Soon after, the Prophet’s disciples invaded and destroyed the glorious churches of Egypt, first, and then attacked the pagan Berbers who were then ruled by Kahina – a Christianized Jewish line North Africa, causing the extinction of Christianity in places like Tripoli that had had bishops like St Augustine.

Later it was the turn of Spain, Sicily and Greece to face the blood-thirsty sword of Islam, and the lands in Anatolia that would eventually become Turkey, where the communities founded by St Paul himself were turned into ruins.

In 1453, after seven centuries of attacks and sieges, Constantinople, the second Rome, capitulated and became today’s Islamic Istanbul. The Islamic threat reached the Balkans through Kosovo, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia but, miraculously, the onslaught was stopped and forced to turn back at Vienna’s walls.

If the Jerusalem massacre of the Muslims by the Crusaders in 1099 is held against the Christians, then so should Mohammed’s unprovoked attack on Christendom at Mu’ta be held against the Muslims.

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Not many historians highlight this subterfuge which was how the Muslims beat the Crusaders using a replica of the True Cross as a bait at what was one of the most important battles in the medieval history of the Middle East — at the Horns of Hattin, which is northwest of the Sea of Galilee.

Saladin or Salah-ud-Din was an evil genius, he turned both psychology and the climate as allies in the war against the Crusaders. In the middle of the summer and burning heat, he spread a rumor that he held the True Cross in his custody. The True Cross is as controversial as the Shroud of Turin that is claimed to have been used to cover the mortal remains of Jesus Christ and which is alleged to have the imprint of his body (a specimen of the Shroud is at Turin in Italy).

History of the True Cross

There is a popular legend amongst devout Christians that the True Cross survives to this day and has to be regained for Christendom. The True Cross was taken by many invaders from Jerusalem. One of these invaders was the Zoroastrian Sassanid general Shehrbaraz, who had captured Jerusalem in 612 and the True Cross fell into their hands. Emperor Heraclius is said to have secretly smuggled the True Cross from Jerusalem after retaking it from the Arabs in a lightening attack. Since then the true cross had disappeared and there had been many versions that claimed to be the original.

Saladin took advantage of this belief amongst the Christians that the True Cross is somewhere in the Middle East by claiming that he had the True Cross in his possession. He set his trap by planting outside the plains of Hattin near the shore of Lake Tiberas (Sea of Galilee) a replica of the True Cross (on which Christ was said to have been crucified).

Saladin challenged the Crusaders saying that if their god really willed it, the Crusaders would recapture the True Cross from his hands. And if they did succeed, he would himself become a Christian ("I shall return to the faith of Christ") This is what he is reported to have told the Crusaders’ envoy. He managed to lure the Crusaders out into the open and the Crusaders fell into his trap of subterfuge.

Saladin chose his time at the height of the merciless Middle Eastern summer. In the midst of the burning heat, the Crusader Armies left their fortified position at Jerusalem and Antioch and marched across the hot and dry desert of Northern Israel towards Lake Tiberas. Saladin had sanded up all the wells along the way and had destroyed the villages of the Maronite Christians who would have supplied the Christian army with water.

Burning with thirst the exhausted Crusaders reached Lake Tiberas. And observed the Muslim positions from higher ground surrounding the Lake. To their amazement, there was no Muslim army to be seen. The few villages along the banks appeared undefended and there was no sign of a Muslim military camp.

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The Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression-an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands. Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While some individual Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, till today in Southern Sudan, Kashmir, Chechnya, South Thailand, South Philippines (Mindanao) the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword.

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The Crusaders who were dying with thirst had an entire lake undefended in from of them. The Christian army which had survived days on without proper water supply, broke ranks and descended on Lake Tiberas (Sea of Galilee). Once the Crusaders broke ranks and reached the Lake, with many of them spread along the Lake shore and were in the act of lapping up the water to quench their parched throats, they found the Muslim swordsmen lunging out of the surrounding villages and attacking them all along the shore. Now the Muslims had the higher ground, with the Christians having reached the shores of the Lake Tiberas and having lost their initial higher ground which they left to reach the lake.

With his evil genius, Saladin, had made the Christians leave their fortified positions in Jerusalem, made them march in the hot and dry summer with no recourse to water and after the Christians arrived at the lake, he hid his infantry in the seemingly abandoned villages, making the Christians think that the lake was undefended.

Once the Christian army left its higher ground for the shore of the lake, the Muslim army which was hiding in the village now had the higher ground from where to attack the Christians, who were caught on the lake shore with the Muslims on higher ground attacking them from behind, while the Christians were trapped between the attacking Muslims coming from behind and had the Lake before them.

Caught between the Lake and the Muslim attackers, the Christians who has dismounted, were at the mercy of the Muslims. They found themselves vas
tly outmaneuvered and outnumbered, and this is how Saladin destroyed the entire Crusader army at the banks of the Sea of Galilee and then marched on to take Jerusalem which had been denuded of troops who perished at the Battle of Hattin on the shores of Lake Tiberas. All the Crusader prisoners were transported to Mecca and, to the great joy of the Mohammedans, the prisoners were put to death at Mecca.

