Free Republic

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the Children's Crusade. The celebration began early. There are some intriguing parallels, and contrasts, with OWS as it sputters into the new year. In the spring and summer of 1212, crowds of young people gathered around two charismatic boys: a shepherd from near Chartres called Stephen and a twelve-year-old from Cologne, Nicholas. Stephen claimed that he had received a letter from Jesus, delivered in person, and Nicholas reported a conversation with an angel. The boys had been told to lead a Crusade to the Holy Land. (snip) Tea-Partiers want to protect children; Occupiers...

Once in a while I go to Wikipidea in order too at last try and remove some of the socialist drivel from there site. It is a futile effort I know but sometimes I come across pages or sentences Stalin and Hitler would be proud. Today I ran into this page on racial superiority. I will let you decide here are some of the better lines I found: Supremacism or racial superiority I will start with this one:“President George W. Bush’s support for fundamentalist Christianity has been linked to his having a “Christian supremacist vision” in his policies in the...

... [P]ervasive negative attitudes toward Islam go far deeper into the American psyche even than these manifestations suggest, for contempt toward the religion of Mohammed is a foundational pillar of Western civilization. That it is unacknowledged only makes it more pernicious. European Christian imagination jelled — as European, as Christian, and as imagination — around the mythic 732 triumph of Charles Martel over “infidel’’ Muslim forces in a battle near Poitiers, France. That may seem like an eternity ago and a world away, but still-powerful attitudes that show up in suspicions of widespread Muslim “radicalization’’ were generated then. In epoch-shaping...

In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said...

Historical facts say that Islam has been imperialistic—and would still like to be, if only for religious reasons. Many Muslim clerics, scholars, and activists, for example, would like to impose Islamic law  around the world. Historical facts say that Islam, including Muhammad, launched their own Crusades against Christianity long before the European Crusades.Today, Muslim polemicists and missionaries, who believe that Islam is the best religion in the world, claim that the West has stolen Islamic lands and that the West (alone) is imperialistic.One hardline Muslim emailer to me said about the developed West and the undeveloped  Islamic countries: 'You...

Many historians had been trying for some time to set the record straight on the Crusades -- misconceptions are all too common. These historians are not revisionists, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of very careful, very serious scholarship. For them, current interest is a "teaching moment," an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually listening. It won't last long, so here goes. 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...

We are about to follow the fortunes of this extraordinary thing which still calls itself Islam, that is, "The Acceptation" of the morals and simple doctrines which Mohammed had preached. I shall later describe the historical origin of the thing, giving the dates of its progress and the stages of its original success. I shall describe the consolidation of it, its increasing power and the threat which it remained to our civilization. It very nearly destroyed us. It kept up the battle against Christendom actively for a thousand years, and the story is by no means over; the power of...

The Austrian Mint in Vienna is issuing the second coin in its €10 silver commemorative series "Tales and Legends in Austria". The theme of the new coin is the captivity of the English king, Richard I, on his homeward journey from the Third Crusade in 1192 and the legend of his loyal friend and troubadour who is said to have discovered in which castle the king was being held. Austria 10€ Richard the Lionheart Silver Coin The first part of the story is indeed history. Richard, called the "Lionhearted" even in his lifetime, mortally offended Duke Leopold V of Austria...

May I begin, by saying, I love this country, the United States of America, It is the greatest hope in the history of our planet, save the works of the prophets of God. I add that I have never voted for a Democrat - and I probably never will - although JFK did cut taxes and I wish he had lived longer. Also: I believe that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, foremost being the freedom of speech. Jim Robinson, Thank you. So: If I be banned for what I am about to write, then I...

Evangelical book catalogs promote books such as Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, The Great Escape, and the Left Behind series. Bumper stickers warn us that the vehicle’s occupants may disappear at any moment. It is clear that there is a preoccupation with the idea of a secret rapture. Perhaps this has become more pronounced recently due to the expectation of a new millennium and the fears regarding potential Y2K problems. Perhaps psychologically people are especially receptive to the idea of an imminent, secret rapture at the present time. Additionally, many Christians are not aware that any other position relative to...

In the book Fire From Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century, the late Yale historian David Underdown tells a story of how the Puritans of Dorchester adopted an unusual tactic to assist the town's poor: they opened a brewery. As in many English towns of the 17th century, problems of overcrowding led many residents and their children to the edge of destitution. But the Puritans' vision of salvation was holistic: the godly would demonstrate their souls' transformation by God in good works. They would not allow their fellow families to go hungry while they had the...

