The word Lent has an obscure origin, and is probably a corruption of similar terms in ancient Anglo, Saxon, and Germanic languages, all of which referred to spring, new life, and hope. Although it is generally considered to be a time of mourning and repentance, it is also designated as a time of new life and hope because by means of the death of Christ, we receive new life.
The Lenten period is calculated to extend from Resurrection Sunday back for forty days, not including Sundays. Sundays are not included because they commemorate Christ’s glorious resurrection on “the day after the Sabbath,” “the first day of the week,” “the Lord’s day.”
The forty days commemorate the significant “forty” periods in Scripture (although forty is not always significant), including the forty years the Jews wandered in the desert after they had been rescued by God from Egypt, and which did not end until they repented. Jonah preached to Nineveh that God’s judgment would come on them in forty days. During that time the people repented and thus were spared God’s judgment. Jesus was tested by the Devil in the desert for forty days before He began His public ministry, announcing salvation to the repentant and judgment to those who continued to rebel against God. Jesus prophesied that God’s judgment would come against Israel for rejecting Him as Messiah within the time of His own generation (Matt. 24; Luke 21; Mark 13). Within forty years of His death, burial, and resurrection, Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple was so ravaged that “not one stone [was] left here upon another” (Matt. 24:2). The Jewish Christians, however, escaped this judgment of God by fleeing to Pella before the final Roman siege, just as Jesus had warned them to do (Matt. 24:16-21).
During Lent Christians are to contemplate their sinfulness, repent, ask God’s forgiveness, and realize the infinite sacrifice God made on their behalf. It is to be a time of quiet contemplation, but not a time of despair, since it culminates in the commemoration of the resurrection. Traditionally, those who are joining the church spend this period in special instruction regarding Christian doctrine, practice, and responsibility. Historically, prospective members (“catechumens”) did not participate in the Lord’s Supper portion of the Sunday services until they were received into full membership on the Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord. For them, this first experience of Ash Wednesday and Lent has special significance as God’s eternal plan of salvation is applied to them personally.
Some Christians abstain from a normal part of their daily routine during Lent to remind them of the sacrifice of Christ. Some might refrain from eating certain favorite foods, or from frivolous entertainment, etc. Some churches encourage members to commit to a sacrifice that can benefit the less fortunate, such as not eating out during Lent and then donating those unused dining funds to a local soup kitchen or food bank. Some churches dedicate the Saturdays of Lent to a congregational volunteer community project, such as refurbishing senior members’ houses, or cleaning up a local park, or serving meals to the needy. Many churches have mid-week Lenten services, sometimes preceded by a simple fellowship meal. Services focus on the events leading up to the Last Supper, Christ’s betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, burial, and finally, His triumphant resurrection.
The final week of Lent is called Holy Week. It begins the day after Palm Sunday, which memorializes Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:1-11). Holy Week commemorates the events immediately preceding the crucifixion. This is the most solemn time during the church year. Many churches conduct services nightly.
Maundy Thursday honors the memory of the final Passover Jesus celebrated as His Last Supper with His disciples. Maundy Thursday gets its name from a Latin church anthem, the first line of which reads, “Mandatum novum do vobis,” or “a new commandment I give to you” (John 13:34). The Latin “Mandatum” is corrupted to the English “Maundy.” Holy Thursday is called “Green Thursday” in Germany, after the green branch given by pastors to penitents on this day to signify that God has heard their prayers and will give them new life. It is called “Sheer Thursday” in some countries to signify that it is by the body and blood of Christ that we are made “clean” or “sheer” from our sins. This is the traditional day for a thorough cleaning of the church altar and everything associated with it. Most churches celebrate communion on Maundy Thursday. Some re-enact Jesus’ washing the feet of the disciples.
Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion and death of Christ. Many churches conduct quiet services from noon until three (called Tre Ore, or “Three Hours”), focusing on the events of the crucifixion and the words of Christ from the cross. In some churches (most notably the Eastern Orthodox), the altar itself and the encased representation of Christ’s burial, called the epitaphion, are covered in black cloth. (Often the Eastern Orthodox churches do this on Holy Thursday instead.) Many Good Friday services conclude with draping the altar cross with black cloth, extinguishing all sanctuary lights (except the eternal flame signifying the Holy Spirit), ceasing all music, and having the congregation exit without speaking to symbolize the imminent (commemoration of the) death of Christ. Some churches refrain from communion until Resurrection Sunday, others don’t. As early as the second century A.D., Christians commonly celebrated each Friday in commemoration of the crucifixion, with fasting or other penance as its most notable feature.
