Author says Muslims Need to Take Another Look at the Crusades
Added: (Fri Sep 15 2006)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
“Condemning the Pope for stating historical facts is more for their local constituency”
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Expatriate author Gary Dale Cearley took umbrage to the Muslim spokespersons in several nations who recently chastized Pope Benedict over comments he made about Islam at a German university. These Muslim spokesmen also demanded that the Pontiff apologize.
“We need to look at the speakers,” said Gary Dale Cearley, author of “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: The Truth about the Vatican and the Birth of Islam”, “For example, on of the first groups quoted by CNN, the Muslim Brotherhood, who were calling on Islamic countries to threaten to break off relations with the Vatican unless Benedict XVI withdrew his quotes and comments. The Muslim Brotherhood? Isn’t that the group whose last part of their motto says ‘death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations’? Aren’t they the ones who assassinated Anwar Al-Sadat, the leader of Egypt and made several attempts on the life of Ghamal Al-Nasser? Wasn’t Ayman Al-Zawahiri a long-time member of this group before joining Islamic Jihad and uniting it with Al-Qaeda? Isn’t the Muslim Brotherhood outlawed in its ‘normal’ form in several Arab countries today? Isn’t the Muslim Brotherhood one of the largest supporters and benefactors of Hamas? Isn’t the Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal to unite the entire world as one nation under Islam? Why should we be alarmed that the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, said the Pope ‘aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world and strengthened the argument of those who say that the West is hostile to everything Islamic’? The Pope was simply quoting a man, Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who was one of the last Byzantine rulers who was very often being attacked by the Muslim Ottomans. Manuel II had seen what Islam was doing to his nation.”
The Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus was one of the last Eastern Roman emperors. He was held hostage by the Ottoman Turks for five years and forced to witness their attacks on his own country, including their attack which led to the fall of Philadelphia, one of the last Byzantine strongholds on the Anatolian Peninsula. Manuel eventually escaped back to Constantinople and re-took the reigns of Byzantine leadership.
“This could well explain why the Turkish Muslim leader Ali Bardakoglu, the head of Turkey's Directorate General for Religious Affairs, had called the Pope's words ‘extremely regrettable’ and said that the Pope ‘should rid himself of feelings of hate’, said Cearley, “I believe that Benedict touched a nerve with these people and that nerve has direct historical roots the Muslims are refusing to consider. Where does the Muslim responsibility to rid themselves of these feelings and reign themselves in begin and end? Constantly falling back on harkening to the Crusades is for their audience, which is an audience that forgets, or refuses to remember, that the Arabs forced scores of people from many nations and religions in conquered territories to convert over the centuries. In many countries these periods of forced conversion were the most bloody chapters of their history. And even more important, these Muslim leaders ignore the fact that at varying times the Muslims took their own ‘Crusades’ to Europe, pushing their way to Austria and to the Pyrenees mountains at different points in history. These pushes into Europe both pre-date the Crusades to the Holy Land by several centuries and they continued after the Crusades to the Holy Land, again for several centuries. Standing eye to eye and toe to toe, Islam has more to answer for in the West than the West has to answer for to Islam but you will never hear this from a Muslim ‘spokesperson’.”
In a recent speech at the University of Regensburg, Pope Benedict quoted criticism of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad by 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who wrote that everything Mohammad brought was evil and inhuman, "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
“From what I have read of the Pontiff’s speech, he was speaking about the Emperor Manuel II's argument that spreading the faith through violence was unreasonable,” said Cearley, “Pope Benedict also said in the contested speech that ‘violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.’ If the people who are taking offense to the Pope’s words are truly people of peace, then what problems should they have with this statement? I believe that the Christian faith has pretty much come to terms with its past in the Crusades as well has its past in the colonial hinterlands, such as its history in, say, the Americas. That’s why we don’t see scores of individual Christians killing people for their faith today. Christians haven’t hijacked Muslim planes. They haven’t kidnapped Muslim hostages. They haven’t suicide bombed innocent bystanders in restaurants, synagogues and shopping areas. I dare say that it is Islam who needs to come to terms with its own past or the ‘peaceful Muslim faith’ won’t be able to ever stop the flow of terrorists that the Muslim societies today are rapidly producing. The Vatican has issued a statement over this flap to say the Pope had never meant to offend Islam. In all of my decades on earth I have never seen an apologetic statement from a Muslim cleric seeking apologies for anything a Muslim leader, religious or ‘secular’, said that may have offended our way of life in the West.”
Gary Dale Cearley is an expatriate author who has written “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: The Truth About the Vatican and the Birth of Islam”, a book concerning the historical factuality of the Vatican Islam Conspiracy which was propagated by Evangelical Christian tract maker Jack Chick and Alberto Rivera, who claimed to be an ex-Jesuit priest. Gary Dale has lived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for many years. He is an active libertarian and originally hails from the small town of Prescott, Arkansas.
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Book Details:
Title: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: The Truth About the Vatican and the Birth of Islam
Author: Gary Dale Cearley
ISBN: 184728731X
Publisher: Aux Arcs Publishing
Copyright: © 2006 Gary Dale Cearley
Language: English
For Additional Information:
Gary Dale Cearley, Author
Tel.: +84 9037 81703
E-Mail: gary.dale @ cearley.net / g.d.cearley @ gmail.com
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Permission to print in related publications granted.
Permission to translate from the original English granted.