Buzz about the 2012 presidential election is already in full swing. But with no real Republican front-runner, really, anyone is game. We’ve been hearing Mitt Romney’s name tossed around as a potential for a while now, but two weeks ago we started hearing another familiar name: Jon Huntsman. While Huntsman doesn’t have the same national profile as Romney, he has gained status as the ambassador to China and might become more of a threat in the upcoming year. Can you imagine—TWO Mormons (gasp) both running for president? Now, I understand my next thought doesn’t apply to every Mormon, BUT, I...

The film Kingdom of Heaven shows conflicts between Muslims and Christians in the twelfth century after the Second and before the Third Crusade, and dramatically culminates with the short siege and fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims in 1187. It is an amazing Hollywood version of the period, but it certainly is not factual history. Such misconceptions, nevertheless, have contributed to the situation today in which “the Crusades” have become virtually synonymous with supposed Christian cruelty and intolerance. The Crusades actually were motivated in part by the desire of Christians in the West to help fellow Christians in the East....

Thomas Madden is chair of the history department at St. Louis University and author of: “A Concise History of the Crusades”, In October 2004 Zenit, the International News Agency, interviewed him. Madden: The following are some of the most common myths and why they are wrong.

ZABUL PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN -- Sitting on the dusty flightline at Forward Op erating Base Lagman in the Afghan hinterlands, what could make better leisure reading than the November issue of Inspire -- the English-language magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? The lavishly illustrated, 23-page PDF, is a "special issue" devoted to the attempted toner-cartridge bombings via UPS deliveries from Yemen. Besides a page taunting Yemen's president, the issue focuses on how the explosives were prepared, how difficult they are to detect and how economically the plot was accomplished. Of course, none of the bombs mailed to out-of-date addresses...

Featured Term (selected at random):HOSPITALERS Originally Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. After 1310 they were also know as the Knights of Rhodes, and from 1530 as the Knights of Malta. Their beginning may be traced to the Benedictines in the eleventh century. Founded to care for the sick, during the Crusades they also gave protection to the pilgrims and in time became either soldiers (military brothers) or physicians and nurses (brother infirmarians). Eventually the military phase went out of existence. The term "hospitalers" is also applied in a wider sense to other religious...

Here is a review from Saint Austin Review: The premier international journal of Catholic culture, literature and ideas of a book called: Crown of the World -- Book 1: Knight of the Temple. by Phillip Campbell III Knight of the Temple by Nathan Sadasivan is the first installment in the “Crown of the World” series, a trilogy set in late twelfth-century Palestine during the waning years of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. One of the most remarkable things about this extraordinary work of historical fiction is that the author, Nathan Sadasivan, wrote the book when he was only fifteen years...

One of the memes – the unconscious, uncritical, lazy thoughts that spreads from person to person like a virus – that has been particularly virulent during this ground-zero mosque controversy is that Christians have no standing to criticize the violence of Islam, given a supposedly violent Christian history. And no one event is more often invoked as an example of Christian hypocrisy than the so-called “Crusades” (so-called, because no one who fought in them called them that).The latest and most appalling example appears in the NY Times, courtesy of a Nicholas D. Kristoff. Among the many absurdities one can find...

Travel broadens the mind—or a part of one's anatomy—it has been said. And as the poem by Joyce Grenfell puts it, I also enjoy travelling in my head, which is to say, by reading travel literature. The wonderful books by Patrick Leigh Fermor, for instance. More recently, I have been reading something quite different in that category. This is The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, in the translation by Roland Broadhurst. Abu 'Husayn Muhammed ibn Ahmad Ibn Jubayr was secretary to the Moorish Governor of Granada in the year 1182. His employer forced him to drink, against his Moslem conscience, seven...

Islamics Launched their Crusades in 630 A.D. Western Crusades started in 1095 A.D. to Stop Muslim Invasion The Crusades were started by the Muslims in the year 630 A.D. when Muhammad invaded and conquered Mecca. Later on, Muslims invaded Syria, Iraq, Jerusalem, Iran, Egypt, Africa, Spain, Italy, France, etc. The Western Crusades started around 1095 to try to stop the Islamic aggressive invasions. Islamic Crusades continued even after the Western Crusades. Islam - Not a Religion of PeaceIslam has killed about 270 million people: 120 million Africans*, 60 million Christians, 80 million Hindus, 10 million Buddhists, etc." Forced conversions...

he year is 732 A.D., and Europe is under assault. Islam, born a mere 110 years earlier, is already in its adolescence, and the Muslim Moors are on the march. Growing in leaps and bounds, the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is known, has thus far subdued much of Christendom, conquering the old Christian lands of the Mideast and North Africa in short order. Syria and Iraq fell in 636; Palestine in 638; and Egypt, which was not even an Arab land, fell in 642. North Africa, also not Arab, was under Muslim control by 709. Then came the year...

