THE CONFLICTS BETWEEN CHRISTIANS & MUSLIMS: WILL THEY NEVER END?

…A Muslim fighter today

Above is an age old question that doesn’t appear will ever have a positive answer.

 

For years now, we have been told that both the Christian and the Muslim religions are both based on their beliefs in peace, not in war or in violence.

Well, my history bug recently became aroused which inspired my interested in pursuing the history of the original war between the Christians and the Muslims.  That war, the First Crusade was only the first of the many wars that has occurred between the Christians and the Muslims.    

 

My curiosity was basically wondering: “Was this ancient war called the ‘Crusades’, also the basis for today’s conflicts between the two religions that have since continued for centuries? 

As it turns out, the answer to that question is pretty much “yes!”

But, how can two religions based on peace, be at war for all those centuries?”

 

For better understanding, let's go back to when it all began.

The reality is that the original Crusades actually started as a staged event originally sponsored by the then Catholic Pope.  A Pope who was making a desperate move as a way for saving the power of the Catholic papacy in Europe.

At the time the Crusades began, up to that point, the Christians and the Muslims were for the most part, able to live side by side somewhat peacefully.  There was no obvious idea at the time that a titanic war of the centuries was either eminent or inevitable.

But then in 1095, along came the Catholic Pope Urban II. 

This Pope was then in the process of having a continuing power struggle with the then emperor of Germany.  So perilous was this Pope about the possibility of losing his power as the spiritual overlord of every Christian in western Europe, he felt he had to do something highly radical for saving his religion.

Pope Urban then decided that he needed to get his church and its leaders aroused, so he called the first ecclesiastical council in decades in the norther Italian town of Piacenza.

At that get-together of the church’s leadership, Pope Urban delivered such a fire and brimstone sermon it would eventually come to transform the history of Europe and the Middle East. 

The Pope’s rousing sermon declared that Christianity was in dire peril.  He said that Christianity was being threatened by a coming invasion of the Muslims and their appalling and inhumane oppression.  It was almost an afterthought when Pope Urban stated that the Holy City of Jerusalem must be taken back by the Christians.

At this time in history, Jerusalem was in the hands of the Muslims who according to Pope Urban were “a people alien to God”.  The Pope then called upon Christian and Latin Europe to rise up as “Soldiers of Christ” against this supposedly savage Muslim foe and to reclaim the Holy Land for Christ.

The Pope then made what became a most critical decision of dispatching a detachment of Latin troops to help repel the false invasion of Islam that had been proposed by the Pope.

Since the invasion was solely from the Pope's imagination, Urban had first envisioned this detachment of troops to be a small, token force.  But due to the word spreading of his rousing call-to-arms, instead of a small army, over the next two years his empire was overrun with a tide of fighters for the Crusades.  These fighters included everyone from poor Christian farmers to Knights and Lords and Princes from all of Europe. 

 

What later became the key to keeping these “Holy Wars” continuing for so many years was because of something the Pope's sermon had told these fighters of the Christian God. 

 

The Pope had promised that these fighter's souls would be saved in the eyes of God if they "fought for or died fighting to save the Holy Lands". 

 

Now, before the Crusades, most all religions preached that killing others and living by the sword was a mortal sin.  Now, the souls of the Knights and all those that fought in the war for their God and church, their souls would all be saved by taking up arms against their God's enemies..

So, we now know how the Christians came to justifying their Holy War with the Muslims. 

 

But to explain how that same justification for war came about for the Muslim religion, we need to go much further back in time.

During the time of Muhammad, around the year 620 CE when the peaceful words of the Koran (The words of God) were being written, Muhammad decided that he had to convert everyone in the land to Islam. 

 

The subsequent local wars in the mid-east that came from those efforts were continually justified personally by Muhammad saying that Holy Wars were an acceptable way for saving their God’s religion. 

But after Muhammed and his sons had passed on, the internal conflicts within Islam began by asking: "who were the real Muslims? " Was it the Sunnis or the Shias? 

 

At that time, these two branches of Islam became so divided that they eventually went to war amongst themselves.  And that is still the situation today, many centuries later. 

 

But once again, the Holy War between these two Muslim sects was understood within Islam to be considered as an acceptable way to resolve their religious differences.

So, just as it was with the Christian religion and with the Pope for starting the Crusades and with both of the Muslim sects, both religions were originally founded on the basis of peace and wellbeing for all.  But they both also eventually came to agree that a Jihad or Holy War was totally justifiable, if it was committed in the name of God.

Therefore, it appears that even though the Holy Wars between these religions started with the first Crusades, the religious wars of then and the wars of today are actually based on those same basic beliefs of over 1000 years ago. 

The proof of that statement is that today, extreme Muslims still look at Christians and Jews, as “Satan’s” and “Infidels”.  While Christians and Jews look at the extreme Muslims as being the “terrorists” against anyone that isn’t a Muslim.

 

Sound familiar?

For centuries the weapons and the technologies of all the past wars have continued to change and advance, but the basics for the conflicts between these peoples today still reverts back to events that started over 1000 years ago.

Unfortunately, what’s left for all of us is a disappointing and on-going story about the years of religious wars for passing on to all of our children and grandchildren. 

A story that seems to show no sign that these religious conflicts will ever end.

Copyright G.Ater  2015

So, understanding this we can see what caused these two religions to be at war for two centuries.  But it doesn't show how either religion can claim today that they are both religions of peace and tranquility.

Well, the real answer to that question of a peaceful foundation is that the Crusades were in reality the two religions foundations were originally based on the peaceful desires of the religion's inspired men of God, Jesus and Muhammad. 

However, it was early on after these religions were in development that the concept of fighting a “Holy War” would become an acceptable, even encouraged, avenue for both sides to either save their respective religion, or to expand their religion’s reach.