New avatar for old crusades-2

New avatar for old crusades-2

They also said that he, who had defied death, had also been immaculately conceived in the womb of a virgin called Mary, who was to marry a man called Joseph. They declared Jesus was Christ, the messiah of God, sent to suffer for the sins of humanity. Their word became the gospel, and they became known as the apostles. Their tales and interpretations of what Jesus said became very popular more in the West than in the East, first amongst Roman slaves, then Roman nobility and eventually Roman royalty. This is how the polytheistic Roman Empire transformed into the monotheistic Holy Roman Empire. Cynics say religious conversion was the only way the Emperor could bind the crumbling empire together. But Christendom was not united. The Christians who lived in Byzantium in the east consciously separated themselves from the Christians who lived in the west and owed greater allegiance to Rome.

Then about 1,500 years ago, an Arab trader called Muhammad was approached by the angel Jibreel and asked to recite the words of God. In a series of such encounters, the Quran was revealed to him and he was declared as the final prophet who would bring humanity to the right path. He was even taken on a horse that could fly to Heaven where he was told the right way to be a Muslim. Prayers thereafter had to be offered facing, not Jerusalem, but Mecca. In the Prophet's lifetime, Islam became a dominant force in Arabia. Soon after his death, the Muslims were divided as the Sunnis who followed the path forged by the Prophet Muhammad's father-in-law and the Shias who follow the path forged by the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law. But this division did not stop the astonishingly rapid spread of Islam from Arabia through Persia to Africa and thence to Asia and Europe. It eventually met stiff resistance in Christian Europe.

A thousand years ago, resistance eventually gave rise to a series of war campaigns known as Crusades led by Christian Europe determined to regain control over the Holy Land of Levant, specifically the city of Jerusalem, from the Muslims. The Crusades nearly lasted for centuries and finally ended with the fall of Constantinople five hundred years ago. With that the Muslims, or rather Ottoman sultans, were declared the masters of the East and the Christians had to be satisfied with the West.

In the last 500 years, Christian pride resurrected itself with enlightenment, industrialisation, colonisation, and finally capitalism. It changed the course of the world forever. America came into being, and colonies finally gave way to secular nation states, but not before two devastating World Wars in the 20th century. One significant outcome of the World War II was the carving out of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire into a number of Muslim states, and one Jewish state - Israel.

Many Muslims see the establishment of Israel on lands, which for centuries belonged to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, as Christian revenge for their defeat in the crusades. For it made no sense why the Christians who for centuries persecuted Jewish people as descendants of Christ killers would want go out of their way to help them. Perhaps to allay the guilt of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust during which millions of Jews were systematically slaughtered by the Nazi regime of Germany. Or maybe, it was the result of Christian nation states being arm twisted by powerful Jewish bankers who realised it was important to have a nation state of their own, after centuries of being homeless and persecuted.

The rise of the Jewish state and the domination of Euro-American commercial powers in the affairs of the Middle East, especially to control the lucrative oil there, spurred the rise of radical Islam that rejects all things modern (read Western), first in Iran and now across almost every country with a Muslim population. Though never admitted, the Gulf War and the Afghan War and now the opposition to ISIS, is being seen by many as a new form of the medieval crusade. Much as the West wants to deny it, for the Muslim world secularism, rationality, liberalism and democracy are just new avatars of their old Christian foes.

Om Namah Shivay