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If the Jerusalem massacre of the Muslims by the Crusaders in 1099 is held against the Christians, then so should Mohammed’s unprovoked attack on Christendom at Mu’ta be held against the Muslims. It was the Muslims who first attacked Christendom in 629, before which there had been no Christian attack on the Muslims.

So in the Muslim-Christian war of 1400 years, it is the Muslims who are the aggressors and the Christians the victims. We need to remember the massacres carried out by the Muslims at Jerusalem (634) Caesarea (636), Babylon – modern Cairo (640), Alexandria (641), all of which came before the Crusades and for which the Muslims need to be made accountable. And later Mohammed II’s action of mass slaughter in Otranto [Italy] in 1480, in addition to 9/11, 7/7, 3/11, Bali, Beslan, Jerusalem again in our times must not also be forgotten nor forgiven. And we should bring the perpetrators to justice, or take justice to the perpetrators by hunting them down.

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But even though they lost Jerusalem, the Crusaders didn’t give up. They mounted campaign after campaign to recoup the Holy Land. They never did get Jerusalem back but there was continuing bloodshed between the Muslims and the Christians. Finally, a century after the battle of Hattin in 1187, the last Crusader stronghold — in Acco (also known as Acre) fell in 1291, bringing an end to the Crusades.

Today we have amazing ruins from the Crusader period all over Israel. Some of the most massive and impressive are in Caesarea, Akko, Tiberias and in Belvoir (near the battle site of Hattin). The most imposing of the many fortresses built by the crusaders, the elegant krak des Chevailers in Syria held out against the Muslims for over a century and a half. The Crusader castle at Sidon (Saidah to for the Arabs) in Lebanon was abandoned after the final defeat of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Although the Crusades achieved no lasting results in terms of military conquest, they were important in the development of trade, and their long-range effects on Western society – on everything from feudalism to fashion – are inestimable. Ironically, they also put an end to the centuries-old rivalry between the Arabs and Byzantines. By occupying Constantinople, the capital of their Christian allies, in the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders achieved what the Arabs had been trying to do from the early days of Islam. Although the Byzantine Empire continued until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, it never recovered its former power after the Fourth Crusade, and subsisted only in the shadow of history during its remaining years.

For the West, however, the Crusaders’ greatest achievement was the opening of the eastern Mediterranean to European shipping. The Venetians and Genoese established trading colonies in Egypt, and luxury goods of the East found their way to European markets. In the history of the Middle Ages, this was far more important than ephemeral conquests. Control of the Eastern trade became a constantly recurring theme in later relations between the European countries and the East, and in the nineteenth century was to lead to widespread Western intervention.

In religious terms, the Crusades, hardened Muslim attitudes toward Christians that lead to more blood-letting when the Muslims invaded Europe after the Crusades. The Crusaders had also left a legacy of blood that matched that of the Muslims. In 1097 after having captured Jerusalem, the Crusaders never stopped killing the Muslims. That was the Crusades of the Middle Ages. In the year 1095, people were shocked in Western Europe by the words of Pope Urban II, "The Muslims have conquered Jerusalem". The Muslims forbade Christians and pilgrims to come to Jerusalem to pray. Pope Urban wanted the Christians to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. People shouted "God wills it".

All over France these were the words of the Christians. The French, German, and Italians were the European Christians that went on Crusades. The word Crusade meant "a war of the cross". During the first Crusade (1095-1097) most of the knights slaughtered any Muslim they could find. Pope Innocent III wanted the Christians to go and kill the Muslims.

All together there were ten Crusades in a period of 176 years. The Crusades lasted from 1095 until 1291.

Fallout of the Crusades in Western minds

A fallout of the crusades, is the canard that it was the Crusades that turned the Muslims against the entire West: and we have all paid – and will continue to pay, the consequences of the Islamic masses’ desire for revenge, of their call for vengeance against the ‘Great Satan,’ which, by the way, is not just the United States, but the whole of Christianity, which is ultimately responsible for the ‘Crusades’." This is absolute rubbish. It was the Muslim who attacked Christendom first in the Battle of Mu’ta in 629, followed by the unprovoked Muslim attack on Christian Palestine in 634.

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Before the Crusades, the Christians in all their wars never crossed the limits of civility. A limit that had been turned upside down by the Muslims with their subterfuge, rape, slaughter and double-crossing and hoodwinking the enemy with means of immoral psychological warfare (psyops). It was in response to this that the Crusades returned the Muslim bestiality with a corresponding bestiality. This corresponding bestiality was in fact why the first Crusade was a success. This corresponding bestiality was also the reason why a century and a half later the Mongols under Hulagu Khan were successful against the Muslims in 1258 when they sacked Baghdad.

