Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Historical Amnesia?

Comparing the current Islamic Jihad against the Judeo-Christian world to the Christian Crusades (which were, in fact, mass forced-conversion or death to Jews worldwide--IOW a Christian Jihad against all Jews--but is typically reported in history texts as the Christian "rescue" of the Holy Land) is a little far-fetched. The Brussels Journal has what appears to be a rather comprehensive overview of the "history of Islamic Jihad" and more pointedly, the Muslim world's attempts at world domination since the moment of Islam's inception.

The overview is stilted, in a number of ways, and is not really as comprehensive as it looks on first glance. For one thing, the entire discussion is founded on a mistaken suggestion that there was only one Crusade by the Christians against the Jews. This is revisionist history, isn't it?

In fact, there were multiple periods of mass slaughter "in the name of G-d." Wikipedia, not the most reliable source but good enough to make this point, claims there were NINE Crusades (others say TEN) against non-Christians. The Medieval Crusades were not the first, nor the last (even ignoring Hitler's Nazi-led genocide attempts). Although it might be a painful and troubling truth for today's Christian world to admit, given the violence this kind of extremist behavior can do to the world--not just the slaughtered victims, individually--it's very, very important not to skim over or pretend anyone is "without sin" or start casting the first stones of pure hate.

The Brussels Journal makes a sincere and well-placed effort to focus on the sins of today's perpetrators: the Islamic Jihadists. I agree, they are extremely dangerous and need to be understood and stopped, but to change our history--any of our history--to frame a context for hating the Jihadists enough to want to wipe them out is a disservice to ourselves. Yeah, to ourselves.

Despite all of this slanting to diminish the Christian world's past sins, the Brussels Journal does succeed in noting that the Jews didn't cause nor are we at "fault" for the current Islamic Jihad against the west--it's been going on for hundreds of years before the State of Israel as it exists today was founded.

Again, while I appreciate the sentiment, this is a bit more of revisionist history. Reality is, the Nation of Israel has existed for thousands of years. We have been a nation of people without a home. We were invaded and conquered by the soon-to-be-called-Muslims and our people were "carried off" to Babylon (most of them; A small number of Jews remained in Jerusalem and Jews everywhere have never given up the fight to reclaim possession of Jerusalem, which we see as our G-d given right and obligation to protect against the profanities still going on today by, for example, the Waqf Muslims.) To say Israel didn't even exist is misleading without the qualifier "the current State of Israel" and diminishes the Jewish people to a 50-year-old group, ignoring our 3000+ year history.

The Brussels Journal overview does, however, offer a very comprehensive reading list on Jihad, the history of Muslim attempts at world domnination and of course, other genocidal movements throughout history. It's well-worth your time to visit and read some of the books cited. There are dozens. It'll fill your reading list for a year!

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