What is the most misunderstood historical event?

[Arakhor]

Look, seriously, stop blatantly misconstruing everything I'm saying, just so that you can continue grinding your clearly well-worn axe along the same grooves. I'm not interested.

 

[abradley]

Look, seriously, stop blatantly misconstruing everything I'm saying, just so that you can continue grinding your clearly well-worn axe along the same grooves. I'm not interested.

I had the same feeling about you, so let's drop it.

 

[useless]

Look Abradley, we get it, you hate and fear muslims.

 

[abradley]

Look Abradley, we get it, you hate and fear muslims.

Where did I say that?

 

[useless]

You don't need to outright say it, it's clear by your obsession with bashing everything Islam and Muslim related.

 

[abradley]

You don't need to outright say it, it's clear by your obsession with bashing everything Islam and Muslim related.

Others state their views on Christianity/Religion. Mostly they're negative, do you criticize them for bashing my religion? No. And I don't expect you to, I should be able to defend it myself.

Not complaining about the anti-Christian flavor here, expected it.

Even get it at http://www.maddogdrivethru.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14693 that is a very, very mild one.

As for obsession about Islam, no ... just trying to set the record straight.

 

[HannibalBarka]

For anyone who is interested, I looked up the number I had given for the deaths during the Islamic conquest - and it turns out I was mistaken! I had got things mixed up, the 270 million deaths by jihad is not for the early Islamic conquest, it is the estimate for jihad in total, to the present day. I humbly admit my mistake and apologize for causing confusion. There is no need to be hyperbolic on the facts about Islam and that certainly wasn't my intention, just the result of an aging brain.

I must cogratulate for your honesty

However, that doesn't change the gist of my post. The bulk of Muslim territories were conquered in the early jihad. Most of the Indian deaths fall into this time, as do many of those in Africa. Even being incredibly modest, the amount of deaths almost certainly exceeds 100 million, and is probably a lot higher.
.

You really need to be more precise when you throw numbers like those: which period are you talking about? and again you need to back your figures with sources.

More importantly, as I said previously the actual number is not even relevant to my argument. I was pointing out the one-sidedness in school books which, on the topic of the crusades, focus on making out the Christians as the evil aggressors invading the territory of the peaceful Muslims, when this is clearly a historically false perspective..

I don't really see the link between the two. Muslims conquest may have been bloody, that won't make the Crusades less violent if they were and vice versa. And as I said in the early reply, what was "bad" in the Crusades was that they committed a lot of religious motivated atrocities, though I am not even sure religion was the sole or even the most important factor. Whether they did on peaceful or once violent muslims is not the point, not to forget that they committed atrocities on Jews and other Christians as well.

I think I'll leave it there, since this thread seems to have gone downhill fast. There is just one comment I want to address, since I hear versions of it a lot.

I wish we could get over this "left vs right"-thinking when it comes to Islam. First off, I am left. And I don't see how criticizing an authoritarian, leader-centered, patriarchic, religious ideology, whose believers disproportionately adhere to violence, can conceivably be regarded as right-wing. If we postulate that the core of being left is to promote the liberation of the individual from authoritarian oppression, then criticizing Islam is as left as you can get. That those who call themselves left in Europe and the US have largely failed to address the oppression caused by Islam and have thereby abandoned their brothers and sisters in the Islamic world who suffer daily under the ideological dogmas, has been a moral debacle. It doesn't change the fact that criticism of the mainstream orthodoxy of Islam has to come from everyone who supports liberal values and human rights.

What I labeled as far right , not just right, runt in your post was not your criticism of Islam as criticzing Islam is indeed not and should not be a "far right thing", but your assertion that the West is Christophobe and Islamophile, using historical revisionism to make us think that West depicts the Crusades falsly just to put Christianity in the bad role and Islam in the good. That kind of paranoia and arguments are indeed found in far right movements in France for example

 

[abradley]

You don't need to outright say it, it's clear by your obsession with bashing everything Islam and Muslim related.

