Recently several members of a banned British Islamic organization called Muslims against Crusaders were arrested after unruly protests outside the U.S. embassy in London. The very name of the organization - Muslims against Crusaders (MAC) – is bound to attract attention. Has anyone seen any bona fide crusaders in the last few hundred years? A cursory investigation of the group’s beliefs makes it clear that its members have bought into a series of myths often propagated as historical facts. The following myths, however, are not held by radical Muslims alone. Even Catholics sometimes mistakenly hold them:
Myth #1: The crusades were wars of unprovoked Christian aggression.
In reality the Crusades were a response to more than three centuries’ worth of Muslim aggression. By the time of Muhammad's death in the year 632, much of what would be modern-day Saudi Arabia already was brought under the black flag of Islam. After Muhammad's death, Muslim conquests accelerated at an alarming rate. Within a matter of decades all of North Africa, much of the Middle East and Central Asia, almost all of Spain, Sicily, and a number of Mediterranean islands were conquered. All of this territory, excepting Central Asia, was inhabited almost solely by Christians.
Muslim authorities imposed restrictions on the conquered Christian populations. All Christians were treated as second-class citizens - in their own countries - and were forced to pay a special tax merely because they were not Muslim. Christian pilgrims, who once freely traveled to and from the Holy Land, suddenly found their access to holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, threatened or seriously restricted. Even the holy sites themselves were not always safe. In the year 1009, the Muslim leader who controlled Jerusalem ordered the destruction of one of the holiest of Christian places - the Church of the Holy Sepulcher - a shrine dedicated to the protection and veneration of the tomb of Christ. To add insult to injury, Christians were not only forbidden to worship at the ruined site, but were not even permitted to visit it.
After a Muslim army dealt a crushing defeat to Byzantine Christians in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, all of Asia Minor was suddenly open to Muslim conquest and the free practice of their religion was suddenly in doubt for millions of Christians. The Byzantine Emperor wasted little time in appealing to the Pope for help in raising mercenary armies. It took almost 25 years, however, for a Pope to come to the aid of Eastern Christians, and when Pope Urban II did so, it was not with a call for mercenaries, but with a call to pious men to risk their lives to free Jerusalem for the glory of God and the benefit of Christian pilgrims.
Almost completely forgotten in all of this today, is the fact that the Crusades were partly the byproduct of two great medieval peace movements fostered by the Church. The Peace of God and Truce of God movements were intended to end unnecessary violence, destruction of church property, and harm done to innocent noncombatants. Although the Catholic Church recognized the need for well-trained armed soldiers to preserve the peace and to serve their secular lords, she believed that the knights could serve a much greater purpose in defending the poor, the unarmed, and the Church herself for the glory of God. Decades later knights influenced by the peace and truce movements rallied to the cause of freeing Jerusalem from Muslim domination. Far from being wars of unprovoked aggression then, the crusades actually were responses to Muslim threats and conquests.
In part two we will examine another myth about the crusades. For more information please consider taking the four week course “The Crusades” offered by the Bishop Helmsing Institute beginning on January 11. Go to www.mybhi.org or call 816-714-2331 to register.