The year is 732 A.D., and Europe is under assault. Islam, born a mere 110 years earlier, is already in its adolescence, and the Muslim Moors are on the march. Growing in leaps and bounds, the Caliphate, as the Islamic realm is known, has thus far subdued much of Christendom, conquering the old Christian lands of the Mideast and North Africa in short order. Syria and Iraq fell in 636; Palestine in 638; and Egypt, which was not even an Arab land, fell in 642. North Africa, also not Arab, was under Muslim control by 709. Then came the year...

Books for the Arsenal of Ordered Liberty Posted by Hunter Bakeron Monday, January 4, 2010 As we begin the New Year, I find myself thinking about books that fill the conservative armamentarium for resisting the left-liberal onslaught on the past handful of years. I’ve omitted some categories, like military and foreign policy, because they are outside my areas of expertise and don’t apply as much to the Acton mission, anyway. Here are my recommendations:Economics:Common Sense Economics by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee — Dr. Gwartney taught the first economics class I ever took as a university student and...

Catholic, Crusader, Leper and King: The Life of Baldwin IV and the Triumph of the Cross By MichaModern society obsessively avoids suffering, risk and danger.  It secures everything with seatbelts and safety rails, air conditions the summer heat, prints warnings on coffee cups and advises that that safety glasses should be used while working with hammers.  Certainly such precautions have prevented misfortune.  However, since heroism and excellence are born from confronting rather than avoiding suffering and peril, the mania for safeguards has also diminished the notion of these qualities.  This is unfortunate since only those intrepid souls who confront danger,...

A Labour minister has sparked controversy by claiming that an alternative symbol is needed for the Red Cross because of the logo's supposed links to the Crusades. Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant said that the historic emblem risked undermining the work of the humanitarian organisation. His intervention came as MPs debated the adoption of the 'red crystal' - a diamond

A former FBI special agent told law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that a network of Islamic organizations are working to incrementally implement Islamic law in the United States. During a presentation at the Bedford County Emergency Management Agency, former FBI agent John Guandolo briefed members about groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which he claims is working with other Islamic groups to slowly implement Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encompasses all areas of life. Guandolo worked in the FBI since 1996, including nine years as a member of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the...

NEVER-BEFORE-REVEALED TERRORIST TRAINING VIDEO EXPOSES 35 COMPOUNDS ON AMERICAN SOILBy Steve Foley - Posted on February 9th, 2009 Press Release from the Christian Action Network “Act like you are his friend. Then kill him.” – Sheik Muburak Gilani explaining how to kill American infidels Washington, DC—Christian Action Network will show Homegrown Jihad at the Landmark Theater in Washington, DC, on February 11, 2009, at 7:30 pm. There is no charge to attend the viewing. Copies can also be obtained at www.christianaction.org. The American public was never supposed to know. The 2006 Justice Department document that exposes 35 terrorist training compounds...

We tend to focus on creeping sharia in the U.S. but Canada is not exempt from the grand jihad as this article from earlier this year indicates. With porous borders and chatter of a North American Union we should hope Canada is taking the threat seriously. David Harris. The enemy within If terrorism suspect Momin Khawaja, now on trial in Ottawa, is as guilty as Crown prosecutors say, it’ll be time to settle an important question: Was Mr. Khawaja a “Naji man”? Amid trial allegations, court details and defence objections, significant questions arise about Mr. Khawaja’s status as a consultant...

Over the next year, the U.S. government will need to borrow somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, the most ever by far. Estimates go as high as $2 trillion, depending on how quickly the economy cools and how fast tax revenues fall. The simple question most of America has not asked is this: Where is the money going to come from? The federal government already knows the answer to that question, and it has implications Americans are not ready for but will soon be faced with. America is going cap in hand to Middle East oil exporters. What government...