With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.
As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word crusade in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn't the present violence, they persisted, 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. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East. (Why Islamist terrorists should be upset about the killing of Jews was not explained.) Clinton took a beating on the nation's editorial pages for wanting so much to blame the United States that he was willing to reach back to the Middle Ages. Yet no one disputed the ex-president's fundamental premise.
Well, almost no one. Many historians had been trying to set the record straight on the Crusades long before Clinton discovered them. They are not revisionists, like the American historians who manufactured the Enola Gay exhibit, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of very careful, very serious scholarship. For them, this is a "teaching moment," an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually listening. It won't last long, so here goes.
The threat of Islam
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 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.
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Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must 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.
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. 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.
Understand the crusaders
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.
Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne'er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders' expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.
During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.
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What really happened?
Urban II gave the Crusaders two goals, both of which would remain central to the eastern Crusades for centuries. The first was to rescue the Christians of the East. As his successor, Pope Innocent III, later wrote:
How does a man love according to divine precept his neighbor as himself when, knowing that his Christian brothers in faith and in name are held by the perfidious Muslims in strict confinement and weighed down by the yoke of heaviest servitude, he does not devote himself to the task of freeing them? … Is it by chance that you do not know that many thousands of Christians are bound in slavery and imprisoned by the Muslims, tortured with innumerable torments?
"Crusading," Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was understood as an "an act of love"—in this case, the love of one's neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, "You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, 'Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'"
The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ. The word crusade is modern. Medieval Crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims, performing acts of righteousness on their way to the Holy Sepulcher. The Crusade indulgence they received was canonically related to the pilgrimage indulgence. This goal was frequently described in feudal terms. When calling the Fifth Crusade in 1215, Innocent III wrote:
Consider most dear sons, consider carefully that if any temporal king was thrown out of his domain and perhaps captured, would he not, when he was restored to his pristine liberty and the time had come for dispensing justice look on his vassals as unfaithful and traitors … unless they had committed not only their property but also their persons to the task of freeing him? … And similarly will not Jesus Christ, the king of kings and lord of lords, whose servant you cannot deny being, who joined your soul to your body, who redeemed you with the Precious Blood … condemn you for the vice of ingratitude and the crime of infidelity if you neglect to help Him?
The re-conquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was not colonialism but an act of restoration and an open declaration of one's love of God. Medieval men knew, of course, that God had the power to restore Jerusalem Himself—indeed, he had the power to restore the whole world to his rule. Yet as St. Bernard of Clairvaux preached, His refusal to do so was a blessing to His people:
Again I say, consider the Almighty's goodness and pay heed to His plans of mercy. He puts Himself under obligation to you, or rather feigns to do so, that He can help you to satisfy your obligations toward Himself. … I call blessed the generation that can seize an opportunity of such rich indulgence as this.
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It is often assumed that the central goal of the Crusades was forced conversion of the Muslim world. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the perspective of medieval Christians, Muslims were the enemies of Christ and his Church. It was the Crusaders' task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion. Indeed, throughout the history of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Muslim inhabitants far outnumbered the Catholics. It was not until the 13th century that the Franciscans began conversion efforts among Muslims. But these were mostly unsuccessful and finally abandoned. In any case, such efforts were by peaceful persuasion, not the threat of violence.
All apologies
The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes. These are usually well-remembered today. During the early days of the First Crusade in 1095, a ragtag band of Crusaders led by Count Emicho of Leiningen made its way down the Rhine, robbing and murdering all the Jews they could find. Without success, the local bishops attempted to stop the carnage. In the eyes of these warriors, the Jews, like the Muslims, were the enemies of Christ. Plundering and killing them, then, was no vice. Indeed, they believed it was a righteous deed, since the Jews' money could be used to fund the Crusade to Jerusalem. But they were wrong, and the Church strongly condemned the anti-Jewish attacks.