An added bit that I posted earlier http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13985654&postcount=230

 

[Arakhor]

Not complaining about the anti-Christian flavor here, expected it.

There's lot of pro- and anti-everything here. It's what happens in a fairly active discussion forum, which is mostly obsessed with religion and US politics.

Further, given that I'm a fan of history, I find arguments similar to "but they started it!" or "they did it worse" thoroughly pointless.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Am sure the Vatican would jump to it.

As to them being Christian, the one's I know of were Christian, but misguided.

You can very well decide that former Popes were misguided Christians, it however sounds like deciding who is and who is not a scotsman

 

[abradley]

You can very well decide that former Popes were misguided Christians, it however sounds like deciding who is and who is not a scotsman

No, it's easy to decide who's a Scot, my grandfather was, he was born in Scotland.

As for Popes being misguided, depends on how they carried out their duties, not where they were born.

 

[Flying Pig]

There's lot of pro- and anti-everything here. It's what happens in a fairly active discussion forum, which is mostly obsessed with religion and US politics.

Further, given that I'm a fan of history, I find arguments similar to "but they started it!" or "they did it worse" thoroughly pointless.

This should be restated. We ought to act based on what we want the future to be, not how we believe the past was.

 

[Formaldehyde]

For anyone who is interested, I looked up the number I had given for the deaths during the Islamic conquest - and it turns out I was mistaken! I had got things mixed up, the 270 million deaths by jihad is not for the early Islamic conquest, it is the estimate for jihad in total, to the present day. I humbly admit my mistake and apologize for causing confusion. There is no need to be hyperbolic on the facts about Islam and that certainly wasn't my intention, just the result of an aging brain.

It still obviously doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Post your supposed source.

Never mind. I found the utter nonsense by googling the phrase. Guess what? Yet another Muslim hate site, of course:

Political Islam: Tears of Jihad

These figures are a rough estimate of the death of non-Muslims by the political act of jihad.

Africa
Thomas Sowell [Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, BasicBooks, 1994, p. 188] estimates that 11 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and 14 million were sent to the Islamic nations of North Africa and the Middle East. For every slave captured many others died. Estimates of this collateral damage vary. The renowned missionary David Livingstone estimated that for every slave who reached a plantation, five others were killed in the initial raid or died of illness and privation on the forced march.[Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions, David Livingstone, p. 62, 1888] Those who were left behind were the very young, the weak, the sick and the old. These soon died since the main providers had been killed or enslaved. So, for 25 million slaves delivered to the market, we have an estimated death of about 120 million people. Islam ran the wholesale slave trade in Africa.
120 million Africans

Christians
The number of Christians martyred by Islam is 9 million [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-10] . A rough estimate by Raphael Moore in History of Asia Minor is that another 50 million died in wars by jihad. So counting the million African Christians killed in the 20th century we have:
60 million Christians

Hindus
Koenard Elst in Negationism in India gives an estimate of 80 million Hindus killed in the total jihad against India. [Koenard Elst, Negationism in India, Voice of India, New Delhi, 2002, pg. 34.] The country of India today is only half the size of ancient India, due to jihad. The mountains near India are called the Hindu Kush, meaning the “funeral pyre of the Hindus.”
80 million Hindus

Buddhists
Buddhists do not keep up with the history of war. Keep in mind that in jihad only Christians and Jews were allowed to survive as dhimmis (servants to Islam) everyone else had to convert or die. Jihad killed the Buddhists in Turkey, Afghanistan, along the Silk Route, and in India. The total is roughly 10 million. [David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-1.] 10 million Buddhists

Jews
Oddly enough there were not enough Jews killed in jihad to significantly affect the totals of the Great Annihilation. The jihad in Arabia was 100 percent effective, but the numbers were in the thousands, not millions. After that, the Jews submitted and became the dhimmis (servants and second class citizens) of Islam and did not have geographic political power.

