Arguments Against The Crusades

As of November 13, in what has become known as the Paris Attacks, France and the world stand united against the growing threat of attacks claimed by the Islamic State (IS) that left 130 people dead and more than 360 wounded according to the BBC report. The group seeks to eradicate obstacles to restore God’s rule on Earth and to defend the Muslim community against infidels and apostates. IS claims that the rest of the world is made up of unbelievers who seek to destroy Islam, attacking Muslims and non-Muslims alike. However, based on my knowledge of history, Christians are equally guilty with also committing violent acts against non believers. The only justification for violence is a holy war in the Islamic context are“jihadists” or the Christian

For example, the Crusades were a series of military campaigns sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages against the growing Turkish threat to guarantee pilgrims access to the holy sites in the Holy Land under Muslim control. From 1095 under Pope Urban II, the Crusades were launched which pitted for the first time, the clash of Christianity and Islam. Pope Urban II in his speech towards his fellow Christians states, “I beseech you as Christ 's heralds... to destroy [the Muslim Turks] from the lands of [the Byzantine Emperor]... Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves...Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.” shows how Christianity justifies war. Using the war as a way for repenters to gain forgiveness for their sins, Christianity served as a means for exploiting the masses in their fear of sin. Pope Urban II appealed to his audience as Christ’s heralds to connect the Christian faith to the holy war against Islam. Urban II fully justified war on the conditions that violence could be employed on behalf of Christ 's intentions for humanity and could even be directly authorized by him. In doing so, Urban calls for asserting Christian dominance in the holy land using violence. The practice of sanctifying violence based on religion

Additionally, Christians also had war with themselves in what is known as the European wars of religion occurring from the late 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries between Protestants and Catholics. It all began with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 which gave each German prince the right to determine the religion of his state; Catholicism or Lutheranism. It did not extend recognition to Calvinists and Anabaptists. Eventually, the outbreak of the Thirty Years ' War in 1618 made the international dimension clear for the war drew every major European nation directly or indirectly into the bloodbath. Only the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years’ War extending terms of the Peace of Augsburg to Calvinists and was a turning point in European political, religious, and social history. One Enlightenment thinker, Voltaire, in his Treatise on Toleration in 1763, remarking on the Religious Wars stated that, “ we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?" which conveys the ironic nature that Christians deemed other converts as not equal yet they all are men who are sons of God. Repeating the same question but incorporating different races, Voltaire tries to show that everyone is the same under God. By comparing the races to one God, Voltaire stressed the importance to see through the sectional differences