From: dosdog2 (Original Message) Sent: 5/16/2007 5:09 PM
So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.
Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years
Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.
crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm
Myth 1: The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.
Myth 2: The Crusaders wore crosses, but they were really only interested in capturing booty and land. Their pious platitudes were just a cover for rapacious greed.
Myth 3: When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman, and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood
Myth 4: The Crusades were just medieval colonialism dressed up in religious finery
Myth 5: The Crusades were also waged against the Jews.
Myth 6: The Crusades were so corrupt and vile that they even had a Children’s Crusade.
Myth 7: Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades
Myth 8: Muslims, who remember the Crusades vividly, have good reason to hate the West
ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/print2005/tmadden_crusades_print.html
In Summary
Muhammad never finalized how the Qur’an was to be recited and allowed variation. There were real variations in the way the Qur’an was being memorized and recited after Muhammad’s death. This caused problems.
Uthman and a team of others did a certain amount of editing to produce a standard text of the Qur’an. Then Uthman ordered that all other Qur’ans be burnt and his version be made the only standard version for the Muslim world. Oral and written tradition now had to conform to Uthman’s standard version.
Some of the Companions, like Ibn Mas’ud, were not happy with Uthman’s actions and suffered for it.
Conclusion
At the beginning of this article we considered the following claims:
The text of the Qur’an is entirely reliable. It has been as it is, unaltered, unedited, not tampered with in any way, since the time of its revelation. (M. Fethullah Gulen, Questions this Modern Age Puts to Islam. London: Truestar, 1993. p.58)
It (the Qur’an) was memorised by Mohammed and then dictated to his companions, and written down by scribes, who cross-checked it during his lifetime. Not one word of its 114 chapters (suras) have ever been changed over the centuries. (Understanding Islam and the Muslims, The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Inc. (pamphlet) Nov. 1991).
Having now read many of the hadiths and other sources it is obvious that these Muslim claims are an exaggeration and have no support at all from the authoritative hadiths. In fact the hadiths record the opposite. They say that Muhammad never standardized the Qur’an and allowed variation and that the early Muslims memorized the Qur’an slightly differently. Then Uthman and a team of others edited and standardized one version of the Qur’an and had all others burnt. I have no doubt that the collection of the Qur’an that Uthman made is one good record of what Muhammad recited. However it was not the only good collection that was made, and it was not a collection made by Muhammad.
answering-islam.org/Green/uthman.htm
answering-islam.org/Nehls/tt1/tt4.html
