A Thinking Man

I recently read a true account of some appalling goings-on - at least, appalling by my standards, though to the people involved they seemed ‘normal’ and justified.  Here’s what happened.

A group of people were going about their ordinary lives, looking after their houses and land, bringing up families, when along comes a religious zealot from another country (I say ‘zealot’ - but to them he was just an ordinary religious leader appointed by god).  Anyway, he says to these ordinary people leading their ordinary lives, if you go and do this thing, I will give you an extraordinary reward.

Now, the extraordinary reward appealed to them.  They wanted eternal paradise and they were promised it by the religious leader.  Their consciences told them that they might be in risk of losing it, or at least, or having to wait a very long time for it (you see, they were ordinary men and women), but now it was (so they believed) in their grasp for sure.  The reward seemed so real and attractive.

The religious leader told them that they had to fight an enemy who lived on the other side of the world.  They had never met the enemy but the zealot told them all about the enemy and the awful deeds that had allegedly been committed.  If propaganda is so inspiring, why worry about facts?  And the enemy had been in ‘their land’ overseas for over 400 years.  This was an insult to them (apparently) and to the jealous god that they served.  They were to destroy the infidel and reclaim the land for their god.

And so they prepared.  They trained, and honed their weapons.  They researched their routes and their targets - well, just a little bit.  They suddenly became even more religious and fasted and prayed and gave alms to the poor.  They held services where they received the blessing of their god and of their ordinary community.  They said farewell to their families.  They put on their symbolic uniform.  And within a year these ordinary people, left their ordinary communities to do extraordinary deeds hoping for an extraordinary reward.

As they travelled they became even more radicalized.  En route they met people who had lived peaceably together for hundreds of years, respecting each others differences.  Now, because one group served their own god in a different way, they told their brothers and sisters that this other group had to be destroyed.  And so they did.  They killed their neighbours in the name of their loving and jealous god, and stole their houses and businesses.  Apparently, under certain conditions, it is ok to do these terrible things.

And when they arrived in the land that they wanted to ‘liberate’, although weakened by disease and exhaustion and losses along the way (there were no jets then, they had to walk) they fought for their god with amazing zeal knowing they would surely receive an extraordinary reward.  They besieged cities for months, causing dreadful suffering to those inside, and on occasions became so hungry themselves, that some of them literally ate their enemies. 

Many in their armies, on both sides, died in appalling ways.  But when the cities were taken, they showed no mercy for the ‘non-combatants’.  All were slaughtered by these ordinary men, so that the city streets were piled high with bodies and ran with blood as they stole whatever they could from the houses.  However, although they took babies from their mothers’ arms and dashed their brains out, and although they killed the elderly, the sick and infirm, rest assured, that when they found the women ‘they did nothing evil to them except pierce their bellies with their lances’.  The women were not raped, just killed, because apparently, slaughter carried out in the name of their god was infinitely preferable to the heinous sin of fornication with an ‘infidel’.

This account, in Thomas Asbridge’s excellent book, The First Crusade, tells how on 27 November, 1095, Pope Urban II, called upon Christians to go to the ‘Holy’ Land and recapture Jerusalem from Muslim control.  In the twelve months following that call, somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 men, women, and children drawn from across the face of Western Europe responded (incidentally, killing many European Jews on the way there).  Against all the odds (and it really is an extraordinary story) Jerusalem was finally recaptured on 15 July, 1099.

Why does it all sound so familiar!  I found it very interesting reading, but sad to realize how little the world has moved on in some ways. 

One image from the book that remained with me was that of decapitation.  Apparently both sides did it, publicly, as a way of discouraging and disgusting their enemies, and both sides often used the resulting heads as projectiles to throw back and attack the other side with.  I remember hearing that one way of starting to find the identity of a suicide bomber is to look for the heads.  The suicide bomber is always decapitated - the force of the explosion blowing his or her head upwards.  I began to think: ”Well, after 1000 years of history, at least they are only decapitating themselves now …”  And then I remembered the fate of Nic Berg .

Although the story of the Crusades (Christian Jihads) may have faded into our dim historical memory, such a history is very alive in other societies, and instead of being used to help people learn from past mistakes, their memory is one of the things that is being used to inspire new Jihads.  The holy wars continue.  The worrying thing for me is that I am now one of the infidels.

Tags: antisemitism, cannibalism, Christians, crusade, decapitation, First Crusade, fornication, God, holy war, infidel, Islam, Jerusalem, Jews, jihad, Muslims, Pope, radicalization, rape, sin, suicide bomber, Thomas Asbridge, Urban II