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But the question to be asked in the context of more than a thousand years of Christian-Islamic relations, says the Italian historian Messori, is: In the Muslim-Christian war, "who has been the victim and who the aggressor?" When Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem in 634, the city had been Christian for over three centuries. Soon after, the Prophet’s disciples invaded and destroyed the glorious churches of Egypt, first, and then attacked the pagan Berbers who were then ruled by Kahina – a Christianized Jewish line North Africa, causing the extinction of Christianity in places like Tripoli that had had bishops like St Augustine.

Later it was the turn of Spain, Sicily and Greece to face the blood-thirsty sword of Islam, and the lands in Anatolia that would eventually become Turkey, where the communities founded by St Paul himself were turned into ruins.

In 1453, after seven centuries of attacks and sieges, Constantinople, the second Rome, capitulated and became today’s Islamic Istanbul. The Islamic threat reached the Balkans through Kosovo, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia but, miraculously, the onslaught was stopped and forced to turn back at Vienna’s walls.

If the Je
rusalem massacre of the Muslims by the Crusaders in 1099 is held against the Christians, then so should Mohammed’s unprovoked attack on Christendom at Mu’ta be held against the Muslims. It was the Muslims who first attacked Christendom in 629, before which there had been no Christian attack on the Muslims.

So in the Muslim-Christian war of 1400 years, it is the Muslims who are the aggressors and the Christians the victims. We need to remember the massacres carried out by the Muslims at Jerusalem (634) Caesarea (636), Babylon – modern Cairo (640), Alexandria (641), all of which came before the Crusades and for which the Muslims need to be made accountable. And later Mohammed II’s action of mass slaughter in Otranto [Italy] in 1480, in addition to 9/11, 7/7, 3/11, Bali, Beslan, Jerusalem again in our times must not also be forgotten nor forgiven. And we should bring the perpetrators to justice, or take justice to the perpetrators by hunting them down.

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"The real interest in these expeditions, in service of Christian brethren threatened by Moslems, was the restoration of peace in the East, and the early stirring of the idea of rescue for distant fellow-Christians. The Crusade posited reconciliation with the adversary before departure, renouncement of disputes and vengeance, acceptance of possible martyrdom

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Messori concluded: "At present, what Moslem country respects the civil rights and freedom of worship of any other than their own? Who is angered by the genocide of Armenians in the past, and of Sudanese Christians at present? According to the devotees of the Koran, is the world not divided between the ‘Islamic territory’ and the ‘war territory’ – all those areas that must be converted to Islam, whether they like it or not?

"A simple review of history, along very general lines, confirms an obvious truth: Christianity is constantly on the defensive when it comes to Moslem aggression; this has been the case from the beginning until now. For example, in Africa at present there is a bloody offensive by the Moslems to convert ethnic groups to Islam. Admittedly, Christians do need to ask for forgiveness for their missionary activities in which they used duress and subterfuge in the form of charity as a covert form of temptation to convert non-Christians to Christianity. But, in this instance of the Crusades, must it be Catholics who ask for forgiveness for actions in self- defense, and for keeping the road open for pilgrimage to Jesus’ places, which was the reason for the Crusades?"

For the atrocities stupidly committed by the Crusaders on the Jewish people in Europe, during the Crusaders’ march to the Holy land, in addition to those on some Eastern Orthodox Christians too, whom the Franks did not recognize, or could not recognize as Christians; we tender an unqualified apology, through the portals of this site.

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Today we have amazing ruins from the Crusader period all over Israel. Some of the most massive and impressive are in Caesarea, Akko, Tiberias and in Belvoir (near the battle site of Hattin). The most imposing of the many fortresses built by the crusaders, the elegant Krak des Chevailers in Syria held out against the Muslims for over a century and a half. The Crusader castle at Sidon (Saidah to for the Arabs) in Lebanon was abandoned after the final defeat of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

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Crusaders never wanted to Convert Muslims to Christianity at the pain of death

Dr Franco Cardini, an expert in Medieval history, contributed to the debate with an article in the Italian newspaper Avvenire, entitled "Crusades – Not Religious Wars." "The Crusades," says Cardini, "were never ‘religious wars,’ their purpose was not to force conversions of Muslim to Christianity. The excesses and violence committed in the course of the expeditions (which did occur and must not be forgotten) must be evaluated in the painful but usual context of … military events, keeping in mind that, undoubtedly, some theological reason always justified them.

To describe the Crusade as a "Holy War" against the Moslems is misleading, says Cardini: "The real interest in these expeditions, in service of Christian brethren threatened by Moslems, was the restoration of peace in the East, and the early stirring of the idea of rescue for distant fellow-Christians. The Crusade posited reconciliation with the adversary before departure, renouncement of disputes and vengeance, acceptance of possible martyrdom …".

But the Crusades failed in three respects. The Holy Land was not won. The advance of Islam was not permanently checked. The schism between the East and the West was not healed. They were the primary objects of the Crusades.

