This would be an interesting development:
As Father Dall'Oglio warns darkly, Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem - from the East.
As Spengler notes, the Muslims should be worried. That truly would be the first real challenge to them, if not since the founding of the religion, at least since the Crusades.
Whose side do you think that the left will take? How many guesses do you want?
[Evening update]
In comments, Carl Pham asks:
What's to be appalled about in the Crusades, eh? Is this just regurgitating some politically-correct pap y'all were fed in public school?
I'm only appalled by the Crusades in the same sense that I'm appalled by the Middle Ages in general (I don't actually recall learning about them in public school, which in itself, regardless of the learning content, is an interesting commentary about public school in the sixties and early seventies. It's no doubt worse now, since it's better to know nothing of the Crusades than to be mistaught them).
And in being appalled, I'm judging it by modern sensibilities. As I said, Islam was more (much more) appalling in its behavior.
Then. And more importantly (and even more), now.
But I'm sure I'll get more Anonymous Morons in comments, whom I'll take great pleasure in appropriately naming, unwittingly making my point about which side the leftists will take.
Also:
If you want to look for unpleasant proselytizing by Christian nations, take a look at South and Central American under the Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s. The Crusades do not quality. Islam is only pissed about them because they coincided with the high-water mark of Islam's own effort to conquer the world.
Agreed. Latin American's dismal state is a consequence of having been colonized by Spain (and it was a Christian Spain). It continues to be mired in a feudal culture, which has only transmogrified into a socialist/fascist one, as exemplified by "liberation theology." Which is (unfortunately) not that far off from the "black liberation theology" of Senator Obama's former church.
The Chinese movement called "Back to Jerusalem" is no minor matter. They seem to be really really serious. You can read about it in the book Jesus in Beijing, by David Aikman. Their theory is that Christianity has always tended to move westward, from the ME to Europe to the New World...and thence to Asia. And now it is time for Asians to push on westward. The plan is to eventually send 100,000 missionaries!
Westward means into Muslim territory. It should be interesting. (Interestingly, they consider Buddhists more difficult to convert than Muslims!)
That's only one of the things going on under the radar. There are also Latin American missionaries going to Muslim Africa. Like the Chinese, they are on what we enlightened Westerners would consider fool's errands, with poverty-level resources. Folly. Madness.
(But maybe the "real world" isn't the one we see around us. Who are really the fools? If you were around in the year 100, would you have bet your money on the might of the Roman Empire, or an obscure sect worshipping some guy named Chrestus?)
Just in case we really live to be 1,000, I'm willing to bet money that the baptism of Magdi Allam will turn out to be the big event of our time...
Christianity isn't about WAR.
Simberg is such an idiot. St. Francis was appalled by the Crusaders. Unfortunately Simberg, who hasn't a clue about what Jesus taught, thinks it's about war.
Time to stop attacking your keyboard, moron.
Why are you giving Rand advice on Jesus when it is obvious you have never met him yourself?
Christianity isn't about WAR.
No one said it was, "moron."
St. Francis was appalled by the Crusaders.
So am I. But nowhere near as much I'm appalled by the violence of the Muslims who had taken over the Holy Land, and then subjugated the Christians in it, and prevented pilgrimages.
But neither I or (as far as I know) the Pope, is proposing another Crusade. They are proposing to make an attempt to convert Muslims to Christ, with missions and missionaries. In general, when that went the other way, it happened as a result of a war, but Christianity actually is a religion of peace, at least modern-day Christianity. Of course, wars might be involved in certain countries even allowing churches to be built...
The Crusades were a defensive response to the depredations of Muslims on the Christians within the Christian lands they had conquered, and a response to the closing of Christian holy sites to pilgrims. It was the first time in almost half a millennium that Christians felt strong enough to take on the Muslims who'd stolen so much them. It's purpose was not to "convert by the sword". (Of course, the execution left a lot to be desired, but on the whole was not any more barbarous than their enemies. And they did manage to take their objectives and hold them for about a century.)
What's to be appalled about in the Crusades, eh? Is this just regurgitating some politically-correct pap y'all were fed in public school? Time to learn some history, folks.
The First and most significant Crusade was a response to a plea from the Byzantine Emperor for help with his Easter frontier, which was threatened by the wave of Arabic conquest that spread out from the desert after the death of Muhammed. It was Islam which set about conquering the world for Allah by the sword. After settling the Persian's hash, they next ran up against the Byzantines, who proved remarkably resilient, largely because they had wealth enough to buy various Anatolian lordlings off, and recruit mercenaries from the West.
