The
connotations of the Crusades continue to haunt and terrorise our lives and can
be guarded against by exercising greater caution in our thinking and sensitivity
towards our actions, says Tarun Dalaya.
So pertinent was the thought of the philosopher and poet George Santayana, that William Shirer chose to quote him among the initial pages of his monumental work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which read: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". Shirer, it seems, was exhorting his readers, through this epigraph, to remember the evil perpetrated by a defeated power lest they suffered something similar again, because of their follies.
Santayana's words bear significance as people, the world over, continue to face the condemnation of re-living undesired history, especially in the form of conflicts arising out of religious strife. Take for instance the conflicts created by radicals representing the religions of Christianity and Islam. No other religious conflict has been more severe and continuous than what these two faiths have experienced. Can there be a more haunting example of this than the Crusades?
Historians tells us that the Crusades – a series of “holy” wars waged by the Latin Christian World against the Islamic World of the Middle-East – were fought during the period 1096–1291, and still continued in various forms throughout following centuries. Bigots, ruled by feelings of insecurity and obscure identities, sowed seeds of irreparable tension between peoples of Christian and Islamic faiths.
Man has now entered a new millennium and yet he
continues to repeat the misdeeds of his ancestors -- blatantly or shrouded in
subtlety.
Let us consider the daring attacks on the World Trade
Centre and elsewhere in the U.S., the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the war in
Afghanistan, the bombings in Bali and Kenya.
Those responsible for initiating and executing these
events conveyed dangerous connotations, deliberately or inadvertently, that the
fires of the Crusades never died and have been transported, with advancements
in travel and technology, to many parts of the world.
While learned and correct-thinking people are not
vulnerable to such connotations, it is unfortunate that such minds are few and
scattered.
In an essay which I read on the internet some time
ago, Alfred J. Andrea, professor emeritus of medieval history at The University
of Vermont, U.S.A., refutes the connotation that such events taking place bear
semblance to the Crusades or are acts avenging it but says that “This is not to
say that Islam's recently reconstructed memory of crusader aggression is not
real and its sense of grievance is not genuine. Faced with what many cultural
traditionalists, religious conservatives, and disenfranchised young people
perceive as Western assaults upon Islam's values and its very existence, it is
easy for them, in the midst of their anger and sense of victimhood, to believe
they have discovered a continuous pattern of Western crusader hostility that
extends back to nine centuries”.
While the US took it upon itself to cleanse the world
of so-called weapons of mass destruction that, it claimed, were possessed by
Saddam Hussein's regime; others used the invasion as an excuse to bring terror
on innocent targets representing the Western world.
Devious and bigoted minds are influencing the naïve
who number in millions. They are making sure that there is no respite from what
took place centuries ago.
On the other hand, those who are scrupulous, have been
careless in their actions and words and have added fuel to the fire that has
been created by the unscrupulous. Balanced and rational persons, especially
among the youth, could waver in their thoughts towards the irrational, as
emotions overrule their minds.
These are intensely testing times, indeed, for sanity
to assert itself. Sane minds of the world must unite and make strenuous efforts
to ensure that their communities remain rational and unfazed.
The anti-war demonstrations that took place in many
nations as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, did display solidarity, but
how much were they able to influence their governments? Were they able to
defeat those who called for jihad in
retaliation for what a handful of countries were doing in an Islamic country?
Christianity and Islam together constitute the largest religious following in the world and any turmoil between the communities of these religions have had and will continue to have global implications.
A Washington Post website report on the terrorist
bombings of commuter trains in Madrid in Spain quoted an e-mail sent by an
Islamic militant group to a London-based Arabic language newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, claiming responsibility for the attacks and saying "This
is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally
in its war against Islam".
It is imperative for peace-loving people in authority
and those having the creativity or power of influencing authority, to come
together with sane minds among masses to prevent a rising tide of hatred and
violence and avert a foreseeable catastrophe in the world.
Religion was founded to refine man’s consciousness
towards his creation and the existence of his creator, but it has sadly found
its purpose challenged, over many centuries, by flames ignited and fanned by
people who have distorted it for their own perverted agendas.
Let us not forget our past and remain cautious in our actions and thoughts or else be doomed to an apocalypse which no one wants.
Copyright © Tarun Dalaya
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