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Deus Le Volt
by Edna Yaghi
On November 27, 1095, the French
Pope Urban ll convoked a great church council held at Clermont,
France. Before a crowd of thousands, Urban protested that the
Turks were occupying the Holy Land, were defiling Christian holy
places and molesting Christian pilgrims. He then urged that all
Christendom join together in a holy war-a great crusade to
recapture the Holy Land for Christianity. But Urban’s motives
were not just to take over Jerusalem and Christianize it. He
pointed out that the Holy Land was fruitful and wealthy, far
richer than the overcrowded lands of Christian Europe. The Pope
also announced that participation in the crusade would take the
place of all penances and assure the crusader forgiveness for all
his sins.
Urban’s speech appealed to his
listeners’ religious and selfish motives. Within a few months,
the First Crusade was under way and was followed by a long series
of holy wars which took place over a span of approximately 200
years. Deus Le Volt, meaning, God Wills It, became the battle cry
of the Crusaders.
Besides the pillage and plunder of
the Holy Land, the Crusades brought western Europe into close
contact with the Byzantine and Islamic civilizations which were
considerably more advanced than western Europe. This contact was
extremely beneficial and paved the way for the Renaissance which
in turn led to the full flowering of modern European civilization.
The First Crusade became an excuse
to unleash savage attacks on the indigenous inhabitants of the
Holy Land. The siege of Jerusalem culminated in a bloody and
destructive Christian victory in July 1099, where many of the
inhabitants were massacred and Jews were burned in their
synagogue. Some Crusaders envisioned the creation of a permanent
Christian presence in the Holy Land and a place to build feudal
states where they could transplant their military culture as well
as carve out fortunes from the new frontier.
Judged by military standards, the
Crusades were a failure. However, many scholars give the Crusades
credit for making Western Europe more cosmopolitan. They believed
that due to the Crusades, Western Europe was exposed to higher
standards of medicine and learning, of Greek and Muslim culture
and to the luxuries of silks, spices and oranges. The Crusades in
essence took Europe out of the Dark Ages.
In 1187, Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim
leader from Takrit, Iraq, (Salah ad-din Yusuf) recaptured
Jerusalem. The Crusades were disgraceful but formative events in
Western history. They were devastating for the Muslims of the Near
East.
Though the Crusades of long ago
ended in Western Christendom’s defeat, they have been replaced
with the neo-Crusaders, who are atheist, heartless Western
Imperialists in a Middle East that is more fertile and wealthier
than ever before. In an age of de-colonization, the neo-Crusaders
are everywhere. They are more subtle, less visible, but they still
plunder and pillage not only the Holy Land but also the entire
Middle East. They are aided and abetted by Zionist Israel, the
monster that the American Frankenstein created, and by the puppet
tyrants that the American Imperialists supplant as leaders of the
helpless Arab masses. Deus Le Volt must be the battle cry of brave
new leaders like Saladin of old or Tariq Bin Ziad.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Edna Yaghi
by the same author:
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Copyright
© 2001 Media Monitors Network. All rights reserved.
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