A Renew of The Crusades by Muslims

Origin of the Crusades

The origin of the Crusades is directly traceable to the moral and political condition of Western Christendom in the eleventh century. At that time Europe was divided into numerous states whose sovereigns were absorbed in tedious and petty territorial disputes while the emperor, in theory the temporal head of Christendom, was wasting his strength in the quarrel over Investitures. The popesalone had maintained a just estimate of Christian unity; they realized to what extent the interests of Europe were threatened by the Byzantine Empire and theMohammedan tribes, and they alone had a foreign policy whose traditions were formed under Leo IX andGregory VII. The reform effected in the Church and the papacy through the influence of the monks of Cluny had increased the prestige of the Roman pontiffin the eyes of all Christiannations; hence none but thepope could inaugurate the international movement that culminated in the Crusades. But despite his eminent authority the pope could never have persuaded the Western peoples to arm themselves for the conquest of the Holy Land had not the immemorial relations between Syria and the West favoured his design.Europeans listened to the voice of Urban II because their own inclination and historic traditions impelled them towards the Holy Sepulchre.

From the end of the fifth century there had been no break in their intercourse with the Orient. In the earlyChristian period colonies ofSyrians had introduced the religious ideas, art, and culture of the East into the large cities of Gaul and Italy. The Western Christians in turn journeyed in large numbers to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt

After Mohammed's death Mohammedanism aspired to become a world power and a universal religion. The weakness of the Byzantine Empire, the unfortunate rivalry between the Greekand Latin Churches, theschisms of Nestorius andEutyches, the failing power of the Sassanian dynasty ofPersia, the lax moral code of the new religion, the power of the sword and of fanaticism, the hope of plunder and the love of conquest — all these factors combined with the genius of the caliphs, the successors of Mohammed, to effect the conquest, in considerably less than a century, of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, NorthAfrica, and the South ofSpain. The Moslems even crossed the Pyrenees, threatening to stable their horses in St. Peter's atRome, but were at last defeated by Charles Martelat Tours, in 732, just one hundred years from the death of Mohammed. This defeat arrested their western conquests and savedEurope.

In the eighth and ninth centuries they conqueredPersia, Afghanistan, and a large part of India, and in the twelfth century they had already become the absolute masters of all Western Asia,Spain and North Africa,Sicily, etc. They were finally conquered by the Mongols and Turks, in the thirteenth century, but the new conquerors adopted Mohammed's religion and, in the fifteenth century, overthrew the totteringByzantine Empire (1453). From that stronghold (Constantinople) they even threatened the German Empire, but were successfully defeated at the gates of Vienna, and driven back across the Danube, in 1683.

Mohammedanism now comprises varioustheological schools and political factions. The Orthodox (Sunni) uphold the legitimacy of the succession of the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Uthman, while the Schismatics (Shiah) champion the Divineright of Ali as against the successions of these caliphs whom they call "usurpers", and whose names, tombs, and memorials they insult and detest. The Shiah number at present about twelve million adherents, or about one-twentieth of the whole Mohammedan world, and are scattered overPersia and India. 

Guy Perea Presidential Elector President of The United States