That's a trailer for 'Saladin' an animated series that the new English-language Al Jazeera Children’s Channel is scheduled to launch with by the end of 2012. Watch the start of the above video and you will hear Saladin say that he would 'lead his people in a fight for freedom... a Crusader King who would enslave my people, he would take our lands and our lives.' Interesting.... Saladin fought and defeated the Third Crusade but let's look at why the Crusaders came to the Holy Land...
Let's skip the Jewish history of Israel that predates Christianity; by definition, Jesus having been born and dies a Jew. The Holy Land had been Christian since the Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity and had been the centre of the Byzantine Empire after the partition of the Roman Empire. The Holy Land had become a predominantly Christian region for many years before the birth of the religion of Islam. The rise of Islam lead to the invasion of Syria in the 7th century AD and later of Israel. Islam being a conquering religion, in the year 1009 the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem although in 1039 his successor, after getting large payments for the right to do so, allowed the Byzantine Empire to rebuild it. This was a time of Islamic conquest and so the First Crusade was an attempt by Christian armies to reconquer the Holy Land from the Islamic armies who had only just been recently turned back from their conquest of various parts of Europe including Northern Spain, for it was Islam that had invaded Christian Europe first.
During the 11th Century the Norman Robert Guiscard had reconquered Calabria and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory against the Muslims of Sicily. Pisa, Genoa and Catalonia were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in Majorca, freeing the coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids. So it was against a background of losing territories to Islam that lead to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I's call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands starting with Jerusalem.
When I tell people about this story of The Crusades they are shocked as it seems that the Islamic narrative that the Crusades were about invading Islamic lands has become the chosen narrative in the West as well as Islamic lands. You can imagine the confusion on their faces when I tell them that in 1683 Islamic armies laid siege to Vienna at a time when Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.
I am sure that the showing of Saladin on American TV will help to ensure that the Islamic narrative of being a religion under attack, not being the aggressor religion, will continue to prevail in the USA.
5 comments:
Shows how much research into this you've done that you can't even spell "Saladin" correctly.
You, sir, are a prize buffoon. Hopefully your tragic views will always be limited to an ill-informed blog like this.
Michael
Two typos, I am so sorry. Now would you care to tell me what else in my research is wrong? Can you? Thought not!
"When I tell people about this story of The Crusades they are shocked as it seems that the Islamic narrative that the Crusades were about invading Islamic lands has become the chosen narrative in the West as well as Islamic lands. You can imagine the confusion on their faces when I tell them that in 1683 Islamic armies laid siege to Vienna at a time when Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. "
I don't know who you're telling this story to, but they must be severly lacking in education if they're not aware of this. I'm not suggesting that any of your research is "wrong", it's the angle at which you're approaching it that concerns me.
Any medieval story of knights/crusaders that you care to read (Rauf Coilyear, for example) reveals the efforts to regain Christian lands and convert Saladin et al to Christianity. Now, these stories are widely available, and there are many, many versions from C12th onwards (approximately).
For over 800 years Saladin has been regarded as a "noble infidel" in these stories, so if Al-Jazeera wants to tell the tale, then let them. The texts are there to tell the (slightly fictionalised) true events of that time.
You can choose to perpetuate the myth that the "Islamic narrative" has somehow become the norm in the west, but it's simply not true.
If you'd care to tell me what I've got wrong, I'd be so grateful to hear. Can you? Thought not! How childish....
Michael.
If you don't like what I write, here's an idea stop reading it.
The Muslim view of the Crusaders attacking Islamic lands is a narrative that many, admittedly lazy and ill-informed, people have somehow injested.
NCF
Ah, but "lazy and ill-informed" is why I read this blog. Gives me a daily dose of amusement.
Post a Comment