The Crusades live on -- yikes!

Not withstanding our warrior popes and bishops and the siege of Europe through the Iberian peninsula and into eastern Europe, the roots of Christianity are in peace. Those who base their acceptance of violence on the Old Testament fail to appreciate the teaching of Christ and the example of early Christians. In fact, placing the Old Testament in primacy over the New Testament is a signals that the believer really is not a Christian. The rest of us need to give public witness to this fact to combat the attempts by some to poison the public discussion on this matter.

Early Christians refused military service so as not to be placed in a position to kill. The violence in the Old Testament including the the commandment to love one another replaced the cursing psalms and other dictum. Just because they call themselves Christians does not mean they are Christians. I for one say I don't accept that label on them.

I am not a pacifist and would rise to defend myself, family and country although I question whether the use of our military today is really defense. Still violence is the very last option and most of the time can be avoided.

No matter what "ism' this Norwegian espoused it was not Christianity.

Well, when you think something valuable is in danger you can either trust in God's plan and let things just be (put the other cheek, so to speak), or you can go batshit insane and kill people. Guess which is the Christian way according to the Bible.

Ander's Behring Breivik's murderous actions will be seen as the act of an insane man. But the polarization exhibited in his psyche exists in our world today. Spain drove out the Moors in 1492, and demanded conversion or expulsion for its Jews at the same time. One has to ask the question: "How many centuries must you live in Spain before you are acknowledged as being Spanish?" But you can ask that question of many countries today who reluctantly harbor undocumented aliens, especially those whose races and religions differ from the "norm."
The Native Peoples of the Americas were deemed to be non-natives of their own lands. We re-named the entire region "the Americas" and declared ourselves its true and rightful owners and natives. We offered "them" salvation and civilization, including the slavery, prostitution and inequality upon which that civilization was built. Methods may change, but the crusading vision of "driving out the Moors," or whoever else is perceived to be an unwanted alien still lives on today.

My deepest congratulations! In a few worlds, you got the picture of the terrible massacre - in Christian terms. What worries me the most, it that's the "crusade style" spirit is spreading all over Europe and the United States. The radical far-wright Christian groups are spreading everywhere, like poisoned mushrooms, through the internet. I know, personally, the huge damages they are causing, all over Africa and Latin America, for instance. They are perverting - with thousands of forms of cults - the Catholic new priests and missionaries. Some people in the Church are awaiting for them to renew the western church: nothing could be more stupid! I've witnessed, with my own eyes, what they are hoping for: free access to the West and perks, without the smallest kind of interest in the Gospel. If you want, I have proofs.

Meanwhile, a new kind of global fascism is under way. I must say, with the help of Rome, so fascinated with the "glorious" past that is unable to read the present and predict the future.

I'll repeat this until exhaustion: the Oslo killings is not a lonely action. It's a part of a much bigger picture, feeded by decades of new-crusaders ideology, nurtured by JPII and BXVI, who started an "agit-prop" pogrom against anything who vaguely smelt of "marxism". The same "dirty" word that the Oslo's monster invoke, to justify the innocent's massacre.

He ignores, as JPII and BXVI before him, that marxism has the somes roots as the socialist idealism of the XIX century, the Christian humanists and the social doctrine, the "Church's best well kept secret". And all of them ignore that the nihilistic culture that is dominating the XXI century and reducing millions and entire peoples to starvation and revolt is not marxism anymore, just a reaction to finantial and "theological" ideology that unites in a single mateeralistic body two popes and a mass-killer.

May God have pity on their souls. And confort the family's victims.

Your naivete about the islamic threat is dangerous, and most helpful to their jihad. Your descendants (particularly the females) will pay dearly for what you are doing. Read a book.

where is the moral threshold between the Norway madman declaring himself a Knights Templar and the heretical exhortation chaput delivered at Colorado's US Air Force Academy in which he declares our psychotically homicidal cadets knights?

Is it not the same, except they wear a different uniform?

And for this blessing of our indiscriminate bombing of innocents chaput gets elevated?

*The following is a repost from http://www.thereligionofpeace.com

The Muslim Game:

Muslims love talking about the Crusades… and Christians love apologizing for them. To hear both parties tell the story, one would believe that Muslims were just peacefully minding their own business in lands that were legitimately Muslim when Christian armies decided to wage holy war and "kill millions.”

The Truth:

Every part of this myth is a lie. By the rules that Muslims claim for themselves, the Crusades were perfectly justified, and the excesses (though beneath Christian standards) pale in comparison with the historical treatment of conquered populations at the hands of Muslims.

