wondering how the f**k christian lands ever became christian lands and muslim lands ever became muslim lands.

Europe had been at least partially evaded by Rome, which by then, waning in power, had become "The Holy Roman Empire."

But the point this author is making is that the re-taking of Jerusalem did not happen in a vacuum. Before that, Europe had suffered being besieged many times by Kurdish imperialism; by the Turks, for one example.

What is a people/ nation to do when attacked and pillaged? Just lie down and vanish from the face of the earth?

Behind imperialism is not religion, but human greed. Oh, they may say they are doing this in the name of their God/s, but when you boil it down it is simply greed/ covetousness.

so if greed is behind imperialism then it follows that christian lands became christian lands because of greedy christians and muslim lands became muslim lands because of greedy muslims. we all know that jews are greedy so that explains isreal too, huh?

Well, yes. Jewish people, though they have a small country, have gotten their fingers in finance. And the U.S., as far as I know, is still sending economic and other kinds of support.

That's another reason radical Islam does not like the U.S.

I can understand why John Lennon wrote the song, Imagine.

so jews still have jewland and muslims still have islamland but you xtians no longer have xtianland? you saved by jesus folk need to learn how to fight a war, huh?

As to who did what first is still being unraveled. But the point here in this article is that the besiege of Jerusalem did did not happen, unprovoked, in a vacuum,.. as many Muslims I am sure are taught.

I feel a lot of Christians know, as Jesus made clear, that there is a Kingdom that is not of this world.
.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

Religion X fighting religion Y over land, nothing new.
How does this compare to settlement of the new world?
Empire building do all religions do it? Whose land was it to begin with ?
That's the question.

You are right to an extent in that it was/is not just religion that fueled all the empire building. However hitler was religious ( he started catholic and morphed religion to suit his agenda (( using hatred of jews from catholic & early christianity)) .

Christianity played a big role in subjugation of American natives by way of the christian boarding schools.

Religion is a very powerful tool, it is very easy to use to turn human beings against their fellow man as history shows.
Religion has been misused too many times through politics for conquest and genocide.
Religion is as dangerous as as any weapon including atomic bombs.
anytime people are told to do another's will, anytime a person surrenders their own will for another persons wishes, they become pawns in a game they cannot control.

Religious people murdered Jesus.

That's your answer?

So you're saying the christians were justified to invade the" holy lands" and they were justified in invading the Americas ?

And that is precisely my objection to religion. I do not believe gods exist but I would not care if people choose to believe in them. It is the religion's power to mesmerise people to do despicable things to others in the name of these imaginary gods that causes my disdain for religions.

So are you still contending the crusades were justified? That all the killing, rape and pillaging were "not that big of deal"?

Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095. Despite modern laments about medieval colonialism, the crusade's real purpose was to turn back Muslim conquests and restore formerly Christian lands to Christian control. The entire history of the crusades is one of Western reaction to Muslim advances. The crusades were no more offensive than was the American invasion of Normandy. As it happened, the First Crusade was amazingly, almost miraculously, successful. The crusaders marched hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory and recaptured not only the lost cities of Nicaea and Antioch, but in 1099 Jerusalem itself. The Muslim response was a call for jihad, although internal divisions put that off for almost fifty years. With great leaders like Nur ed-Din and Saladin on the Muslim side and Richard the Lionheart and St. Louis IX on the Christian side, holy war was energetically waged in the Middle East for the next century and a half. The warriors on both sides believed, and by the tenets of their respective religions were justified in believing, that they were doing God's work. History, though, was on the side of Islam. Muslim rulers were becoming more, not less powerful. Their jihads grew in strength and effectiveness until, in 1291, the last remnants of the crusaders in Palestine and Syria were wiped out forever.

But that was not the end of the crusades, nor of jihad. Islamic states like Mamluk Egypt continued to expand in size and power. It was the Ottoman Turks, though, that built the largest and most awesome state in Muslim history. At its peak in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire encompassed all of North Africa, the Near East, Arabia, and Asia Minor and had plunged deep into Europe, claiming Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia. Under Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks came within a hair's breadth of capturing Vienna, which would have left all of Germany at their mercy. At that point crusades were no longer waged to rescue Jerusalem, but Europe itself. Christendom had been shrinking for centuries. The smart money was all on Islam as the wave of the future.

