I doubt there will be an Islamic renaissance any time in the short-term future, while Islam is in its current siege mentality state of existence.
Also , I think most of what got me irritated on this thread is that someone could so blatantly regard his religion as superior to any other, and be so dismissive of the merits another religion. But looking at Dave's sources, I realise why:
quote:
I found this overview of the clash of Islam and Christianity particularly relevant to this discussion:
http://www.700club.com/cbnnews/commentary/islamhistory0212%2Easp
It discusses in detail the events leading up to "Christian aggression" in the Crusades, detailing 400 years of Islamic brutality toward Cristians in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
I know you have an aversion to Christian sources, but there are few places these events would be given fair treatment elsewhere in the media.
This link contains pure apologist propaganda. Its also wrong. Here is an academic perspective, agenda-free:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
quote:
In Western Europe the Crusades have traditionally been regarded by laypeople as heroic defensive enterprises, although not all historians have agreed. In the Islamic world, however, the Crusades are regarded to this day as cruel and savage onslaughts by Christendom on Islam, and so, for example, some of the rhetoric from Islamic fundamentalists uses the term "crusade" in this emotional context to refer to Western moves against them. Eastern Orthodox Christians also see the Crusades as attacks by the West, especially because of the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade.
There is an interesting symmetry between the terms "Crusade" and "Jihad". In the West the term "Crusade" has positive connotations (for example a politician might use rhetoric such as "a crusade against illegal drugs") while the term "Jihad" has negative connotations associated with fanatical holy war. In the Islamic world the term "Jihad" has positive connotations that include a much broader meaning of general personal and spiritual struggle, while the term "Crusade" has the negative connotations described above. Thus to correctly translate nuances of meaning, the use of "Jihad" in Arabic should be translated to "Crusade" in English while use of the Arabic term for "Crusade" should be translated to "Jihad" in English.
In truth much of what the crusaders did was less than heroic. They committed atrocities not just against Muslims but also against Jews and Christians. For example the Fourth Crusade never made it to Palestine, but instead sacked Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Byzantine Empire. This crusade served to deepen the already hard feelings between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Christianity. The Byzantine Empire eventually recovered Constantinople, but its strength never fully recovered, and the Byzantine Empire finally fell to the Ottomans in 1453.
[quote]
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade
[quote]
After a break, the rest of the Crusader army marched on to Jerusalem, which had, in the meanwhile, been recaptured by the Fatimids of Egypt. After a lengthy siege in which the Crusaders probably suffered more than the citizens of the city (with 15,000 marching in starvation on July 8), Jerusalem was taken on July 15, 1099. The Crusaders massacred the whole Muslim and Jewish population, men, women and children. The Jews were burned alive in their main synagogue where they had fled; the Muslims were slaughtered in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and according to the accounts their blood ran ankle-deep.
There can be no apologism for this.