What was unusual about the First Crusade was that, unlike most warfare before or since, it began, at least, as a selfless attempt to help defend another nation from the predations of an aggressive religious invader -- that would be the Arabs, not the Christians or Jews, who, duh, had been living in the Middle East for ten centuries, all without waging aggressive war against their Muslim neighbors.
Alas, the temptation to carve out a little kingdom for themselves proved too tempting to the knights, and so after helping the Byzantines out, a bit, they founded Antioch and Jerusalem and settled down to stay. All the subsequent Crusades were (mostly unsuccessful) efforts to help those beleaguered states when the Muslim princes attempted reconquest.
Were the Crusaders interested in forcible conversion of the Muslim world to Christianity? Hardly. The reverse, however, is quite true, and they were only stopped in Europe by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours.
Did the Crusaders behave poorly on Crusade? Not particularly (for the time) with respect to the conquered peoples. Their most abhorrent behaviour was actually with respect to their nominal allies, the Byzantines, in particular the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, a tragic loss for Western humanism and science, inasmuch as it was the Byzantines who had preserved the humanistic achievements of the classical world. Had this not been preserved (imperfectly) by the Arabs, we would not know of Aristotle, etc.
If you want to look for unpleasant proselytizing by Christian nations, take a look at South and Central American under the Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s. The Crusades do not qualify. Islam is only pissed about them because they coincided with the high-water mark of Islam's own effort to conquer the world.
The most personal reason I am appalled by the crusades is described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews_in_the_First_Crusade
Rand, I apologize for the repeat comment, but I hope you won't mind because I think this quote deserves attention:
"Setting off in the early summer of 1096, a German army of around 10,000 Crusaders led by Gottschalk, Volkmar, and Emicho, proceeded northward through the Rhine valley, in the opposite direction of Jerusalem, and began a series of pogroms which some historians call "the first Holocaust".[11] # ^ Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, 1986, p. 50.
"Jewish communities were given the option of converting to Christianity or being slaughtered. Most would not convert and, as news of the mass killings spread, many Jewish communities committed mass suicides in horrific scenes. Thousands of Jews were massacred, despite some attempts by local clergy and secular authorities to shelter them." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade#Persecution_of_the_Jews
This sounds a lot more appalling than the crusade described by Carl and Raoul. I realize that this is not the main subject of your post, Rand, but I think this view of the Crusades is worth considering.
Robert, if you think pogroms in the Middle Ages were limited to or even primarily the doing of the Crusaders, your historical ignorance transcends that of the ordinary Wikipediphile. This sort of villainy among the civilians is endemic throughout history. Consult a good history of the Thirty Years War, or consider the Armenian experience in the First World War, et cetera (unless you feel genocide against Jews is worse than against other identity groups).
Perhaps I should have phrased my initial sentence better. The Crusades were appalling -- because all war is appalling. Deliberate mass murder is appalling. It's only in the strange and remarkable case of the present Iraq war that we can even conceive of a war in which the people who mostly die are assuredly up to no good. In all previous wars nearly all folks who die aren't themselves guilty of whatever evil it was started the war. Even in the Second World War, hardly any German soldiers were personally guilty of plotting aggressive war against Poland, ordering the murder of French hostages, or gassing Jews and gypsies in Poland.
In most cases the people killed are killed on the basis of being (generally involuntary) representatives of their culture or national government. From a moral viewpoint, that's as crude and horrific as deterring crime by arbitrarily picking out each year 500 random people who match the descriptions, ethnically and otherwise, of crime perpetrators and executing them.
So war is appalling. The Crusades no less so than any other war, but -- and this is my point -- no more so. They were not especially hideous.
I should mention that the fact that war is appalling doesn't mean it doesn't have to be fought sometimes. If nothing else, sometimes the other side doesn't give you a choice, and sometimes what follows from not starting a war is worse than war itself. Look for perfection in this world after Christ comes again (or Obama His Prophet is elected), not before.
Carl, lets look at what you said:
If you want to look for unpleasant proselytizing by Christian nations, take a look at South and Central American under the Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s. The Crusades do not qualify.
I say they do qualify as "unpleasant" proselytizing (to the say the very least). You made the Crusades sound as though they weren't about forcible conversion, but that isn't the case, as I illustrated above.
Were the Crusaders interested in forcible conversion of the Muslim world to Christianity? Hardly.
I don't know if you're right about that. But I'm sure you're wrong if you think forced conversion of Jews to Christianity wasn't part of the Crusader's agenda. And that's just as bad.
What was unusual about the First Crusade was that, unlike most warfare before or since, it began, at least, as a selfless attempt to help defend another nation from the predations of an aggressive religious invader -- that would be the Arabs, not the Christians or Jews
I'm pointing out that the First Crusade was an evil and appalling predation by so-called "Christians" who were acting as an aggressive religious invader against the Jews of Europe.
