Also, you have to take into account how different religions spread. The beginning of Christianity was not involved in destroying and killing. There was indeed a conversion throughout the ancient Roman world.
I saw a program on EWTN. Iraq and Syria were heavily Christian countries, and they fell through the sword. Islam spread through the sword into Northern Africa, but it fell in part due to many heresies among the people as well as losses from the bubonic plague.
Islam spread into Christian Spain whose sovereignty was always up for grabs until Islam took over Spain for over 700 years. Hard to imagine that…but then the Spanish finally overcame them.
The Byzantine world was first attacked in the 600’s but overcame the Muslim military forces. Then Constantinople fell hundreds of years later and the streets were deep in blood. The area of Bosnia had the child tax put on the Christians so that the oldest and brightest son was forced to become Muslim and work for the spreading of Islam.
The Barbery Coast was the source of kidnappings of Christian women used for sex slaves as well as their children enslaved, and the older boys were then forced to become Muslim soldiers. Check out the European white slave market of those times. The Barbary pirates and the Battle of Tripoli…that is our first American military excursion after our independence.
What set off the Crusades was not only the slow coming (400 years) of pleas by Christians in Jerusalem to restore the Holy Lands, and the attack on pilgrims by the Suljak Turks, but the Calilph’s exclamation that St. Peter’s Basilica would be used for horse watering and stables. I heard a militant Muslim speak within the past 2 years that they tried two times to take over the Vatican, the third time they will.
The Muslims were advancing into France and the turning point was Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours. There is also reference to the Battle of Lepanto and the exhortation to pray the rosary. My friend works in a diocese whose cathedral displays the skulls of 800 Italian Catholic men who were beheaded for refusing to submit to Islam. Sicily and Sardenia were under Muslim rule. Richard of Avalon drove out the Muslims.
Since 9/11 I have studied Islamic expansion and what I heard last night coincides with the various and contradictory sources I read. If we had not had these battles, the Europeans would be studying Islam. Unfortunately, when it comes to militant Islam the response is prayer, fasting and diplomacy for our times and realizing we are dealing with a very different mentality and world most foreign to us. When it comes to protecting the remains of Christianity, when all else avails, then what would we do?
There are empty church buildings in my town that are being purchased and used for other purposes. So it is also worthwhile to know the context of how the Buddhist temple was turned into a church.
Otherwise, as a human being I would be offended to by taking someone’s place of worship for their own.