The idea of a "a Crusade" was born before Islam

In fact the first instance, of a Crusade was before the birth of Islam in the expedition of Heraclius against the Persians in the seventh century before Islam had started the Jihad. This was when the Zoroastrian Sassanid general Shehrbaraz, who had overrun Jerusalem in 612 and had taken the True Cross into Persia and installed it at Dastgard. Then the Sassanid armies had reached the Walls of Constantinople under another Sassanid Persian General Shahin and along with the Avars of Bulgaria had besieged Constantinople.

To roll back the Sassanid attack, Heraclius had invoked religion as a motivation to retake the lost Byzantine territories that included Jerusalem which he retook in 628 and also regained the True Cross when he captured the Persian city of Dastgard and reinstalled the True Cross at Jerusalem.

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It was in response to the Muslim bestiality and unprovoked attack on Christendom starting in 629 from the battle of Mu’ta that the Crusades answered the Muslim bestiality with a corresponding bestiality. This corresponding bestiality was in fact why the first Crusade was a success. This corresponding bestiality was also the reason why a century and a half later the Mongols under Hulagu Khan were successful against the Muslims in 1258 when they sacked Baghdad. Without this corresponding bestiality which in fact should outdo the Muslim bestiality, there is no hope for anyone to defeat and destroy the Muslims – who are the worst threat to a civilized way of life.

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Six years after this in 634, the Arab Muslims invaded Byzantium and captured Jerusalem. It is also possible that the nascent Muslims and their uncouth prophet turned this idea of the Byzantines of waging a war on the non-Christian Zoroastrians to reclaim the holy land as the inspiration for their Jihad. But this is a debatable issue. Before the Crusades, the Christians in all their wars never crossed the limits of civility. A limit that had been turned upside down by the Muslims with their subterfuge, rape, slaughter and double-crossing and hoodwinking the enemy with means of immoral psychological warfare (psyops). It was in response to this that the Crusades answered the Muslim bestiality with a corresponding bestiality. This corresponding bestiality was in fact why the first Crusade was a success. This corresponding bestiality was also the reason why a century and a half later the Mongols under Hulagu Khan were successfu
l against the Muslims in 1258 when they sacked Baghdad. Without this corresponding bestiality which in fact should outdo the Muslim bestiality, there is no hope for anyone to defeat and destroy the Muslims – who are the worst threat to a civilized way of life.

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Many Muslim historians look upon the Mongols as looters and plunderers. They tell us that the Mongols were like the vandals, destroying everything on the way with the only aim to loot established rich civilizations. And the civilization of the Muslims at Baghdad was, the Muslims claim, the richest in the 13th century. This is wrong, while Baghdad was a rich and well endowed city, the Caliphate owed its riches to the constant looting of Persia, Central Asia, North Africa, Spain which the Muslim armies indulged from the beginning of Islam, till they were checked by Charles Martel in France and till their brutal; march across Central Asia towards China was reversed with equal brutality by the Mongols.

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The Mongol counterattack on Islam – The Mongols almost completed the job, which the Crusaders had started

Many Muslim historians look upon the Mongols as looters and plunderers. They tell us that the Mongols were like the vandals, destroying everything on the way with the only aim to loot established rich civilizations. And the civilization of the Muslims at Baghdad was, the Muslims claim, the richest in the 13th century. This is wrong, while Baghdad was a rich and well endowed city, the Caliphate owed its riches to the constant looting of Persia, Central Asia, North Africa, Spain which the Muslim armies indulged from the beginning of Islam, till they were checked by Charles Martel in France and till their brutal; march across Central Asia towards China was reversed with equal brutality by the Mongols.

If the Mongols were motivated purely by intentions of looting the Caliphate (which itself was a center where loot was collected and stored by the Muslims), the Mongols need not have traversed some four thousand miles from their homeland in Mongolia, to reach Baghdad, they could have as well attacked China, Korea, Japan, all of which was hardly a few hundred miles from their homeland and were more rich and endowed than Baghdad. They could also have attacked Kampuchea (Cambodia), Thailand, Sri Vijaya and Majapahit in Malaysia and Indonesia which were relatively nearer to the Mongols than Baghdad.

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The real reason why the Mongol horsemen made their way from Mongolia and started rolling back the Muslim invaders from the lands of the Turko-Mongol people which are today known as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, finally reaching Iran, and Iraq, lay in the subterfuge, savage cruelty and other foul tactics which the Muslims had used to convert the Turks and Mongols to Islam.

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The reason why the Mongols attacked Islamdom

The real reason why the Mongol horsemen made their way from Mongolia and started rolling back the Muslim invaders from the lands of the Turko-Mongol people which are today known as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, finally reaching Iran, and Iraq, lay in the subterfuge, savage cruelty and other foul tactics which the Muslims had used to convert the Turks and Mongols to Islam.

This had led to a gradual accumulation of bitterness and a desire for revenge against the Muslims in the Turks and their related clans the Mongols. From the seventh to the thirteenth centuries many Persian Zoroastrians, the Persian Nestorian Christians, along with the Turks, Chinese and the Mongols had nursed within themselves a grievance against the Muslim aggression into Persia and Central Asia.