Fifty years later, when the Second Crusade was gearing up, St. Bernard frequently preached that the Jews were not to be persecuted:
Ask anyone who knows the Sacred Scriptures what he finds foretold of the Jews in the Psalm. "Not for their destruction do I pray," it says. The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered … Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity, but "they only wait for the time of their deliverance."
Nevertheless, a fellow Cistercian monk named Radulf stirred up people against the Rhineland Jews, despite numerous letters from Bernard demanding that he stop. At last Bernard was forced to travel to Germany himself, where he caught up with Radulf, sent him back to his convent, and ended the massacres.
It is often said that the roots of the Holocaust can be seen in these medieval pogroms. That may be. But if so, those roots are far deeper and more widespread than the Crusades. Jews perished during the Crusades, but the purpose of the Crusades was not to kill Jews. Quite the contrary: Popes, bishops, and preachers made it clear that the Jews of Europe were to be left unmolested. In a modern war, we call tragic deaths like these "collateral damage." Even with smart technologies, the United States has killed far more innocents in our wars than the Crusaders ever could. But no one would seriously argue that the purpose of American wars is to kill women and children.
The failure of the Crusades
By any reckoning, the First Crusade was a long shot. There was no leader, no chain of command, no supply lines, no detailed strategy. It was simply thousands of warriors marching deep into enemy territory, committed to a common cause. Many of them died, either in battle or through disease or starvation. It was a rough campaign, one that seemed always on the brink of disaster. Yet it was miraculously successful. 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.
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But it was not. When we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was. The colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades are interesting largely because they were an attempt to counter that trend. But in five centuries of crusading, it was only the First Crusade that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam. It was downhill from there.
When the Crusader County of Edessa fell to the Turks and Kurds in 1144, there was an enormous groundswell of support for a new Crusade in Europe. It was led by two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, and preached by St. Bernard himself. It failed miserably. Most of the Crusaders were killed along the way. Those who made it to Jerusalem only made things worse by attacking Muslim Damascus, which formerly had been a strong ally of the Christians. In the wake of such a disaster, Christians across Europe were forced to accept not only the continued growth of Muslim power but the certainty that God was punishing the West for its sins. Lay piety movements sprouted up throughout Europe, all rooted in the desire to purify Christian society so that it might be worthy of victory in the East.
Crusading in the late twelfth century, therefore, became a total war effort. Every person, no matter how weak or poor, was called to help. Warriors were asked to sacrifice their wealth and, if need be, their lives for the defense of the Christian East. On the home front, all Christians were called to support the Crusades through prayer, fasting, and alms. Yet still the Muslims grew in strength. Saladin, the great unifier, had forged the Muslim Near East into a single entity, all the while preaching jihad against the Christians. In 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, his forces wiped out the combined armies of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem and captured the precious relic of the True Cross. Defenseless, the Christian cities began surrendering one by one, culminating in the surrender of Jerusalem on October 2. Only a tiny handful of ports held out.
The response was the Third Crusade. It was led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of the German Empire, King Philip II Augustus of France, and King Richard I Lionheart of England. By any measure it was a grand affair, although not quite as grand as the Christians had hoped. The aged Frederick drowned while crossing a river on horseback, so his army returned home before reaching the Holy Land. Philip and Richard came by boat, but their incessant bickering only added to an already divisive situation on the ground in Palestine. After recapturing Acre, the king of France went home, where he busied himself carving up Richard's French holdings. The Crusade, therefore, fell into Richard's lap. A skilled warrior, gifted leader, and superb tactician, Richard led the Christian forces to victory after victory, eventually reconquering the entire coast. But Jerusalem was not on the coast, and after two abortive attempts to secure supply lines to the Holy City, Richard at last gave up. Promising to return one day, he struck a truce with Saladin that ensured peace in the region and free access to Jerusalem for unarmed pilgrims. But it was a bitter pill to swallow. The desire to restore Jerusalem to Christian rule and regain the True Cross remained intense throughout Europe. PAGE 6 OF 8
The Crusades of the 13th century were larger, better funded, and better organized. But they too failed. The Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) ran aground when it was seduced into a web of Byzantine politics, which the Westerners never fully understood. They had made a detour to Constantinople to support an imperial claimant who promised great rewards and support for the Holy Land. Yet once he was on the throne of the Caesars, their benefactor found that he could not pay what he had promised. Thus betrayed by their Greek friends, in 1204 the Crusaders attacked, captured, and brutally sacked Constantinople, the greatest Christian city in the world. Pope Innocent III, who had previously excommunicated the entire Crusade, strongly denounced the Crusaders. But there was little else he could do. The tragic events of 1204 closed an iron door between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, a door that even today Pope John Paul II has been unable to reopen. It is a terrible irony that the Crusades, which were a direct result of the Catholic desire to rescue the Orthodox people, drove the two further—and perhaps irrevocably—apart.
