A New Crusade?
What do you think the Crusades were all about?
I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought the Crusades were the prime example of Bad Christianity. I thought European armies invaded Asia Minor and the Middle East in order to stamp out Islam and force everyone to convert to Christianity.
But I was curious, so I did some research and wrote a novel about the subject.
Turns out, nearly everything I thought was wrong.
Here’s what really happened: Christian armies went to Asia Minor and the Middle East to drive out Muslim invaders who were conquering Christian cities and forcing Jews and Muslims to convert to Islam or be slaughtered.
My novel about the First Crusade, Cross of Swords, has yet to be published. One editor found the book interesting but ultimately decided that “the Crusades were too controversial.”
Too controversial. A thousand years later.
A lot of bad things happened during the two-hundred-plus period of the Crusades. Bad things happen in war; that’s a given. There were atrocities committed on both sides. Still, a thousand years later, most of us have no idea what did happen and why. Given current events, it might be a good idea to find out.
To do that, we must start at the beginning—when Islam was born.
Mohammed’s Hope
Mohammed ibn Abdullah (570-632 AD), the founder of Islam, was a merchant and caravan raider before he decided to invent a new religion. At the beginning of his career as a prophet, Mohammed respected the “People of the Book” (Christians and Jews) and even praised the Torah as the true Word of God. He also believed that God spoke about him in Deuteronomy:
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. Deuteronomy 18:18
Once he had conquered Mecca and converted all the disparate Arab tribes to Islam, however, Mohammed’s attitude changed. He believed Allah now wanted him to destroy the People of the Book and drive them out of the Arab Peninsula.
"I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them. It is not ye who slew them; it was God." Surah 8:13-17.
Fight them (unbelievers); Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them… Surah 9:14
Mohammed was once asked: what is the best deed for the Muslim next to believing in Allah and His Apostle? His answer was: " To participate in Jihad in Allah’s cause. " Al Bukhari vol 1:25. (Hadith)
Mohammed hated Jews even more than Christians. He is often quoted in the Hadith: “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say: 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'"
To the Muslims, Jews are less than human:
Saudi sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam of the principal mosque in the holiest city in Islam, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, has said in a sermon that Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."
Fun Fact, according to several Muslim sources, Mohammed died after eating poisoned mutton provided by a Jewish woman.
Mohammed taught that Islam was the only true religion, and it was the Muslim duty to eliminate all others, including Christianity and Judaism.
After Mohammed’s death, Muslim armies, following his instructions, set out to conquer the rest of the world. They invaded Persia (Iran), Byzantium (Turkey and Asia Minor), Egypt, North Africa (Morocco), and the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Then they began an assault on mainland Europe that was stopped by the Franks under Charles Martel. If you’ve read my novel, The Hammer of God, you know all about that.
The Crusaders Strike Back
The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Jerusalem, routinely murdered Jews and Christians who refused to convert to Islam unless they paid a hefty tax— a practice established by Mohammed himself. The Muslims forbade Christians and Jews from entering the city on pilgrimage, and they wantonly desecrated the holy sites. Pope Urban and Emperor Alexius became alarmed, not only by the rapid expansion of Islam, but by the horrendous treatment of non-Muslims in the region. They called for the armies of Europe to liberate the Holy Land and Asia Minor from Muslim occupation.
The Jews, unfortunately, were the victims of both sides. Christian Crusaders engaged in pogroms against the European Jews, mainly to confiscate money to finance their war. During the ensuing wars, many Jews were massacred along with the Muslims and Christians. In the fog of war, no one stops to ask what side you’re on before killing you.
The First Crusade was largely successful. The Crusaders took back Nicaea, Antioch, Ashkelon, Jerusalem, and nearly everything in between. Christians controlled Jerusalem for ninety years. In the end, the Holy City was lost to the Muslims, who then began driving Jews and Christians out of the Holy Land. Muslims controlled the region known as Palestine until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.
FUN FACT: The Emperor Hadrian changed the same of Israel or Judea to “Palestine” as an insult to the Jews. The name Palestine derives from the Philistines, Israel’s most pernicious enemy in Bible times.
The Return of the Jews
The Bible tells us that Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees in southern Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. He was a pagan. His father, Terah, worshipped idols like Nonna, a moon god. Terah moved the family to Haran, which is in modern-day Turkey. Then God called Abraham to “leave your family and everything behind” and go to a new land. The land of Canaan. (Note that Abraham took everything, including his family, with him). God was going to create a great new nation from Abraham’s seed.
Jews trace their lineage to Isaac, Abraham’s son by his wife Sarah. Arabs trace their lineage to Ishmael, Abraham’s son by the Egyptian slave girl, Hagar. Arabs and Jews are, therefore, closely related. Practically brothers.
Approximately seven hundred years later, the Israelites returned from slavery in Egypt to conquer the land of Canaan which God had promised to Abraham. The Kingdom of Israel lasted for four hundred years until it was conquered by Babylon and Assyria, and the Jewish people were exiled again.