Of course, that is not how it turned out. But surprisingly the rise of the West was not the result of any military victory against Muslims. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire survived largely intact until the end of World War I. Instead, something completely new and totally unpredictable was happening in Europe. A new civilization, built on the old to be sure, was forming around ideas like individualism and capitalism. Europeans expanded on a global scale, leaving behind the Mediterranean world, seeking to understand and explore the entire planet. Great wealth in a commercial economy led to a fundamental change in almost every aspect of Western life, culminating in industrialization. The Enlightenment turned Western attention away from Heaven and toward the things of this world. Soon religion in the West became simply a matter of personal preference. Crusades became unthinkable - a foolishness of a civilization's childhood.

As for the Islamic world, it was left behind. Even today Muslim countries struggle to catch up. It is a difficult task, for they are seeking to reconcile their own culture with modern concepts that are uniquely western. Invariably this tension has led to charges among Muslims that their religion and their world is being sold out. Those Muslim leaders who have dealt with the West have been labeled apostates and sometimes targeted by jihad warriors. Indeed, the vast majority of Islamist terrorism over the last century has been aimed at other Muslims. The division, starkly put, is between those who wish to adopt the benefits of Western culture while retaining a devotion to Islam and those who consider any concession to the West to be an abjuration of faith. In short, it is a division between the medieval and the modern worlds.

Which brings us back to the crusades. If the Muslims won the crusades (and they did), why the anger now? Shouldn't they celebrate the crusades as a great victory? Until the nineteenth century that is precisely what they did. It was the West that taught the Middle East to hate the crusades. During the peak of European colonialism, historians began extolling the medieval crusades as Europe's first colonial venture. By the 20th century, when imperialism was discredited, so too were the crusades. They haven't been the same since. In other words, Muslims in the Middle East - including bin Laden and his creatures - know as little about the real crusades as Americans do. Both view them in the context of the modern, rather than the medieval world. The truth is that the crusades had nothing to do with colonialism or unprovoked aggression. They were a desperate and largely unsuccessful attempt to defend against a powerful enemy.

That's the thing about bin Laden, he is a troublesome mix of the modern and the medieval. He and his lieutenants regularly fulminate about the "nation," a reference to a Muslim political unity that died in the seventh century. They evoke an image of the crusades colored with the legacy of modern imperialism. And they call for jihad, demanding that every Muslim in the world take part. In short, they live in a dream world, a desert cloister where the last thousand years only partially happened.

what do you not understand about what the powers that be were at the time of the inquisition? do you need another reference? have you never discussed a topic relying on your own knowledge of the subject matter? seems to me that's why you get tripped up so much in your own threads. you're a fantastic copy/paste technician but can you simply match wits with the few of us here who are capable?

I don;t have a photographic memory, so what I have studied decades ago, needs to be reviewed.

Sail had asked what is the purpose of this thread.

To educate.

It was not at first Christians picking on poor, peaceful Muslims, as many are led to believe.

Muslims had slaughtered hundreds of thousands in Europe, beforehand, unprovoked

JR has asked to discuss the infamous Inquisitions. Here, from Rice University's Galileo Project is what seems to be quite an accurate account of the heinous abuse of religion referred to as The Inquisition....

http://galileo.rice.edu/chr/inquisition.html

There are a couple of things to bear in mind, when discussing the unconscionable acts of the Inquisition. First of all, these were edicts coming from so called Papal authority, to murder those who apposed Roman Catholicism. I use the word murder because those accused of heresy were hardly given any kind of fair trial at all.

Second, though these criminal & murderous deeds--to this day--still give God a black eye, one must realize we are hard pressed to find anything in the New Testament to support what Catholicism did.

So, what is Catholicism's basis for defending what they did? How did they come to believe they were under God's authority to murder people? The answer? A simple misreading and misapplication of the words of Christ found in Matthew 16:18, which Catholics erroneously point to as Jesus declaring Peter as a "rock," the first Pope (Note the different New Testament Greek words)....

"Thou art Peter [petros], and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (King James Version)

From Strong's Concordance:

Petros (a rock or a stone)

Pe'-trä (a rock, cliff or ledge, a projecting rock, crag, rocky ground, a rock, a large stone, metaphorically a man like a rock, by reason of his firmness and strength of soul

Jesus was NOT declaring Peter the rock upon which Jesus would build His church. Jesus was referring to Himself!

The Jubilee Bible (2000) is one of the few Bibles that correctly translates Matthew 16:18 from the original Greek..

"Thou art Peter, a small rock and upon the large rock I will build my congregation, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against her."

And Paul, the Apostle, refers to Christ as that Rock.....

1 Corinthians 10:4: “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.”

"Yes, a time is coming when the one who kills you will think he’s serving God." ~ Jesus (John 16:2) (New International Version)

The solution is to repair everything we touch .

everything came from the ground????????

everything came from the ground????????