German recognition of Armentian genocide

[StLucieBengal]

(06-10-2016, 02:43 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Actually, the goal of the First Crusade was not to "take back" Jerusalem for the Christians. The primary goal of the First Crusade was to respond to a request for aid from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos against the Seljuk Turks who were encroaching upon his border from the east. Many believe Pope Urban II's personal motivation was to reunite the Eastern and Western churches, which had separated 42 years earlier, under his own control. But Urban II had an additional motivation: to wrest influence from the secular rulers (the kings and leaders in Western Europe), whose power had been growing rapidly at the end of the dark ages.

It was never an effort to "drive back fanaticism". The fact is, it created fanaticism. Pope Urban II exaggerated the threat to the Eastern Empire (the main threat to the Byzantine Empire was always the Byzantines themselves and their penchant for political infighting). Urban claim that the Muslims were ravaging the "churches of God in the Eastern regions" and had seized "the Holy City of Christ" and had "sold her into abominable slavery". The Muslims had ruled over Jerusalem for over 450 years. The period of Muslim expansion and conquest ended in 750, 300 years before the First Crusade. Pilgrimages by Catholics to holy sites in the Seljuk Empire were permitted during this time, resident Christians within the empire were considered as full citizens and Dhimmi ("protected persons"), and intermarriage between Muslims and Christians was not uncommon. This changed, understandably, after the call for the First Crusade.

Urban promised that people joining the crusade would have their punishment for sin reduced through plenary indulgences. Twenty thousand peasants joined immediately, marched into the Rhineland, and began slaughtering Jews (known as the Rhienland Massacres). The peasants eventually made their way to Constantinople where the Byzantine Emperor urged them to stay and wait for nobles from the West to arrive. Instead, they headed into Seljuk territory where they were ambushed near Nicaea. Only 3,000 survived.

Eventually, the nobles from Western Europe arrived with the main crusade force numbering approximately 100,000. They pledged to restore lost territory to the Byzantine Emperor and then marched south. They did retake lost territories, including Jerusalem where they massacred most of the inhabitants. But rather than return them to the Byzantines, they decided to settle down there themselves and set up shop. They set-up four new kingdoms: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli. The kingdoms were actually very well run, particularly considering that they were started from scratch and that support from the Western nations was infrequent and insufficient. The crusader nobles made efforts to incorporate the local Muslim populations into their kingdoms. Also, the kingdoms benefited from power struggles within the Muslim world at that time.

The Second, Third and Fourth Crusades were all efforts to regain territories which the crusaders in the First Crusade had won, but were lost over the years. Salah ad-Din (a.k.a. Saladin, of Kurdish descent BTW) rose to power and reclaimed Jerusalem in 1187. Eventually, all of the Crusader states would fall, one-by-one. By the time the Fourth Crusade rolled around, the crusaders never even made it to the Levant. Instead, they became embroiled in Byzantine political infighting and decided to sack Constantinople and head home instead.

The Crusades were pretty much a debacle. They were an effort by the Pope to increase the strength and influence of the church by reincorporating the Eastern church and by cowing the developing nationalism in Europe. They failed on both counts. The fact the the crusaders decided to hold the former Byzantine lands they retook for themselves and the eventual sacking of Constantinople meant the end of any reconciliation between the East and West churches. The men who went on the crusades did so for personal enrichment rather than for a religious cause. They set up kingdoms that were destined to fade. They would just as soon make alliances with neighboring Muslim nations than work together for a common goal. And, as they proved in the Fourth Crusade, they would just as soon attack Christians as well as Muslims.

Oh I am well aware of the tension between east and west.    But the initial crusade was yes going against the Turks. Jerusalem was part of the plan and there never would be a need to fight had Muslims not been so violent.   I left the Turks out because I didn't want to write a book.    Too much of a Hassle on my phone

[BigPapaKain]

(06-10-2016, 01:25 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Muslims constantly tried to take over lands.    I know you are desperately trying to vindicate your Islamic buddies and prove Christians are the scourge of the world but it's just not the case.  

I remember learning about the Muslim conquest of Africa and the Americas. Not to mention their wholesale genocide of people in Boston in the 1800s. And that whole Spanish Inquisition thing.

Can I stop now? Do we get it?!

[Rotobeast]

(06-10-2016, 07:30 PM)BigPapaKain Wrote: I remember learning about the Muslim conquest of Africa and the Americas. Not to mention their wholesale genocide of people in Boston in the 1800s. And that whole Spanish Inquisition thing.

Can I stop now? Do we get it?!

Is it true that they caused Atlantis to sink and literally ate El Dorodo ?

