Taking of Jerusalem
In Chapter 13 of Karen Armstrong's Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, Armstrong discusses the Crusades sent by European Christians to capture Jerusalem in the name of Christianity. These crusades began to spread the word of God and his message of love. The crusades were originally sent by Emperor Alexius Comnenus I as a way to settle the area. It only became a "holy war of liberation" (Armstrong pg. 271) once Pope Urban II unified the powerful figures and lower class alike under this message. On 15 July, 1099 the first European soldiers were able to break through Jerusalem's defenses. "For the next three days, the Crusaders systematically slaughtered about thirty thousand of the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Armstrong pg. 274). No one was spared and all the people of Jerusalem found themselves under attack: Muslims and Jews alike. The Crusades devastated the city and left Jerusalem without many of its inhabitant's sacred spaces. These Crusades had been advertised as the spreading of God's love "but this 'love' had been expressed in violence and atrocity" (Armstrong pg. 282).
Under the violence of the oppressive European Christians, you can see Jerusalem's former inhabitants yearning for the city back. Muslim spiritual leaders began campaigning for jihad, a law from the Qur'an that says to fight against your oppressors. The Qur'an says, "If people were killed or driven from their homes and saw their places of worship destroyed, Muslims had a duty to fight a just war of self-defense" (Armstrong pg. 289). In their attempts to grow support and military operations, the jihad is used to inspire the path taken, just like Christians did with the message of God's love. Although inspired by a passage about war and fighting, when Muslims entered Jerusalem to reclaim it, "not a single Christian was killed" (Armstrong pg. 293). The Muslim people were brought to action by part of the Quran that spoke of violence but were not violent themselves. This can be seen in sharp comparison with the Christian invasion that was motivated by love but ultimately caused utter violence.
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