Geopolitics
The Moral Triumph of Western Civilization Part 8 – The Impact of the Crusaders and Mongols on the Islamic World
Part 8 – The Impact of the Crusaders and Mongols on the Islamic World
(Part 8 of a multi-part series on The Moral Triumph of Western Civilization.)
While the European continent was finally beginning to settle down in the 11th century, nothing was settled in the Islamic world. Muslim expansion was militant and continuous. Muslim Arabs waged war against the coastal areas of France and Italy and occupied Sicily.
Jerusalem was originally captured by caliph Umar from the Christians in the 7th century who weren’t significantly impacted for a few centuries. But by the 11th century the zealous Fatimid caliph, Hakim, was persecuting Christians and “despoiled” the Holy Sepulcher (the church built by Emperor Constantine’s mother in 330 A.D.). The Holy Sepulcher commemorated the hill of crucifixion and Christ’s burial tomb. Hakim had the 700 year-old church destroyed right down to the bedrock.
By the late 11th century, Byzantine Emperor Alexius I, who had been threatened by the (Muslim) Seljuk Turks appealed to the West (Rome) for help. In 1095 Pope Urban II exhorted the church council at Clermont, France to go to Jerusalem to take back the tomb of Christ from Islamic control.
The Moral Triumph of Western Civilization
Part 8 – The Impact of the Crusaders and Mongols on the Islamic World
The case of Aasia Bibi: Another example of Islamic “tolerance”
Pakistan recently acquitted 54-year-old Christian farm worker and mother of five, Aasia Bibi, for blasphemy, a crime that called for the death penalty in that Islamic nation.She had been on death row there since 2010.
In June 2009, a quarrel ensued between Bibi, who had retrieved water for other workers during a scorching day, and two Muslim women who said they refused to drink from the same container a Christian had. The women subsequently accused Bibi of insulting Muhammad to one of the village’s mullahs. This was sufficient to get her charged by the government and sentenced to death.
Read moreThe case of Aasia Bibi: Another example of Islamic “tolerance”
Orwell’s “1984” coming soon to China and it’s not fiction — it’s real life
Unless we’re politically diligent, we could experience here in the U.S. what citizens of other major socialist nations around the world face in an increasingly surveilled daily environment.
The Communist government of China will shortly make full use of its extraordinary digital capabilities to monitor the actions and behavior of its people. Cameras are everywhere and many police officers have so-called smart glasses that can provide instant facial recognition.
In 2020, China will introduce a national monitoring system that ranks all of its 1.4 billion citizens based on their “social credit” or how the government wants them to act. Each person will have to participate in this national point-system program that will reward or punish people based on actions the authoritarians in power determine are good or bad.
Read moreOrwell’s “1984” coming soon to China and it’s not fiction — it’s real life
Google bows to Chinese government by censoring free information there but torpedoes assistance to the U.S. military
Like many radical environmentalists who target 99% of their protests and political activity toward the United States, companies like giant Google, are quick to direct their moral outrage at America but also apparently fast to bow to the totalitarian dictates of Communist China.
After about 4,000 Google employees wrote their management demanding the company stop all research and assistance to the U.S. Department of Defense in developing artificial intelligence to improve military drone accuracy, the company acceded to their wishes and announced in June that it would not renew its contract with the DOD.
But in China, Google capitulated to its government by tearing up its previous commitment to be the “champion of free expression” by agreeing to censor information provided by its search engine based solely on the demands of the Chinese government.