[Bengalzona]

(06-10-2016, 03:24 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Oh I am well aware of the tension between east and west.    But the initial crusade was yes going against the Turks. Jerusalem was part of the plan and there never would be a need to fight had Muslims not been so violent.   I left the Turks out because I didn't want to write a book.    Too much of a Hassle on my phone

Actually, Jerusalem wasn't part of the initial plan. The initial plan was to show that Pope Urban II was a great guy by getting troops to volunteer to go fight for the Byzantines, thus mending the rift between the two churches and bringing them back into the Pope's fold. He got more than he bargained for. He had no idea of the numbers of younger princes and nobles with little inheritance and seeking a kingdom of their own, as well as peasants seeking to strike it rich and get ahead in life. The idea of Jerusalem as an ultimate target developed later to focus the mob in a direction. And it was initially a mob. Urban had no idea that economically frustrated peasants would go off the rail before they even got to the middle east and start massacring Jews in Germany. The nobles came and eventually gave the mob a direction. The selection of Jerusalem as an ultimate goal further refined the direction.

And BTW - The Muslims were no more violent than the Christians.

[*jason*]

(06-10-2016, 08:07 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Actually, Jerusalem wasn't part of the initial plan. The initial plan was to show that Pope Urban II was a great guy by getting troops to volunteer to go fight for the Byzantines, thus mending the rift between the two churches and bringing them back into the Pope's fold. He got more than he bargained for. He had no idea of the numbers of younger princes and nobles with little inheritance and seeking a kingdom of their own, as well as peasants seeking to strike it rich and get ahead in life. The idea of Jerusalem as an ultimate target developed later to focus the mob in a direction. And it was initially a mob. Urban had no idea that economically frustrated peasants would go off the rail before they even got to the middle east and start massacring Jews in Germany. The nobles came and eventually gave the mob a direction. The selection of Jerusalem as an ultimate goal further refined the direction.

And BTW - The Muslims were no more violent than the Christians.

There you go letting historical facts get in the way of a good story.

[Bengalzona]

(06-10-2016, 07:58 PM)Rotobeast Wrote: Is it true that they caused Atlantis to sink and literally ate El Dorodo ?

I remember when they killed Bambi's mother. That was sad, dude!

[StLucieBengal]

(06-10-2016, 08:07 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Actually, Jerusalem wasn't part of the initial plan. The initial plan was to show that Pope Urban II was a great guy by getting troops to volunteer to go fight for the Byzantines, thus mending the rift between the two churches and bringing them back into the Pope's fold. He got more than he bargained for. He had no idea of the numbers of younger princes and nobles with little inheritance and seeking a kingdom of their own, as well as peasants seeking to strike it rich and get ahead in life. The idea of Jerusalem as an ultimate target developed later to focus the mob in a direction. And it was initially a mob. Urban had no idea that economically frustrated peasants would go off the rail before they even got to the middle east and start massacring Jews in Germany. The nobles came and eventually gave the mob a direction. The selection of Jerusalem as an ultimate goal further refined the direction.

And BTW - The Muslims were no more violent than the Christians.

And yet they would have had no targets had the Muslims been peaceful.   

I don't debate whether the Christians were violent.   Ofc they were you can't defeat evil with happiness and sunshine.   Repeated attempts of Islam to push into christian territory kept this going.    Yes there were other things that branched off ... That's what happens in war.   But that does not change why the Byzantines needed help in the first place...   Because of Muslim aggression.  

Heck the Muslims even fought along side of Hitler.   These are not good people....   The problem is they haven't changed since before the crusades.   The rest of the world has moved forward except them.  And until they have a reformation they can't be trusted.    

[Bengalzona]

Quote:StLucieBengal
And yet they would have had no targets had the Muslims been peaceful.   

I don't debate whether the Christians were violent.   Ofc they were you can't defeat evil with happiness and sunshine.   Repeated attempts of Islam to push into christian territory kept this going.    Yes there were other things that branched off ... That's what happens in war.   But that does not change why the Byzantines needed help in the first place...   Because of Muslim aggression.  

Heck the Muslims even fought along side of Hitler.   These are not good people....   The problem is they haven't changed since before the crusades.   The rest of the world has moved forward except them.  And until they have a reformation they can't be trusted.    

Dude. You put two empires next to each other and they fight. That's the way history rolls. The whole term 'empire' defines a group of people that can't be satisfied with just their own borders and feel they have to continually invade other kingdoms.

You are aware that the interactions between the Byzantines and the Turks were more complex than "good guys, bad guys", right?

First off, and this may come as a shock, not all Turks... were Muslim. And the Seljuk Turks were quite different from the Ottoman Turks or the modern Turks. At one time, the Seljuk Empire stretched from Anatolia to China (1092). While most Seljuk Turks were Muslim, the expansion of their empire had nothing to do with seeing another religion and attacking them. It had everything to do with expanding the power of the empire itself as a political entity, in exactly the same manner that Alexander the Great expanded his empire beyond Macedonia. The truth is that most of the expansion of the Seljuk empire was through Muslim lands and 80% of the fighting they did was against Muslims.