It is this accumulation of grievances that led to the burst of the Mongol attack on Islamdom from 1200 that culminated in the sack and slaughter of Baghdad in 1258 under Hulagu Khan who was egged on to this path by his Nestorian Persian Christian wife.

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Chengiz Khan – An artist’s impression.

Chengiz Khan’s and Hulagu Khan’s attack on Islamdom was a collective expression of resistance to Islam from the pre-Islamic Persians who had settled in China and Mongolia, and the Turks who had been waging a struggle against Islam in the 8th to the 10th centuries.

The Mongol counterattack on Islam was a result of historical wrongs committed by the Arab Muslims on the Zoroastrian Persians, and by the Arab Muslims along with the Islamized Persians on the Turks, and in turn, by the Arabs with the Islamized Persians and the Islamized Turks on non-Islamic Turks and Mongols and Chinese.

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Historians have failed to interpret the attack of the Mongols on Muslim Persia, and the Middle East as the Turko-Mongol counterattack on Islam in the 13th century whereas the Crusades, are clearly recognized as the Christian counterattack against Islam in the 11th century.

We shall examine this in detail the chapter on the Mongol resistance to Islam, before some of the Mongols succumbed to the subterfuge and savagery of Islam. Suffice it to note here that Chengiz Khan’s and Hulagu Khan’s attack on Islamdom was a collective expression of resistance to Islam from the pre-Islamic Persians who had settled in China and Mongolia, and the Turks who had been waging a struggle against Islam in the 8th to the 10th centuries.

The Mongol counterattack on Islam was a result of historical wrongs committed by the Arab Muslims on the Zoroastrian Persians, and by the Arab Muslims along with the Islamized Persians on the Turks, and in turn, by the Arabs with the Islamized Persians and the Islamized Turks on non-Islamic Turks and Mongols and Chinese.

Humble Origins of Genghis Khan

In 1200, a Mongol named Temujin (Temüjin) rose as a khan over his and various other families by dint of extraordinary bravery and skill at warfare. He was a good manager, collecting under him people of talent. He was vassal to Ong Khan, titular head of a confederacy that differed in its being better organized than the other, normally scattered clans of Mongols. Temujin expressed his loyalty and joined Ong Khanin a military campaign against Tatars to their east.

In 1202, Temujin defeated these Tatars, and with this success the aging Ong Khan declared Temujin his adoptive son and heir. Ong Khan’s natural son, Senggum (Senggüm), had been expecting to succeed his father, and plotted to assassinate Temujin. Someone leaked the plans to Temujin. Those loyal to Temujin defeated those loyal to Senggum, and Temujin became ruler of what had been Ong Khan’s coalition. In 1206, Temujin the adopted son, took the title Universal Ruler, which translates to Genghis Khan.

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On being informed that the Mongols were well-disposed towards Christianity, Pope Innocent IV sent them Giovanni di Pianocarpini, a Franciscan, and Nicolas Ascelin, a Dominican, as ambassadors. Pianocarpini was in Karakorum 8 April, 1246, the day of the election of the great Khan

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Genghis (Changez, Chinggis or Chengiz) Kha
n’s Invasion of Central Asia and Iran.

The Mongols had among them a significant number of descendants from the Zoroastrian and Nestorian (Persian) Christian refugees who had fled the Muslim persecution in Persia since the 7th century and had settled in Western China and Mongolia. Among these refugees were many Nestorian (Persian) Christian refugees. In the six hundred year interregnum between the Muslim occupation of Persia in 650 to the Mongol counterattack in 1250, when the Mongols finally decided to repel the Muslims who were making incursions from Kazakhstan into Western Mongolia and China, the number of Zoroastrians in Persia had dwindled to less than a tenth of the population.

But in this interregnum of six hundred years, Nestorian (Persian) Christianity had made some headway among the Mongol elite at least, certainly those of Kereit clan in origin, most notably the womenfolk in the royal family. The Persian Christian religious identity and activities of Dokuz Khatun, Hulagu’s Persian (Nestorian) Christian wife, is well known. Mention can be made of other notable Christian Mongols, such as Kitbugha and Il-Siban, respectively the military commander of Syria in 1260 and the governor (shihna or na’ib) of Damascus who were also Nestorian Mongol Christians.

Immediate cause for the Mongol-Muslim war

The Christian and Zoroastrian influences prevailed on the Mongols to attack Islamdom, which found an immediate provocation for war when a Mongol caravan of several hundred merchants approached one of the recently acquired Central Asian provinces of the Islamic Persian Empire. The sultan of this kingdom claimed that spies were in the caravan and detained the entire caravan.

To negotiate their release, Genghis Khan sent envoys to the Sultan, but the Sultan had the chief of the envoys killed and the beards of the others burned whom he sent back to Genghis Khan. To this affront, Genghis retaliated, sending by his army westwards in to the Sultan’s domains. Genghis Khan overran, Central Asia and Caucasus reaching the cities of Shiraz and Tabriz in Iran.