You focused on the supposed political objectives of the Crusades, but I'm pointing out that the Crusades constituted a religious war within Europe before the Crusaders ever got to the middle east.
You want to backtrack by saying "well, all wars are horrible, all wars involve the mass deaths of innocents", but you were defending the Crusades on ideological grounds, and I'm pointing out that it was the Crusades' ideological underpinnings that made life so horrible for the Jews of Europe. This was not par for the course. The First Crusade was one of the first organized assaults on the Jews of Europe, and set a pattern of organized antisemitism. Prior to the First Crusade, the Church acted to prevent the killing of Jews. Afterwards, it didn't, and organized oppression and killings continued for nearly the rest of the millennium culminating in the Holocaust.
No, of course I'm not saying that genocide against the Jews is any worse than genocide against any other groups. But most wars have not involved genocide, and the Crusades did.
If you don't like wikipedia, just type "jews" and "crusades" into google and see what comes out. How about this, from http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_cru1.htm:
"By the end of the crusades, most European Christians believed the unfounded blood-libel myths -- the rumor that Jews engaged in human sacrifice of Christian children. A long series of Christian persecutions of the Jews continued in Europe and Russia into the 20th century. They laid the foundation for the Nazi Holocaust. "
See also: http://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/history_wing/antisemitism/crusades.cfm
Phooey on your defense of the crusades!
As Spengler notes, the Muslims should be worried. That truly would be the first real challenge to them, if not since the founding of the religion, at least since the Crusades.
In the time since Islam has been founded, I see only a couple of existential threats to it. Coincidentally, these same two threats were shared by Christianity. The first was the Mongolian invasions of the 13th Century. The second is obselescence in the face of greater understanding of the universe and of the changing morality and belief systems of modern humans.
Aside from the First Crusade, none of the invasions amounted to much. On the European side, there was little logistics, command and control was usually sharply divided at the top, poor military discipline, tactics and technology were ill-suited to the hot, desert environment, and the enemy tended not to share these disadvantages and had a significant edge in military technology (better siege equipment,
Finally, Carl, in the decisive battles between Islamic and Christian countries let us not forget the two sieges of Vienna or even the Barbary Wars between the pirates of the Barbary coast (who happen to be Muslim and the US and assorted European powers). The latter helped end sea piracy as a significant danger.
Of course they are. All things being equal, being a Buddhist is fairly pleasant. Why mess with a good thing? The benefits of converting away from a religion like Islam are far more apparent (especially for women, but for men too). It's easier to pull someone to you when they're already being pushed.
Read you own question again. I think Robert answered it exactly. Just because the 1st Crusade also tried to push back Islam's advance in the Middle East and ran a less awful government than the Muslim one they replaced there does not make the attacks on Jews "not appalling." They were appalling. Asked, and answered.Do not try to defend the indefensible.
Pham is a bloated self-important wussy pussy boat person. He would have certainly been burnt at the stake in a better time and thanked God for the heat. So much for his knowledge of the crusades.
It was the first time in almost half a millennium that Christians felt strong enough to take on the Muslims who'd stolen so much them
It wasn't "stolen" - it was conquered. It was a fair fight and they won.
It wasn't "stolen" - it was conquered. It was a fair fight and they won.
What in the world does that mean? They fought by Marquis of Queensbury rules? They obeyed the Geneva Conventions? It was a "just war"? They freely offered the chance to convert before being put to the sword?
I think that this is one of the top ten stupidest comments I've seen on this blog.
Rand,
Why not simply delete the posts that the subhuman shitstain Elifritz and his scrotum buddies posts?
Mabey if you deleted all the troll posts, they would go away?
You were originally doing that and then stopped.
You were originally doing that and then stopped.
No, I've never been in the habit of deleting posts. I operate on the philosophy that the posts say much more about the posters, even the anonymous ones, than they do about the people they're attempting to slam. I have banned a few posters, but very few (I think I can count them on the fingers of one hand). Elifritz is one of them. But he keeps coming up with a new IP.
Hmmmm.
What I find curious is the near inability for Islamic majority countries to operate effectively in the modern world. The primary exception is Turkey but that can be ascribed to the Kemalists keeping the Islamic fundamentalists in order.
Without significant oil income it seems most Islamic majority countries devolve into the lowest tech required societies.
When the world moves beyond oil, it's going to be interesting.