Seventy years later, the Jews began to return to Israel. They built a new temple and rebuilt the city walls of Jerusalem. Though they were no longer a kingdom, they stayed there for over a thousand years until the Muslims began driving them out.
The Zionist Movement of the late 19th century saw Jews returning to their ancestral homeland once again. (Amos 9:14-15). They bought or traded the Arabs for land to establish communal farms called Kibbutzes. The Arabs did not farm the land nor develop it in any way. It was uninhabited, swampy, and virtually worthless. When visiting the region, Mark Twain remarked,
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince... Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.
The Jews managed by sheer ingenuity and hard work to rehabilitate the land and establish thriving communities. (Isaiah 27:6)
After the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I, the UN gave the administration of Palestine to Britain, who then attempted to carve it up into separate Jewish and Arab homelands. (Joel 3:2) The Arabs living in Palestine fiercely resisted the creation of an Israeli homeland, but in 1948, the Nation of Israel declared its independence. (Isaiah 66:8) A new nation surrounded by enemies. For several decades, the Muslim nations attacked Israel, losing every time and conceding more and more territory. (Zech 12:2-3)
Israel gave some of the land back to the Muslims in hopes of securing a lasting peace. Such peace never lasted very long. Golda Meier once said: “If the Palestinians lay down their weapons, there will be peace. If the Israelis lay down their weapons, there will be a massacre.”
The New Crusade
What we are seeing now in the Israeli-Hamas war is essentially a New Crusade. Never mind all the talk about freedom and disputes over land ownership. This is a religious war, with Muslims using a political excuse in an attempt to wipe out the Jews. There is no doubt about this. Hamas’ charter states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement…Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.
To the Islamic crusader, there is no such thing as an innocent Jew. Fathi Hammad, Hamas Politburo member, said in 2019, “There are Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on planet Earth! We must slaughter and kill them, with Allah's help. We will lacerate and tear them to pieces.”
Nor do Islamic crusaders care about the safety and well-being of their own people. If they did, they would embrace and emulate Israel as the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. Instead, they put their missile launchers in kindergartens.
Here’s the bottom line: When Christians and Jews commit murder and mayhem, kill babies, rape women and slaughter innocents, they are acting against the tenets of their faith.
When Muslim extremists do it, they are acting in accordance with the tenets of Islam. Killing non-Muslims is not a sin. It is a ticket to Paradise.
And yet, even though the Muslims are once again the invaders, it is the Jews who are shouldering much of the blame. Most Middle Eastern countries, Russia, China, students and professors on Western college campuses, Western media outlets, and even many Western politicians and government spokesmen have either denounced Israel outright for daring to respond to the brutal attack from Hamas, or they simply refuse to denounce Hamas at all.
Who Persecutes Who?
Is it true that Israel is an apartheid state that oppresses Palestinians?
Arabs make up 21% of the population of Israel. They serve in the government. They are doctors, lawyers, and Supreme Court judges. They have the same rights as all citizens of Israel. The only difference is that Arab Muslims are not required to serve in the military, though many do anyway. That is not the say that Arabs living in Israel do not face challenges or that racial tensions don’t exist. Still, Arabs living in Israel seem to prefer it to living in any Arab country.
By contrast, nearly a million Jews have been persecuted and forced into exile from Islamic countries since 1948, leaving their property and assets behind. The few who remain are subject to intense discrimination and political persecution by the Islamic regime. Islamic schools teach hatred of Jews and the eradication of the nation of Israel.
Jerusalem is within Israel’s borders, but Israel gave control of the Temple Mount to the Muslims, who do not allow Jews to visit the site.
FUN FACT: Muslims believe the Temple Mount is their holy site because Mohammed claimed he had traveled there at night (in a dream) and ascended to heaven. But Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Quran, and Mohammed never actually set foot in Jerusalem.
Christians have faced similar persecution. A 2017 UK report found that the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries was “alarming,” with arrest, detention, imprisonment and mass murder on the rise. The report says, “The level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.”
It is virtually illegal to be a Christian in Islamic countries. Any Muslim who converts to Christianity risks death at the hands of their own family members, even those living in the United States.
Is Peace Possible?
In the Bible, God promised to protect Ishmael and make him into a great nation, just as he promised Abraham’s legitimate son Isaac. He also said this of Ishmael:
'He will be a wild mule of a man; he will fight everyone, and they will fight him. He will live at odds with all his relatives.” Genesis 16:12
The Bible is the only book that gets prophecy right.
We can only dream of a world where the Islamic aggressors lay down their arms and agree to live in peace with their Jewish brothers. That will probably never happen.
At least, not until Jesus returns.
Thus says the Lord: I have returned to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain.
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Behold, I will save my people from the east country and from the west country, and I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.”
Zechariah 8:3,7-8
Gina Detwiler wrote The Hammer of God (under the name Gina Miani), the story of Charles the Hammer’s monumental battle against an Arab invasion of Europe. She also wrote the award-winning Forlorn series, a YA supernatural adventure, and The Ultimate Bible Character Guide. She is the co-author of the bestselling Prince Warriors series with Priscilla Shirer. Find out more at http://www.ginadetwiler.com/