Like most empires, the Seljuks had a wide range of ethnic groups and religions living within their empire (Kurds, Armenians, Georgians, Persians, Christians, Zoastrians, Hindus. Jews, etc.). And, as with most empires, they did not try to convert subjects. As long as the subject people obeyed their laws, they were okay with them living there and worshiping as they pleased. What they did import, however, was Persian culture. Life in the Seljuk Empire was quite different for Christians and other minorities than it was for folks in the Iberian Peninsula. A big part of that was because the Caliphate of Cordoba was led by Syrian Arabs, former rivals of the Seljuks (from the Umayyad Caliphate). The Syrian minority leadership in Cordoba were not nice people and believed wholeheartedly in their racial and religious superiority over others, even other Arabs and Muslims. Those types of exclusive attitudes prevent a group from ever creating an empire and was a reason why the Seljuks were able to successfully create an empire and the Syrians were not.

The Byzantine Empire also had a plethora of ethnic groups and religions, including Turks, Arabs, Muslims, etc. The Byzantines also hired Turks, Arabs, Muslims, Bulgarians, Russians, Vikings, English, etc. to fight for them at various times in their history. They really weren't too particular about who did the fighting for them.

[StLucieBengal]

(06-11-2016, 02:09 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: Dude. You put two empires next to each other and they fight. That's the way history rolls. The whole term 'empire' defines a group of people that can't be satisfied with just their own borders and feel they have to continually invade other kingdoms.

You are aware that the interactions between the Byzantines and the Turks were more complex than "good guys, bad guys", right?

First off, and this may come as a shock, not all Turks... were Muslim. And the Seljuk Turks were quite different from the Ottoman Turks or the modern Turks. At one time, the Seljuk Empire stretched from Anatolia to China (1092). While most Seljuk Turks were Muslim, the expansion of their empire had nothing to do with seeing another religion and attacking them. It had everything to do with expanding the power of the empire itself as a political entity, in exactly the same manner that Alexander the Great expanded his empire beyond Macedonia. The truth is that most of the expansion of the Seljuk empire was through Muslim lands and 80% of the fighting they did was against Muslims.

Like most empires, the Seljuks had a wide range of ethnic groups and religions living within their empire (Kurds, Armenians, Georgians, Persians, Christians, Zoastrians, Hindus. Jews, etc.). And, as with most empires, they did not try to convert subjects. As long as the subject people obeyed their laws, they were okay with them living there and worshiping as they pleased. What they did import, however, was Persian culture. Life in the Seljuk Empire was quite different for Christians and other minorities than it was for folks in the Iberian Peninsula. A big part of that was because the Caliphate of Cordoba was led by Syrian Arabs, former rivals of the Seljuks (from the Umayyad Caliphate). The Syrian minority leadership in Cordoba were not nice people and believed wholeheartedly in their racial and religious superiority over others, even other Arabs and Muslims. Those types of exclusive attitudes prevent a group from ever creating an empire and was a reason why the Seljuks were able to successfully create an empire and the Syrians were not.

The Byzantine Empire also had a plethora of ethnic groups and religions, including Turks, Arabs, Muslims, etc. The Byzantines also hired Turks, Arabs, Muslims, Bulgarians, Russians, Vikings, English, etc. to fight for them at various times in their history. They really weren't too particular about who did the fighting for them.

Wasn't This all about how this started?   I realized it mushroomed into something crazy...   And certainly it's not Christians were great and Muslims were bad.     I am just pointing out how the religion of peace has conducted itself not only back then but throughout modern history.   

Would the crusades had started if Muslims were actually peaceful.... Probably.   But it wouldn't have been a religious centric war.   It would have been your typical war of empires.    

The difference between Christians and Muslims is that Christians are no longer fighting a holy war over lands they think are theirs.   I used to think Sykes-Picot was wrong but it was done to contain them to just fighting one another. 

[Bengalzona]

(06-11-2016, 02:27 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Wasn't This all about how this started?   I realized it mushroomed into something crazy...   And certainly it's not Christians were great and Muslims were bad.     I am just pointing out how the religion of peace has conducted itself not only back then but throughout modern history.   

Would the crusades had started if Muslims were actually peaceful.... Probably.   But it wouldn't have been a religious centric war.   It would have been your typical war of empires.    

The difference between Christians and Muslims is that Christians are no longer fighting a holy war over lands they think are theirs.   I used to think Sykes-Picot was wrong but it was done to contain them to just fighting one another. 

Nobody was peaceful back then. Even the Hindus and Buddhists had nasty wars (really nasty). If you were peaceful then, you were run over by a Mack truck. And most of the fighting was against people of the same religion. The Arabs/Muslims were exactly the same as the Western Europeans. As for the Crusades being religious-centric, I think you'll find they were far less centered on religion and more on economics and politics in the end. Religion sometimes starts wars, but politics and economics always crop up as the real causes.

[Rotobeast]

(06-09-2016, 03:29 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: So it's interesting how vitriolic things are becoming between Turkey and Germany over this. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

What do you think would happen if Claudia Roth became Chancellor ?

[Belsnickel]

(06-11-2016, 11:00 AM)Rotobeast Wrote: What do you think would happen if Claudia Roth became Chancellor ?

She is advocating for Merkel to take a firm stance with what is going on. I think even the notorious pro-Turkey politician is rather unhappy with the most recent turn of events. I don't know how far she would go, but if Turkey keeps going with what they started I would not be surprised to see her move against including Turkey in the EU.