Memomachine,
If you are interested in visually spot-checking your assertion, look at the famous "Earth At Night" photo here: http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/multimedia/earth-at-night016.gif -- the concentration of lights roughly correspond to concentrations of wealth and technology. It is only a rough guide, and geographical features like the Sahara Desert and the Australian Outback have to be taken into account, but you'll see lots of bright areas in Muslim majority countries. The string of light along the Nile is particularly bright and impressive, but don't miss Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the south-western Med, etc.
Another way to check your assertion is to pick the name of a city in Muslim-Majority country, and look at photos of it (google image search is at your fingertips). You'll see lots of cities in Muslim majority countries that look fairly high tech. The ultimate example, of course, is Abu Dhabi, but look at Tehran - it is hardly full of cavemen.
Wait, I've got to stop. If you haven't looked at photos of Abu Dhabi recently, you really should -- it is jaw-dropping! See http://images.google.com/images?q=abu%20dhabi
Obviously, looking up the pertinent statistics would be a better way to get a real understanding of the situation, but pictures do contain a lot of useful information.
Finally, while you are talking about societies in general, not specific technological abilities, I want to mention that I wouldn't have worried about Iraqi WMDs, and now Pakistani and Iranian WMDs, if those countries were completely technologically hopeless, utterly unable to operate in the modern world...
It is only a rough guide, and geographical features like the Sahara Desert and the Australian Outback have to be taken into account, but you'll see lots of bright areas in Muslim majority countries. The string of light along the Nile is particularly bright and impressive, but don't miss Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the south-western Med, etc.
How much of that technology was developed in those places, Robert? How much of it would be in place, and remain in place absent massive foreign aid (in the case of Egypt) or the luck to be sitting on huge lakes of oil? Do you think that Iran (and previously, Iraq) would have a nuclear program without a lot of help from Russia (in the case of the former) and France (in the case of the latter)? One of the reasons that the infrastructure remains spotty in Iraq isn't just that terrorists continue to target it, but also because the Iraqis themselves pay insufficient attention to properly maintaining it, even after we repair it.
Wealth and technology is not a natural human state, Robert. It requires a lot of hard work, and certain attributes of culture to continue to keep the entropy of a society low, and those attributes are largely missing from the Muslim world.
Rand, I'm hardly a cheerleader for the Muslim world, but consider this:
1) The "Muslim World" is a big place full of lots of different kinds of people. Malaysians are quite different from Albanians....
2) Your comments about where the technology was invented are similar to the comments made about Japan and Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960s and 70s: (eg "the Japanese are just imitators, not innovators.")
3) If the Muslim world, and if Iraq in particular, is such a hopeless case, impaired by its culture rather than circumstances, then we should ask whether the United States should be investing blood and treasure trying to build a prosperous democracy in Iraq. If it is really the way you say, maybe the Iraq war should have been a quick invasion to look for WMDs and remove a dangerous dictator, and once those goals were accomplished, we should have left. Your support for our continued presence in Iraq implies (to me, at least) that the culture there doesn't make the Iraqi people beyond help. I've pointed this out to you before -- it seems to come up whenever you criticize Muslims as a group.
4) Cultures evolve.
5) Memomachine's point was about operating effectively in the modern world. It is worth reflecting whether that requires a) inventing new technologies, or b) just being able to profitably use them (and I'm pointing out that much of the Muslim world can do this quite well), or c) something else.
The "Muslim World" is a big place full of lots of different kinds of people. Malaysians are quite different from Albanians....
I agree. I am primarily referring to the Salafist Arabs, or countries strongly influenced by them (which are unfortunately, too many, due to all of the Saudi funding of madrassas).
Your comments about where the technology was invented are similar to the comments made about Japan and Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960s and 70s: (eg "the Japanese are just imitators, not innovators.")
Statements which were clearly foolish, at least about the Japanese, since they had clearly invented a lot of military hardware in the 1920s and 1930s. If you want to see a difference in culture and technology use and innovation, simply compare Israel to, say, Syria. What does Saudi Arabia export, other than terror, sharia and oil? Do you think that would be the case if the Israelis were running the place instead?
Your support for our continued presence in Iraq implies (to me, at least) that the culture there doesn't make the Iraqi people beyond help. I've pointed this out to you before -- it seems to come up whenever you criticize Muslims as a group.
I have never claimed that the Iraqi people are beyond help. I'm simply pointing out that they operate from a cultural disadvantage--a reality that makes our job more difficult, but still important.
Cultures evolve.
Indeed they do, but sometimes they need a little help. Evolving their culture is what will be necessary in order for us to win the war and ultimately be able to peacefully share a planet with them. The alternative is horrible to contemplate. And, contra Senator Obama's historically ignorant views, it doesn't consist of arresting and imprisoning them piece meal.