During the course of the invasion Genghis Khan died. His son Hulagu carried on the attack and pressed further into Iran, Mesopotamia, Palestine, up to the borders of Egypt. Hulagu Khan established contacts with the Crusaders who were still holding on to some of their possessions on the Mediterranean.

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The Mongol Warriors at the Battle of Ayn Jalut

By thus leading up to an alliance between Mongols and Christians against the Muslims, the crusade had produced the desired effect; early in the fourteenth century the future development of Christianity in the East seemed assured. Unfortunately, however, the Mongols met with a defeat at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (Eye of the Goliath) in Palestine (today’s Israel) and internal changes which occurred in the West, the weakening of the political influence of the popes. This led to a gradual ceasing of contacts between Christendom and the Great Khan of the Mongols and the only Turko-Mongol people to embrace Christianity were the Bulgar Turks (Not many of us know that the Bulgars were Turkic in origin and the word Bulgar is derived from the Turkish word Bulgha which means to mix)

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The Lost Opportunity for a Mongol-Crusader Alliance

On being informed that the Mongols were well-disposed towards Christianity, Pope Innocent IV sent them Giovanni di Pianocarpini, a Franciscan, and Nicolas Ascelin, a Dominican, as ambassadors. Pianocarpini was in Karakorum 8 April, 1246, the day of the election of the great Khan, but nothing came of this first attempt at a Crusader-Mongol alliance against the Muslims. However, when St. Louis, who had left Paris 12 June, 1248, and reached the Island of Cyprus, he received there a friendly embassy from the Great Khan and, in return, sent him two Dominicans.

Embassies of Christian nations and of the Papacy in Mongol Potentates

Many other memoirs, especially that of Hayton, King of Armenia (1307, ed. Armenian Documents, I), considered an alliance between the Christians and the Mongols who had then overrun Persia and Mesopotamia, before making their way into Syria and Palestine. A Christian-Mongol alliance was indispensable for success against the common enemy – the Muslims.

In fact, from the end of the thirteenth century many Christian missionaries had penetrated into the Mongolian Empire; in Persia, as well as in China, their propaganda flourished. St. Francis of Assisi, and Raymond Lully had hoped for the conversion of the Mongols to Christianity. Some of the Mongols who were also members of the Nestorian Church, received these delegations willingly.

During the pontificate of John XXII (1316-34) permanent Dominican and Franciscan missions were established in Persia, China, Tatary and Turkestan, and in 1318 the Archbishopric of Sultanieh was created in Persia. In China Giovanni de Monte Corvino, created Archbishop of Cambaluc (Peking), organized the religious hierarchy, founded monasteries, and converted to Christianity men of note, including the great Khan himself. The account of the journey of Blessed Orderic de Pordenone (Cordier, ed.) across Asia, between 1304 and 1330, shows us that Christianity had gained a foothold in Persia, Central Asia, and Southern China.

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A Christian-Mongol alliance was indispensable for success in defeating the common enemy – the Muslims.

In fact, from the end of the thirteenth century many Christian missionaries had penetrated into the Mongolian Empire; in Persia, as well as in China, their propaganda flourished. St. Francis of Assisi, and Raymond Lully had hoped for the conversion of the Mongols to Christianity. Some of the Mongols who were also members of the Nestorian Church, received these delegations willingly.

The Mongol Crusader alliance had the potential of wiping off the Islamic threat to civilization in the 13th century itself. But both parties failed to see beyond their immediate interests. The leaders of the Crusade and especially the pope, insisted on the conversion of the Mongols to Christianity, before an alliance could be formed. This was the main hurdle for the Crusaders joining forces with the Mongols in 1260 at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (Eye of the Goliath).

The fallout was that both the Mongols and the Crusaders were individually defeated by the Muslims. At the end both lost and civilization continued to be under the threat of Islam, as it is up to this day.

Today we Americans should realize that apart from mending fences with Russia, a powerful ally in the battle against the Jihad, we also need to join up with the Chinese who have been able to tame the Jihad in China. The Chinese symptomatically represent the Mongols of yore. They come from the same ethnic stock and carry in their genes, the art of war as propounded by Sun Tzu.

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By thus leading up to an alliance between Mongols and Christians against the Muslims, the crusade had produced the desired effect; early in the fourteenth century the future development of Christianity in the East seemed assured.

Unfortunately, however, the Mongols met with a defeat at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (Eye of the Goliath) in Palestine (today’s Israel) and internal changes which occurred in the West, the weakening of the political influence of the popes. This led to a gradual ceasing of contacts between Christendom and the great Khan of the Mongols and the only Turko-Mongol people to embrace Christianity were
the Bulgar Turks (Not many of us know that the Bulgars were Turkic in origin and the word Bulgar is derived from the Turkish word Bulgha which means to mix).