Since CNN devoted so much time to covering the Hajj, a number of prominent Muslims -- including known terrorists and jihadists -- have opined that "We are defeating these people [American "evangelicals"] through their homes in their lands." "Terrorists gush over CNN coverage," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily, December 12 (thanks to Doc Washburn): JERUSALEM – CNN's extensive coverage this week of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca is a defeat for evangelical Christians and proves it is only a question of time before Islam will be "shining all over the world," according to Muslim terrorists in Gaza speaking to...

More evil and violence from the ‘religion’ of ‘piece’. No wonder muslim kids grow up so full of hate and venom, the very people charged with protecting them are beating them down in the name of allah. Gee what a shocker there… Muslim children are being beaten and abused regularly by teachers at some British madrassas - Islamic evening classes - an investigation by The Times has found. Students have been slapped, punched and had their ears twisted, according to an unpublished report by an imam based on interviews with victims in the north of England. One was “picked up...

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Robert Spencer [whose “Jihad Watch” is featured weekly in HUMAN EVENTS] has been a one-man warning system against radical Islam. A scholar who has spent most of his professional life studying Islam, his string of books dissects the world's largest religion as a bastion of intolerance and hate, justified by the teachings of spiritual leader Mohammed and various holy men. As one of his previous titles, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam," suggests, Spencer does not buckle in fear of the type of backlash that can materialize as a death-threatening fatwa against a critical...

A 19-year-old man is tortured and beheaded for a bad joke interpreted as blasphemy. A father is accused of killing his son because he converted to another religion. They are not Muslims but Christians, and the place is France in the mid-1700s. There was a time when Europe often behaved in ways parallel to that of Muslim-majority countries today. Yet by the end of the 1700s, this was changing. In the first case cited above, the king and even Catholic bishops failed to save the unfortunate Chevalier de la Barre, but the outcry led to the end of such actions....

Riyadh, 2 April (AKI) - Swiss football referee Massimo Busacca vowed he would wear a whistle with the Swiss Cross symbol on it during of the Saudi championship on Wednesday, despite anger voiced in the Kingdom at the 'crusader' item. "I have respect for all religions, including Islam, but I don't see anything offensive in this and am optimistic. I will not give up my 'crusader' whistle," he told pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat. Many in Saudi Arabia had called for Busacca to sport a different whistle to avoid offending Muslims. He has previously refereed several soccer matches in the Kingdom....

The relationship between Muslims and Christians received added attention this past Easter when Pope Benedict XVI publicly baptized Magdi Allam, the most prominent Muslim journalist in Italy.  Allam knew that publicly renouncing his Islamic faith would bring attempts on his life from angered Muslims, but expressed conviction that his newfound faith would sustain him through any difficulties. "You asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another and much more grave death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but...

Crusaders 'left genetic legacy' The genetic signature can be traced to Europe Scientists have detected the faint genetic traces left by medieval crusaders in the Middle East. The team says it found a particular DNA signature which recently appeared in Lebanon and is probably linked to the crusades. The finding comes from the Genographic Project, a major effort to track human migrations through DNA. Details of the research have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The researchers found that some Christian men in Lebanon carry a DNA signature hailing from Western Europe. The scientists also found that...

At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the Frankish king Charles Martel defeated the Saracens and pushed the forces of Islam back into the Iberian Peninsula. It was not until 1492 that the Moors were finally thrown out of Europe, but in the meantime the Islamic virus was contained in Spain and Portugal, and thus kept out of the heart of Western Europe. One of Charles Martel’s comrades-in-arms at Poitiers was a warrior of the North known as Ogier le Danois, later Holger Danske, or Holger the Dane. Although Holger was a historical figure, little is known of him, and...

According to the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia, the Spanish football club Barcelona is altering its famous badge in some Arab countries in order to avoid offending Muslims. The badge is especially altered in Saudi Arabia or Algeria, where the Barcelona shirts are being sold without the red cross of Saint George, the patron saint of the Catalan region which Barca claims to represent, the La Vanguardia newspaper found in a private investigation. The badge, which was created in 1906, features a single vertical red line in Saudi Arabia and Algeria, due to the fact that there, the red cross represents...

Robert Spencer on the Battles Still Being Waged WASHINGTON, D.C., 11 MARCH 2006 (ZENIT) The Crusades may be causing more devastation today than they ever did in the three centuries when most of them were fought, according to one expert. Robert Spencer, author of "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" (Regnery), claims that the damage is not in terms of lives lost and property destroyed but is a more subtle destruction. Spencer shared with ZENIT how false ideas about the Crusades are being used by extremists to foment hostility to the West today. Q: The Crusades are often...