The remainder of the 13th century's Crusades did little better. The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) managed briefly to capture Damietta in Egypt, but the Muslims eventually defeated the army and reoccupied the city. St. Louis IX of France led two Crusades in his life. The first also captured Damietta, but Louis was quickly outwitted by the Egyptians and forced to abandon the city. Although Louis was in the Holy Land for several years, spending freely on defensive works, he never achieved his fondest wish: to free Jerusalem. He was a much older man in 1270 when he led another Crusade to Tunis, where he died of a disease that ravaged the camp. After St. Louis's death, the ruthless Muslim leaders, Baybars and Kalavun, waged a brutal jihad against the Christians in Palestine. By 1291, the Muslim forces had succeeded in killing or ejecting the last of the Crusaders, thus erasing the Crusader kingdom from the map. Despite numerous attempts and many more plans, Christian forces were never again able to gain a foothold in the region until the 19th century.
Europe's fight for its life
One might think that three centuries of Christian defeats would have soured Europeans on the idea of Crusade. Not at all. In one sense, they had little alternative. Muslim kingdoms were becoming more, not less, powerful in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The Ottoman Turks conquered not only their fellow Muslims, thus further unifying Islam, but also continued to press westward, capturing Constantinople and plunging deep into Europe itself. By the 15th century, the Crusades were no longer errands of mercy for a distant people but desperate attempts of one of the last remnants of Christendom to survive. Europeans began to ponder the real possibility that Islam would finally achieve its aim of conquering the entire Christian world. One of the great best-sellers of the time, Sebastian Brant's The Ship of Fools, gave voice to this sentiment in a chapter titled "Of the Decline of the Faith":
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Our faith was strong in th' Orient,
It ruled in all of Asia,
In Moorish lands and Africa.
But now for us these lands are gone
'Twould even grieve the hardest stone …
Four sisters of our Church you find,
They're of the patriarchic kind:
Constantinople, Alexandria,
Jerusalem, Antiochia.
But they've been forfeited and sacked
And soon the head will be attacked.
Of course, that is not what happened. But it very nearly did. In 1480, Sultan Mehmed II captured Otranto as a beachhead for his invasion of Italy. Rome was evacuated. Yet the sultan died shortly thereafter, and his plan died with him. In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent 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, born from a strange mixture of Roman values, medieval piety, and a unique respect for commerce and entrepreneurialism, had led to other movements like humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Exploration. Even while fighting for its life, Europe was preparing to expand on a global scale. The Protestant Reformation, which rejected the papacy and the doctrine of indulgence, made Crusades unthinkable for many Europeans, thus leaving the fighting to the Catholics. In 1571, a Holy League, which was itself a Crusade, defeated the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. Yet military victories like that remained rare. The Muslim threat was neutralized economically. As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and sophisticated Turks began to seem backward and pathetic—no longer worth a Crusade. The "Sick Man of Europe" limped along until the 20th century, when he finally expired, leaving behind the present mess of the modern Middle East.
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 soldier 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. 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 faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction.
