re: jihadist Khaled Sharrouf’s son, 7, holds severed head

quote:

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Not really. Yes, there was some killing on behalf of the Catholic Church during the Crusades but it was essentially a war against an advancing Islamic army trying to take over new territories. It was a defensive first strike against a religion hell bent on world domination even then.

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"Some killing" ha! There's a nice simplification/possible whitewashing of history. You do realize that it wasn't just Muslims that the Europeans fought, right? They also fought Jews, and *gasp* other Christians. I mean, you're talking about a complex period that lasted well over 100 years here. You can't fit the whole thing into a "it was to stop the Turks" without missing a lot of the medieval politics behind it.

I am a Christian myself, but I really do not understand why some feel the need to defend or whitewash this shite. Why do you need to absolve what a bunch of medieval Europeans did hundreds and hundreds of years ago? Because they practiced the same religion as you? That's silly. The religious and cultural climate from back then would be completely alien to any of us today. Defending the violent deeds of a completely different era doesn't defend your personal faith, just as acknowledging it doesn't demean your faith. Aside from really oversimplifying a complex web of political and religious conflicts, what whitewashing REALLY does is take away from the lesson that people of ALL faiths and creeds are capable of doing violent things. It is not a Christian/Muslim thing, it is a sinful humanity thing.

totes, at least the shitty ones that are around today