No sooner had the six Muslims been arrested for planning an attack on Fort Dix, the left wing media was pimping the concept that the six had absolutely nothing to do with al Qaeda; no connection, no alliance, no nothing (no mention of Islam) and further, that radicals anyway make up a small, misguided splinter group. Of course we Americans are so terminally ignorant that we swallow this traitorous lie as if it were written in the Bible; and we sigh in relief comforted by this “liberal cabal’s” continuing propaganda to separate our minds from reality. When pushed against the...

Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has discovered. The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children as well as black pupils to feel alienated, according to a study by the Historical Association. A lack of knowledge among teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to "shallow" lessons on emotive and difficult subjects. Some teachers dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons because of fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-semitic reactions. One school avoided teaching the...

As the Pelosi Democrats attempt to steer the debate on Iraq and the war on terror away from President Bush's approach, it is useful to examine the premises behind the liberal Democratic understanding of the war on terror. So far the Democrats have been successful in faulting the president's admittedly-flawed approach. But there is no advantage in trading one bad model for another. Here, then, is my critique of some of the major elements of the liberal explanation for "why they hate us." They're very upset at us for the Crusades: James Carroll’s recent book Crusade, portrays the Crusades as...

Bernard Lewis is the recipient of the 2007 Irving Kristol Award presented annually by the American Enterprise Institute at the institute's annual dinner. After receiving the award, Mr. Lewis delivered the Irving Kristol Lecture. In his lecture, Bernard Lewis outlined the historical relationship between the west and the middle east and recent trends in European attitudes towards Muslims.

Western civilization – life as we know it – is under attack, and indeed has even reached a very dangerous point. Some may even think it is a point of no return. Not just because in recent months Muslim groups around the world insisted that the pope apologize for merely quoting someone else. No, not just because the prime minister of Denmark had to grovel to the Muslim nations for a cartoon that appeared in a Danish newspaper, over which he had no control whatsoever. No, not even just because President Bush rushed into a Muslim mosque in Washington, D.C.,...

Think carbon nanotubes are new-fangled? Think again. The Crusaders felt the might of the tube when they fought against the Muslims and their distinctive, patterned Damascus blades. Sabres from Damascus, now in Syria, date back as far as 900 AD. Strong and sharp, they are made from a type of steel called wootz. Their blades bear a banded pattern thought to have been created as the sword was annealed and forged. But the secret of the swords' manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century. Materials researcher Peter Paufler and his colleagues at Dresden University, Germany, have taken electron-microscope pictures of...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Almost from the very beginning of Islam, there were wars upon wars between Christians and Moslems. We remember the Crusade wars, seven major and several minor, which lasted for centuries. This is the story of the Battle of Lepanto, which marked the end of the Crusades and was a turning point in the history of Christianity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles Martel's victory at Poitiers definitely stopped the Moslem invasion of western Europe. In the east Christians held firm against attacks of the Moslems until 1453. In that year, Mohammed II threw huge assaults against Constantinople and by the evening of May...

good book on the crusades?

Pope Benedict XVI, the "Panzer pope," has done the unusual in modern discourse: he has jumped into the war on terror with armored facts from six centuries ago that refute a deal of the appeasement from 21st-century Europeans and their American fellow travelers. You will recall that Pope Benedict recently spoke, auf Deutsch, at Regensburg University, where he once enjoyed a professorship. The speech was dry, mechanical, unappetizing, a predictable German exercise in theology, with much attention to how reason and faith are compatible. In Calvinist seminary we used to call this a Roman disquisition on epistemology. Yet in the...

The Calling of Our Generationhttp://magic-city-news.com/article_6655.shtml By Hans Zeiger Sep 18, 2006, 10:43 "The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century, and the calling of our generation." These are the words of President Bush on September 11, five years after the attacks. If Baby Boomers doubt that this present war is the calling of their generation, the children of the Boomers-at least the rising leaders among them-have little doubt that it is theirs. On the eve of September 11, 2006, nearly 150 Hillsdale College students gathered for a...

Unreasonable Response Benedict XVI hasn’t revived the Crusades. By Thomas F. Madden -------------------------------------------- In November 1095 Pope Urban II called the First Crusade. To judge from the comments issuing from some Muslim groups and politicians, Pope Benedict XVI has done the same thing. According to Salih Kapusuz, a deputy leader of the majority party in Turkey, Benedict, “has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world.” Kapusuz maintains that the pope is engaged in “an effort to revive...