So finally, the contemplated alliance with the Mongols was never fully realized. It was in vain that Argoun, Khan of Persia, sent the Nestorian monk, Raban Sauma, as ambassador to the Pope and the princes of the West (1285-88); his offers elicited but vague replies from the Pope and most of the Mongols turned to Islam making Central Asia a Muslim land.

Prominent amongst those Mongols who had been converted to Mohammedanism, was Timur the lame who showed his hostility to the Christians by taking Smyrna from the crusaders for the Muslims. This was the final break between the Christians and the pagan Mongols and henceforth most Mongols (except those of Mongolia proper) became Muslims. The Muslim Mongols comprise the Kazaks, Tajiks, Ughirs, Han, Uzbeks, Khirgiz of today.

With the Mongols lost to the enemy, the crusades lost the last possible ally and thus by the end of the 13th century, the Crusades came to an end.

Lessons from the Lost Opportunity of a Mongol-Crusader Alliance

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Finally, the contemplated alliance with the Mongols was never fully realized. It was in vain that Argoun, Khan of Persia, sent the Nestorian monk, Raban Sauma, as ambassador to the Pope and the princes of the West (1285-88); his offers elicited but vague replies from the Pope and most of the Mongols turned to Islam making Central Asia a Muslim land.

Prominent amongst those Mongols who had been converted to Mohammedanism, was Timur the lame who showed his hostility to the Christians by taking Smyrna from the crusaders for the Muslims. This was the final break between the Christians and the pagan Mongols and henceforth most Mongols (except those of Mongolia proper) became Muslims. The Muslim Mongols comprise the Kazaks, Ughirs, Han, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Khirgiz of today. With the Mongols lost to the enemy, the crusades lost the last possible ally and thus by the end of the 13th century, the Crusades came to an end.

After the Crusades came to an end, the Muslims took only a century to regroup, till they launched their renewed invasion of Europe which culminated in the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and eventually took the Muslims to Vienna in 1683 and up to the borders of Poland, Prussia (Germany) and Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and of course Russia. It was the valiance of the Polish king Jan Sobeiski that kept the Turks from overrunning Vienna. And the unnamed Serb, Croat, Greek, Bulgar, Romanian, Hungarian Austrian, Prussian heroes turned back the Muslim from Europe in a struggle lasting over four hundred years from 1350 to 1918.

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The Mongol Crusader alliance had the potential of wiping off the Islamic threat to civilization in the 13th century itself. But both parties failed to see beyond their immediate interests. The leaders of the Crusade and especially the pope, insisted on the conversion of the Mongols to Christianity, before an alliance could be formed. This was the main hurdle for the Crusaders joining forces with the Mongols in 1260 at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (Eye of the Goliath). The fallout was that both the Mongols and the Crusaders were individually defeated by the Muslims. At the end both lost and civilization continued to be under the threat of Islam, as it is up to this day.

Today we Americans should realize that apart from mending fences with Russia, a powerful ally in the battle against the Jihad, we also need to join up with the Chinese who have been able to tame the Jihad in China. The Chinese symptomatically represent the Mongols of yore. They come from the same ethnic stock and carry in their genes, the art of war as propounded by Sun Tzu.

After the Crusades came to an end, the Muslims took only a century to regroup, till they launched their renewed invasion of Europe which culminated in the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and eventually took the Muslims to Vienna in 1683 and up to the borders of Poland, Prussia (Germany) and Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and of course Russia.

It was the valiance of the Polish king Jan Sobeiski that kept the Turks from overrunning Vienna. And the unnamed Serb, Croat, Greek, Bulgar, Romanian, Hungarian Austrian, Prussian heroes turned back the Muslims from Europe in a struggle lasting over four hundred years from 1350 to 1918.

An evaluation of the Crusades

In the context of the war on terror, just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word "crusade" in his remarks? Many Westerners mistakenly believe that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn’t the present violence, they persist to insist, have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame? Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so and he is supported by those ‘snakes in the grass’ communists, and pseudo-liberals. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam.

Misconceptions about the Crusades

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the ‘peaceful’ Middle East and then deformed the ‘enlightened'(sic) Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins.

For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression-an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands. Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims as always were gunning for them. While some individual Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, till today in Southern Sudan, Kashmir, Chechnya, South Thailand, South Philippines (Mindanao) the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword.

In the Muslim view, the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Communist (and earlier Zoroastrian) states are required to be destroyed and their lands conquered.

When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years and a half, till today.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt – once the most heavily Christian areas in the world-quickly succumbed.

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The crusaders saved us from a bleak and gory
fate. We owe them our gratitude and need to take inspiration from their spirit, grit, determination and ruthless bravery for completing their unfinished task. It is no wonder that, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, in a spontaneous expression of his mindset President Bush called the war on Terror – "a Crusade".

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By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece.

In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world.