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Related Elsewhere:
Coverage of the film, Kingdom of Heaven, from Christianity Today Movies includes:
Review: Kingdom of Heaven | The director of Gladiator ventures into relatively unexplored cinematic territory with a film on the Crusades—and while it's not historically perfect, it certainly maintains the spirit of those events. (May 06, 2005)
Kingdom Come | Director Sir Ridley Scott, a self-described agnostic, and leading man Orlando Bloom, discuss their new film about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven, opening in theaters Friday (May 04, 2005)
More CT articles about the Crusades include:
Waging Peace on Islam | A missionary veteran of Asia proposes one way to defuse Muslim anger about the Crusades. (May 05, 2005)
Unholy Wars | Two books document the dangers of mixing church and state. (Jan. 27, 2005)
Christians Retrace Crusaders' Steps | The effort is being called the "Reconciliation Walk." And the 2,000-mile, three-year walk across Europe, through the Balkans and Turkey, then south to Jerusalem, seeks to build bridges of understanding and to reverse a legacy of animosity among three of the world's most prominent religions. (Oct. 7, 1996)
After U.S. President Barack Obama's controversial remarks comparing radical Islam to the Christian crusades, Franklin Graham took to social media to call out America's leader:
"Today at the National Prayer Breakfast, the President implied that what ISIS is doing is equivalent to what happened over 1,000 years ago during the Crusades and the Inquisition. Mr. President, many people in history have used the name of Jesus Christ to accomplish evil things for their own desires. But Jesus taught peace, love and forgiveness. He came to give His life for the sins of mankind, not to take life. Muhammad, on the contrary, was a warrior and killed many innocent people. True followers of Christ emulate Christ—true followers of Muhammed emulate Muhammed."
Ann Barnhardt, a unique, outspoken Catholic-American women, explains why Islam is a satanic religion and political system. She shatters the myths that this is a religion of peace.
Ed's note: I wished that we lived in a world where knowledge of the following material wouldn't be necessary, however this is not our present-day reality. We need to have a working background as to what is really happening in Canada/USA and worldwide through Islamisation by *acquiescence. You only need to read the daily news to see how Satanic this religion/political-system is; beheadings for adults and children alike, burning people alive, burying children and adults alive, female genital mutilation and rampant homosexuality! ... these characteristics are prominent in this cult and are nothing but satanic. While living and working in a number of Islamic African countries, I realized the tragic bondage that Islam has brought into people's lives. Here, Ann Barnhardt exposes much of the background that is Islam.
In this video series (short videos) Ann presents eye-opening information from someone who is not afraid to call things for what they are. I applaud Ann's firm stand as a watchman on the wall! The alternatives (if you can call them that) is to *acquiesce to Islamisation of our country and culture or face death as "infidels".
* ac·qui·esce
ˌakwēˈes/
verb
gerund or present participle: acquiescing > to accept something reluctantly but without protest.
"Sara acquiesced in his decision"
(Photo above: Iran before and after the Islamic revolution in 1979)
In connection with the rising opposition to Islamisation – most strongly expressed by the PEGIDA movement – it is useful to have a clear overview of how Islamization sneaks its way into our society, how it manifests itself, and what the consequences are:
Nicolai Sennels (born 1976) is a Danish licensed psychologist. Sennels is running 10News.dk and author of the book "Among Criminal Muslims" (to be translated into English and Swedish) and numerous articles on the psychology af Islam and Muslim mentality. He bases his conclusions on his work with more than 100 Muslim patients and on scientific research.
What is Islamization? By Nicolai Sennels, psychologist
Islamization is a phenomenon that has existed since the Muslim prophet Mohammed lived 1,400 years ago. The word ‘Islamization’ was originally coined by Muslims to describe the conversion of a kufr (infidel) society to an ‘enlightened’ (Islamic) society.
Islamization has been effective, since Islam is now the main religion in 57 countries. The association of Islamic countries – the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), is today one of the world’s largest supra-national organizations, surpassed only by the United Nations (UN).
Three roads to Islamization
One road to Islamization is to remove non-Islamic traditions and symbols. This is done to avoid offending Muslims or expose Muslims to proselytizing by other faiths. It also aims to reduce competition from the country’s original religion and culture in order to improve the possibilities for further Islamization.
An example is the Red Cross’ refusal to decorate for Christmas in their stores, or when banks no longer hands out piggy banks to their customers’ kids (because pigs are unclean in Islam). In both cases, this is done in order not to offend Muslims and thus lose Muslim customers.
Another way Islamization is accomplished is by making Islamic traditions and rules part of non-Islamic societies.
