I'd like to keep this discussion focused: it started when you said "Muslims have a 1400 year reputation of barbary..." and I said Christians are no better in that respect and gave examples. We've gone a couple of rounds and it seems your latest point is this:
Christians never went to Muslim countries and killed Muslims for being Muslim.
At the same time you're also saying that when they did, as in the first Crusade, it was because the Muslims had invaded that territory at some earlier point. You said:
This was territory Muslims took from Jews by force
and that is historically incorrect in a couple of ways. The Jews were kicked out of Jerusalem and forbidden to return by the Romans in the year 136 or so. This was almost 500 years before Islam appeared. In that time there were only two short periods ( 361-363 and 614-617) when Jews were allowed into Jerusalem.
In those 500 years Jerusalem was ruled by a series of empires (the Byzantine empire, then the Sasanian Empire, and then the Byzantine empire again). The Byzantines eventually surrendered the city to a Muslim army after a siege in 637. It was a bloodless surrender, and the Muslims actually allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem for pretty much the first time in almost 500 years. (http://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/p/period3-2.htm)
Muslims most definitely did not take Jerusalem from the Jews. They ruled it for over 400 years before the Christians showed up with their Crusade - and slaughter - in 1095.
One way and another you keep saying that when Christians slaughter women and children it's not as bad as when Muslims do it, and I am going on record as disagreeing with that. Let's keep that point front and centre, and remember that Christians have spread their faith in unpleasant ways all over the world. Ask the indigenous people subjected to Christian European rule all over the world in the last 6 or 7 centuries.
I said Christians are no better in that respect and gave examples.
False.
So you say. Anyone who can read has only to study history to see that Christians have brought their share of misery to people around the world, and have no high ground to stand on while looking down on others.
I think it's pretty illustrative of your values that you feel the slaughter of women and children during the Crusaders' capture of Jerusalem is somehow morally superior to the bloodless Muslim capture of the city.
I'd like to keep this discussion focused: it started when you said "Muslims have a 1400 year reputation of barbary..." and I said Christians are no better in that respect and gave examples. We've gone a couple of rounds and it seems your latest point is this:
At the same time you're also saying that when they did, as in the first Crusade, it was because the Muslims had invaded that territory at some earlier point. You said:
and that is historically incorrect in a couple of ways. The Jews were kicked out of Jerusalem and forbidden to return by the Romans in the year 136 or so. This was almost 500 years before Islam appeared. In that time there were only two short periods ( 361-363 and 614-617) when Jews were allowed into Jerusalem.
In those 500 years Jerusalem was ruled by a series of empires (the Byzantine empire, then the Sasanian Empire, and then the Byzantine empire again). The Byzantines eventually surrendered the city to a Muslim army after a siege in 637. It was a bloodless surrender, and the Muslims actually allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem for pretty much the first time in almost 500 years. (http://www.bu.edu/mzank/Jerusalem/p/period3-2.htm)
Muslims most definitely did not take Jerusalem from the Jews. They ruled it for over 400 years before the Christians showed up with their Crusade - and slaughter - in 1095.
One way and another you keep saying that when Christians slaughter women and children it's not as bad as when Muslims do it, and I am going on record as disagreeing with that. Let's keep that point front and centre, and remember that Christians have spread their faith in unpleasant ways all over the world. Ask the indigenous people subjected to Christian European rule all over the world in the last 6 or 7 centuries.
So you say. Anyone who can read has only to study history to see that Christians have brought their share of misery to people around the world, and have no high ground to stand on while looking down on others.
I think it's pretty illustrative of your values that you feel the slaughter of women and children during the Crusaders' capture of Jerusalem is somehow morally superior to the bloodless Muslim capture of the city.