Here are some quick facts…

The first Crusade began in 1095… 460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies, 457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies, 453 years after Egypt was taken by Muslim armies, 443 after Muslims first plundered Italy, 427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople, 380 years after Spain was conquered by Muslim armies, 363 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies, 249 years after the capital of the Christian world, Rome itself, was sacked by a Muslim army, and only after centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians.

By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.

Europe had been harassed by Muslims since the first few years following Muhammad’s death. As early as 652, Muhammad’s followers launched raids on the island of Sicily, waging a full-scale occupation 200 years later that lasted almost a century and was punctuated by massacres, such as that at the town of Castrogiovanni, in which 8,000 Christians were put to death. In 1084, ten years before the first crusade, Muslims staged another devastating Sicilian raid, burning churches in Reggio, enslaving monks and raping an abbey of nuns before carrying them into captivity.

In 1095, Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I Comneus began begging the pope in Rome for help in turning back the Muslim armies which were overrunning what is now Turkey, grabbing property as they went and turning churches into mosques. Several hundred thousand Christians had been killed in Anatolia alone in the decades following 1050 by Seljuk invaders interested in 'converting' the survivors to Islam.

Not only were Christians losing their lives in their own lands to the Muslim advance but pilgrims to the Holy Land from other parts of Europe were being harassed, kidnapped, molested, forcibly converted to Islam and occasionally murdered. (Compare this to Islam’s justification for slaughter on the basis of Muslims being denied access to the Meccan pilgrimage in Muhammad’s time).

The Crusaders only invaded lands that were Christian. They did not attack Saudi Arabia (other than a half-hearted expedition by a minor figure) or sack Mecca as the Muslims had done (and continued doing) to Italy and Constantinople. Their primary goal was the recapture of Jerusalem and the security of safe passage for pilgrims. The toppling of the Muslim empire was not on the agenda.

The period of Crusader “occupation” (of its own former land) was stretched tenuously over about 170 years, which is less than the Muslim occupation of Sicily and southern Italy alone - to say nothing of Spain and other lands that had never been Islamic before falling victim to Jihad. In fact, the Arab occupation of North Africa and Middle Eastern lands outside of Arabia is almost 1400 years old.

Despite popular depiction, the Crusades were not a titanic battle between Christianity and Islam. Although originally dispatched by papal decree, the "occupiers" quickly became part of the political and economic fabric of the Middle East without much regard for religious differences. Their arrival was largely accepted by the local population as simply another change in authority. Muslim radicals even lamented the fact that many of their co-religionists preferred to live under Frankish (Christian) rule than migrate to Muslim lands.

The Islamic world was split into warring factions, many of which allied themselves with the Frankish princes against each other at one time or another. This even included Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who is credited with eventually ousting the "Crusaders." Contrary to recent propaganda, however, Saladin had little interest in holy war until a rogue Frankish prince began disrupting his trade routes. Both before and after the taking of Jerusalem, his armies spent far more time and resources battling fellow Muslims.

For its part, the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire preferred to have little to do with the Crusader kingdoms and went so far as to sign treaties with their Muslim rivals on occasion.

Another misconception is that the Crusader era was a time of constant war. In fact, very little of this overall period included significant hostilities. In response to Muslim expansion or aggression, there were only about 20 years of actual military campaigning, much of which was spent on organization and travel. (They were from 1098-1099, 1146-1148, 1188-1192, 1201-1204, 1218-1221, 1228-1229, and 1248-1250). By comparison, the Muslim Jihad against the island of Sicily alone lasted 75 grinding years.

Ironically, the Crusades are justified by the Quran itself, which encourages Holy War in order to "drive them out of the places from whence they drove you out" (2:191), even though the aim wasn't to expel Muslims from the Middle East, but more to bring an end to the molestation of pilgrims. Holy war is not justified by New Testament teachings, which is why the Crusades are an anomaly, the brief interruption of centuries of relentless Jihad against Christianity that began long before and continued well after.

The greatest crime of the Crusaders was the sacking of Jerusalem, in which at least 3,000 people were said to have been massacred. This number is dwarfed by the number of Jihad victims, from India to Constantinople, Africa and Narbonne, but Muslims have never apologized for their crimes and never will.

What is called 'sin and excess' by other religions, is what Islam refers to as duty willed by Allah.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Games-Muslims-Play.htm#crusades
By the rules that Muslims claim for themselves, the Crusades were perfectly justified, and the excesses (though beneath Christian standards) pale in comparison with the historical treatment of conquered populations at the hands of Muslims.

The first Crusade began in 1095… 460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies, 457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies, 453 years after Egypt was taken by Muslim armies, 443 after Muslims first plundered Italy, 427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople, 380 years after Spain was conquered by Muslim armies, 363 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies, 249 years after the capital of the Christian world, Rome itself, was sacked by a Muslim army, and only after centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians.

By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.