At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense. The Crusade was an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. By 1098, the Crusaders had restored Nicaea and Antioch to Christian rule. In July 1099, they conquered Jerusalem and began to build a Christian state in Palestine. The joy in Europe was unbridled. It seemed that the tide of history, which had lifted the Muslims to such heights, was now turning. After the Crusades ended, the Ottoman Turks conquered continued to press westward, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, capturing Constantinople and plunging deep into Europe itself. In 1529, Suleiman the Turkish Sultan laid siege to Vienna.

If not for a run of freak rainstorms that delayed his progress and forced him to leave behind much of his artillery, it is virtually certain that the Turks would have taken the city. Germany, then, would have been at their mercy. Yet, even while these close shaves were taking place, something else was brewing in Europe-something unprecedented in human history. The Renaissance, to be followed the expeditions to the New World, the colonization of the Americas, followed by the Industrial Revolution. The Muslim threat was neutralized economically.

As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and seemingly sophisticated Turks began to be seen through as what they really were – backward and pathetic – no longer worth a Crusade. The "Sick Man of Europe" Ottoman Turkey limped along until the 20th century, when he finally expired under the blows given to him, by Mustfa Kemal Pasha (Ataturk) the Christianized and Westernized founder of modern secular Turkey. But the demise of the sick man Ottoman Turkey, has left behind the present mess of the modern Middle East. The Iraq imbroglio originates in the misrule of the Ottoman Turks.

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The two faces of Islam : Had the Crusades succeeded, these two events and many others we witness today would not have had happened.

Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient civilization of Europe with its Greco-roman origins, with its respect for women and love for democracy, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

We have to thank the Crusaders for the fact that this did not happen, or else we in Europe and America would have been ruled by rabble rousing Ayatollahs and Mullahs, who would have issued death threats and sent us against each other on an endless orgy of blood-letting (as they are doing in Iraq and across the Islamic world today), instead of sending man to the moon and looking outward to conquer the universe.

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From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades. Religion, after all, is nothing to fight wars over. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies. And yet, both the medieval and the modern soldiers fight ultimately for their own world and all that makes it up. Both are willing to suffer enormous sacrifice, provided that it is in the service of something they hold dear, something greater than themselves – a free, democratic and a civilized way of life.

Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient civilization of Europe with its Greco-roman origins, with its respect for women and love for democracy, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

We have to thank the Crusaders for the fact that this did not happen, or else we in Europe and America would have been ruled by rabble rousing Ayatollahs and Mullahs, who would have issued death threats and sent us against each other on an endless orgy of blood-letting (as they are doing in Iraq and across the Islamic world today), instead of sending man to the moon and looking outward to conquer the universe.

What our generation should learn from the Crusaders

The crusaders saved us from a bleak and gory fate. We owe them our gratitude and need to take inspiration from their spirit, grit, determination and ruthless bravery for completing their unfinished task. It is no wonder that in a spontaneous expression of his mindset President Bush called the war on Terror – "a Crusade".

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* For those uninitiated, PBUH expands to Perpetual Battle Upon Hagarism (Islam) – founded by the mass-murderer and pedophile pretenderprophet Mohammed-ibn-Abdallah (Yimach Shmo – May his name and memory be obliterated).

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Select Bibliography

Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict, by Obadiah Shoher

Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries (Hardcover) by Paul Fregosi

The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World by Srdja Trifkovic

Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer

Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam) by David Cook

Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq

Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer

Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’Or

Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Yeor

What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary by Ibn Warraq

Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches About Christianity, Violence and the Goals of the Islamic Jihad by Mark A. Gabriel, Mark A. Gabriel

A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer

The Great Divide: The failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West by Marvin Olasky

The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims by Robert Spencer

Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer, David Pryce-Jones

The Koran (Penguin Classics) by N. J. Dawood

Don’t
Keep me Silent! One Woman’s Escape from the Chains of Islam by Mina Nevisa

Christianity And Islam: The Final Clash by Robert Livingston

Holiest Wars : Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden by Timothy R. Furnish

The Last Trumpet: A Comparative Study in Christian-Islamic Eschatology by Samuel, Ph.D. Shahid

Unleashing the beast: How a fanatical islamic dictator will form a ten-nation coalition and terrorize the world for forty-two months by Perry Stone

Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Religion and Politics) by David Cook

Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle by Mark A., Ph.D. Gabriel

The Challenge of Islam to Christians by David Pawson

The Prophetic Fall of the Islamic Regime by Glenn Miller, Roger Loomis

Prophet of Doom : Islam’s Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad’s Own Words by Craig Winn

The False Prophet by Ellis H. Skolfield

The Approach of Armageddon: An Islamic Perspective by Muhammad Hisham Kabbani

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel

Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry

Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left by David Horowitz

Unveiling Islam : An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs by Ergun Mehmet Caner

Perfect Soldiers : The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott

Islam Revealed A Christian Arab’s View Of Islam by Anis Shorrosh

Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out by Ibn Warraq

The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book by Ibn Warraq

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This article used by permission of "History of Jihad.com." Thank You!

© 2009 – 2011, Matt. All rights reserved.