Quote:
Originally posted by khazadman:
Actually at the time Hierophant, Islam was a relatively new religion. And they had invaded that part of the world themselves in their drive to spread Islam. As had many others before them. Very popular bit of realstate there, huh? At first it was because it was on the land route between Egypt and Africa and the rest of the world. Then religion came into the equation and it's been one big party ever since.
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That's right Khazad, the 'Holy Land' was of great strategic importance, particularly in regulating trade routes throughout the Mediterranean. The Macedonians knew it, the Roman's knew it, pretty much every civilised State in history has known it. Now with the essential role that oil plays in the industrialised world the region has become even
more important and subject to gross military and economic exploitation.
In the days of the Crusades Christianity/Islam/Religion itself was merely efficient means by which to motivate an uneducated populace into throwing themselves mercilessly at their 'enemies'. When people don't question what they are ordered to do and assumed that it was God's will to go to war then all manner of atrocities ended up being committed. The hilariously tragic thing is that the Latin Christians of Western Europe ended up pillaging Byzantium, the focal place that they had mobilised themselves to protect from encroaching Seljuk Turks.
Religion was a cover-sheet, a coat of paint on top of deeper cultural enmities that drove the invading throngs. The Crusades were not a two-sided war story though, there were multiple groups of all religions all battling it out for control of land and wealth, if not for mere survival itself. Arabs, Franks, Persians, Turks, English, Germans, Greeks: all different cultural groups artificially crammed together by modern historians under the banners of 'Christian' and 'Islamic'. It's ridiculous. Byzantium and Constantinople were caught in the middle and ultimately destoryed by their supposedly fellow Christians. Saladin crushed a great deal of his own Saracens in order to maintain cohesive control of his armies. Atrocities on all 'sides'. And it continues to this day.
Problem is, alot of people think that modern-day politics are removed from their medieval ancestry. Thing is, this game has been playing out for centuries, it's all related. Look back through a step-by-step timeline and you can see that many, if not most, of today's cultural and political problems such as western/eastern animosity, Middle-Eastern land-grabbing etc all flow on directly from movements that occured hundreds, even thousdands of years ago. Our 'new millenium' is not an island, it is a mire, a swampland bogged down with millenia worth of unquestioning prejudice. Best thing to do is run away from it, far away from it (like way down here in New Zealand
): get away from the madness of power-crazy fools and live in peace... until the power-crazy fools find you and decide you have something they want... and then it starts all over again.