Examples of this phenomenon are construction or refurbishment of public sports facilities to cater for Muslims’ inhibited views on nudity and contact between the sexes, or the imposition of forced leave on Islamic holidays.
A third way Islamization occurs is when certain areas or neighbourhoods acquire such a high a proportion of Muslims that the country’s indigenous culture and people are pushed out.
One example is when non-Islamic authorities such as police and fire departments meet with disrespect, threats and/or violence, while imams, patrolling police-style Muslim fathers’ groups, homemade Sharia Courts, and Islamic mediation meetings are free to exercise their power. Another example is when Jews cannot wear yarmulke or girls can not wear miniskirts in Muslim-dominated areas, because they risk being attacked.
Islamization thus occurs through the systematic elimination of indigenous culture, the introduction of Islamic traditions and cultural practices through immigration and the gradual building of Muslim parallel societies.
Disadvantages of Islamization
There are many disadvantages of Islamization. The main issue is of course that it comes at the expense of our own culture, which is the foundation of our lifestyle, our sense of community and our well-functioning societies based on principles such as tolerance, universal human rights and free speech. Also, when compared with Muslim cultures, our Western culture is freer and more productive.
Moreover, Western culture encourages people to be more self-confident, happy and loving, because it does not cultivate aggression, fragile feelings of honour, and intolerance against other faiths, unlike Muslim culture. Furthermore, we allow and encourage the Enlightenment principles of free speech and democracy, while allowing women and feminine qualities to bloom freely for the benefit of themselves, men and a balanced society.
Every time we introduce more Islamization to our society, it takes us one further step away from our own culture, bringing us one step closer to the Muslim culture and a Sharia-based society.
Islamization occurs at the expense of indigenous culture and its norms. By harming the native culture, important life values are taken away from the people, undermining the values and norms that bind our community together. This sense of community is fundamental to quality of life for us “pack” animals, and common core values are the foundation of the mutual trust, helpfulness, openness, understanding and respect among a community, even in individualistic Western culture.
Islamization dilutes national identity among indigenous populations, because it dilutes our common culture. At the same time, it strengthens the Muslims’ Islamic identity at the expense of national identity. National identity and sense of community are important for morale, in relation to the paying of taxation, reluctance to fraudulently obtain social welfare benefits and respect towards the nation’s laws and authorities. People who feel part of the community feel that they hurt themselves if they harm their community.
Islamization allows inhumane traditions to take root in our society. The Koran’s prescriptions and the Muslim culture’s views on women’s rights, free speech, and tolerance other faiths are medieval at best. They subvert the principles of democracy and human rights in our countries – and whether it is in small or large increments, or restricted to certain geographical areas, no such thing should take root in our society.
Islamization pushes the indigenous people out of areas where Muslims and Muslim culture dominate. This is because Muslim culture is so different from Western culture that we find it hard to feel at home and comfortable in an inhospitable culture, and because Islam and Muslim culture is racist towards non-Muslims.
Islamization makes it possible to retain hard line Muslim traditionalists or Islamic extremists in our countries, because they can keep their conservative Islamic traditions often more easily in our ‘tolerant’ Western culture than they can back home. This is counter-productive to integration and a fertile source of home grown Islamic extremism.
For every new Islamization of society, the step is even shorter to the next Islamization. It is easier for Muslims to make claims when they can refer to the fact that we have already accepted a large number of other similar claims.
Islamization provides manoeuvring space for a political ideology that has oppression and extermination of all non-Muslims as both means and goal.
Examples of Islamization
The following examples of Islamization lead to one or more of the aforementioned disadvantages.
It is Islamization of our cities when entire neighbourhoods are dominated so strongly by inhospitable Muslim culture, Islamic values and Muslim racism that the country’s own culture and the indigenous population no longer feel at home and safe in the area. As the indigenous population, we should feel at home and welcome everywhere in our own country and it is unwise to accept anything short of this.
It is arguably Islamization of our food supply when halal foods are not labelled as such.
By keeping consumers ignorant of what is Islamic food, we are forced to eat halal. By buying it, we contribute to Islamic “charity”, which helps fund terrorists, and support Muslim jobs at the expense of non-Muslims and low food prices — for halal slaughter requires a Muslim to assist with the slaughter, and Muslim organizations are paid to approve the procedure.