This gives a rough estimate of 270 million killed by jihad.

 

[Ajidica]

IMO May 29, 1453 was the greatest wrong done to the Byzantine Empire. And who did that wrong, Islam.

If you knew anything about Byzantine history, you would know Byzantium was its own worse enemy and did the greatest wrongs to itself.
(This is how you know the Byzantine Empire was Roman, they loved themselves a civil war.)

Also, I'm still not sure how "Islam" can cause a wrong unless the doctrine literally made itself manifest and kicked down the Theodosian Walls.
I suppose if a concept can be deceitful, knocking down walls is child's play.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, "legal secularism, institutional Christianity" dropped the atomic bomb, "tolerant Lutheranism" founded quantum theory and "Jewish agnosticism" devised the theory of relativity, so it's all good, I suppose.

 

[gay_Aleks]

we should kill all muslims

Hey, that's pretty fun, actually. Y'all should try it out!

Moderator Action: This is not a remotely appropriate post, even as a joke. Banned for two days.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[daft]

If you knew anything about Byzantine history, you would know Byzantium was its own worse enemy and did the greatest wrongs to itself.
(This is how you know the Byzantine Empire was Roman, they loved themselves a civil war.)

Also, I'm still not sure how "Islam" can cause a wrong unless the doctrine literally made itself manifest and kicked down the Theodosian Walls.
I suppose if a concept can be deceitful, knocking down walls is child's play.

And you claim to be an expert in the field?
The Byzantines tried to fight the Muslim Turks the old fashioned way, but they wouldn't commit to a battle, would raze the countryfield, run away from Byzantine armies, wait for them to get exhausted, tired, then they would attack, routing and killing them, mercilessly.
Turkish migrants migrated into Byzantine lands by the thousands, settled in, then turned against their Christian neighbours, killing all, women and children.
Read about the Turco-Greek wars, find out the truth about how the Muslim Turks treated the Christians once they became their overlords, in modern day Turkey, in Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania...
All you supposed experts, I leave you to read and find the truths, then state your mind...

 

[gay_Aleks]

"So who ended the Byzantine Empire?"
"Those bloody Turkish immigrants, they're at it again. First the Arabs in Spain, now those bastards. What's this world coming to?"

 

[Ajidica]

And you claim to be an expert in the field?

Now that most of the World History old guard has left, I probably am one of the better informed people on Byzantine history in this forum.
As far as being an expert, dear god no.

The Byzantines tried to fight the Muslim Turks the old fashioned way, but they wouldn't commit to a battle, would raze the countryfield, run away from Byzantine armies, wait for them to get exhausted, tired, then they would attack, routing and killing them, mercilessly.

It is important to remember than even at Manzikert the Byzantine themes and tagmata were probably the strongest military force in Europe and the Near East at the time. At Manzikert Alp Arslan (although it may be apocryphal, I don't remember) dressed himself in white because he expected to die in the battle. The whole reason the Byzantine army lost at Manzikert was because the commander of the rear guard decided it would be a good time to desert the emperor and abandon the field and not cover the retreat. Had the commander of the rear guard covered the retreat, then I believe Manzikert would have remained a historical footnote.

Incompetency: the worst enemy of the Byzantines.

I wouldn't say they were incompetent. Rather, they happened to be very competent at things it probably would have been better for the Empire they had been less competent at.

EDIT: THE SMILEY I USED AS AN ATTEMPT TO ILLUSTRATE HOW THE STATEMENT WAS MEANT LARGELY IN JEST AND GOOD-NATURELY. IT WAS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO EXPRESS AN OBJECTIONABLE OPINION AND ATTEMPTING TO PUT A LIGHT-HEARTED JOKEY SPIN ON IT!!!

 

[gay_Aleks]

Incompetency: the worst enemy of the Byzantines.