Food products are already transparently labelled in detail in relation to content, health, and production methods to increase consumers’ ability to make conscious choices concerning their food so we should not tolerate surreptitious halal certification, which should also be labelled as such.
It is Islamization of children’s schooling when the state allows and supports Islamic schools and madrassas. Primary schools are our society’s most important cultural carrier and are intended to inform school children of the country’s indigenous culture and values, not to drive impressionable minds away from our values.
It is Islamization of our urban design and architectural culture when municipalities and the state permit the construction of large mosques and minarets that symbolise anti-Western values. Arabic architecture does not belong in Western cities, and certainly not at very central, historical or highly visible locations.
It is Islamization of our country when mosques are permitted. The mosques enforce and increase Islamic values among the area’s Muslims and often function as a springboard for extremist political activity that works to propagate the Islamization of the country.
It is Islamization of our way of being together and the undermining of the status of women when we allow burqas and the niqab in public spaces. In a democratic society, we should see each other’s faces. Women and men are equal and should be free to dress as they like, not to forcibly appear subservient to men.
It is Islamization of our public sports facilities when swimming pools and locker rooms are closed altogether or reconstructed so that Muslims can use them. It should be up to personal choice and not to religion as to what view of nudity a person is comfortable with. Moreover, personal preferences should not restrict the citizens’ global access to public taxpayer-funded facilities.
It is Islamization of our schools, institutions, workplaces and the rhythm of the year when we create non-Western Muslim holidays,and when municipalities and unions print Muslim holidays in our calendars. We have an adequate number of holidays in our country, and more holidays harm children’s academic development and lead to a loss of productivity in companies.
The yearly rhythm is closely associated with a country’s history, traditions, and culture, and plays an important role in national identity. This very basic rhythm of life should be experienced as it relates to our own history and culture, and not be Islamized away from Western values.
It is Islamization of our schools when Muslims are treated as a special case and schoolchildren are excused from physical education and Christian education for religious reasons.
It is Islamization of our stores when they choose not to use Christian, cultural or national symbols in order not to offend Muslims or lose Muslim customers. Shop decorations are part of our Western culture and our cities’ streetscape, and they are definitely not offensive. They help mark the seasons with Christmas ornaments, Easter eggs, carnival decorations etc. Buyers should select stores that take a social responsibility for the continuation of our society and culture.
It is Islamization of our public institutions and workplaces when halal foods are included on the menu. Special diets due solely to personal choices of religion should not be funded by the state.
It is Islamization of our way of caring for children when we ignore that they are simply being starved for religious reasons. Ramadan damages children’s ability to concentrate in school. Moreover, it affects children’s social development, because hunger and fluctuating blood sugar make them emotionally unstable and aggressive. Starving of children should rightfully be categorized as neglect and punished as such.
It is Islamization when we ignore the fact that a specific ethnic group of women in our own country are deprived of basic human rights on religious grounds. Women from non-Western countries should have regular visits or meetings with municipality employees. These employees must advise migrant women about family planning and contraception. Additionally, employees should make sure that these women are free and safe. Finally, it is important that migrant women know their rights include access to women’s shelters, divorce and repatriation.
It is Islamization of the Danish government when public sector workplaces have prayer rooms. Public workers are public servants, and thus taxpayers’ money should not be used for the observance of non-secular religious practices.
It is the Islamization of our jurisprudence when we do not effectively stop homemade Sharia Courts and Islamic mediation meetings. Such things are organized vigilantism and an assault on the foundations of our social structure, directly undermining our legal system and sense of justice, and should be removed with the necessary methods.
It is Islamization of the justice system when police ignore Muslims’ scorn, threats, and violence, and when the police invite Muslim fathers’ groups to help stop Muslim riots and gangs. It is harmful to the sense of justice in the country and undermines police authority.
It is the Islamization of our legal system when we allow Sharia courts or give reduced sentences to perpetrators who have committed a crime for religious or cultural reasons (honour crimes).
It is Islamization of our population, electorates, and countries,when we allow immigration from Muslim countries and when our European leaders do not protect us effectively against illegal immigration and the silent Islamization of our Western European societies by surreptitious means.
