In this episode, I speak with author Raymond Ibrahim about the Crusades and why it is so important to understand the history of the crusades and how it relates to today's anti-Islamic crusaders. Raymond is a historian, author, and historian of the Crusaders. He has written a trilogy of books about the 14th and 15th century Crusades, and is a leading voice in the anti-Jihadist and anti-Islam movements. He is also the author of several other books, including The Crusades: A Biography of the First Crusades.
00:06:55.560The creme de la creme of Persia, I mean, ancient civilizations, Egypt, Babylon, Persia.
00:07:03.160I mean, you're talking about some pretty big empires that had pretty organized religions, did they not?
00:07:08.400Yes, yes, into the Indus Valley as well. And Persia had the Zoroastrian religion, of course. And they actually fell relatively early as well. They fell around the same time that Egypt and Syria did. And again, that's probably because they were closer to the Arabian homeland.
00:07:27.180So, you know, the neighbors that were right there on the doorsteps were the first to get attacked and the first to get swallowed up.
00:07:34.820But yes, usually what I'm talking about now is primarily because the jihad was so far reaching historically, you have to really focus on one aspect.0.94
00:07:44.000So I usually try to focus or I am at this point the Christian slash Western world.
00:07:49.160But of course, yes, Persia, the Zoroastrianists, all the way into the Far East and into sub-Saharan Africa also through jihad.0.95
00:07:57.100And these are all diverse peoples with different civilizations and religions, all of whom got subsumed under Islam.0.80
00:08:04.700Okay, so that's basically the context of, if you fast forward now to the First Crusade, everyone in Europe, the educated classes, of course, the clerical classes, the popes, the nobles,0.92
00:08:16.220understood what had originally happened to the Christian world in North Africa and the Middle
00:08:21.800East. So they understood that. And it comes out in their correspondences and letters. And when
00:08:26.180they're speaking too, they often say things like when Egypt comes back to Christianity and things
00:08:32.040of that sort, for example. So now we're coming a couple of decades before the first crusade and
00:08:38.760you have another especially savage iteration of jihad under the Seljuk Turks. And they are0.94
00:08:47.340running amok in the Holy Land. They are committing much worse atrocities than had even occurred
00:08:52.720before then under the various different Arab dynasties and sultanates, which themselves were
00:08:58.600also pretty bad. But now it's at a new level. And the atrocities which we have recorded and0.89
00:09:04.360which were widely spoken about from the Pope, from Pope Urban to Peter the Hermit, to Robert
00:09:09.700of Flanders, to, you know, Emperor Alexius and his daughter. So we have lots of records of what
00:09:15.500was happening. And, you know, to call it horrific is, it doesn't even do it justice. I mean, the
00:09:20.940things that are written down are, you know, stuff of nightmare, where, you know, people are being
00:09:25.520skinned alive, their entrails are being pulled out, tied to a column, and they're whipped until
00:09:31.520all their entrails are pulled out and fall down. For example, women being systematically raped on0.98
00:09:37.160top of altars, you know, anything you can imagine. And it also spilled over onto pilgrims, because
00:09:44.480you still had European pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land during this time. It was understood that
00:09:49.140was dangerous. That's part of the pilgrimage. You know, you're taking this, you're undertaking
00:09:53.700this very dangerous journey on a pilgrimage to visit the holy sites and, you know, to engage in
00:10:01.380adoration and possibly die while you're doing it so and that is exactly what was happening to them
00:10:05.960and one of the more notable instances occurred in 1064 because it's widely attested where a large
00:10:11.780german pilgrimage went down and they got attacked again by the turks and everyone was slaughtered
00:10:17.380and they talk about a very uh attractive nun uh who was warned not to go and then and she was
00:10:23.020gang raped to death and then at the end it says and those vile men did these sorts of things to
00:10:29.140all the pilgrims they could ever reach. So this is the backdrop of the first crusade, which we
00:10:34.980never, ever hear. We just hear that out of the blue, you know, I've quoted it before, probably
00:10:40.720to you as well, John Esposito, Georgetown academic, as this memorable line where he basically says,
00:10:47.640five centuries of peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims elapsed before an imperial
00:10:52.940papal power play led to a series of so-called holy wars and centuries of distrust and dislike0.86
00:10:59.580basically from muslims who now have a grievance because of what the crusaders did so until now0.72
00:11:05.160in schools in colleges uh you literally have people and professors and books who teach that
00:11:11.940that those centuries that i just told you were islam annexed conquered subjugated and destroyed
00:11:17.300more than much more than half of christendom and as well all those other civilizations in persia0.81
00:11:22.920and so forth um this you have professors telling people that that was the highlight that was like
00:11:27.840peaceful coexistence between christians and muslims until randomly pope urban and all these franks
00:11:34.940decided just to go and ruin it all because because well and now so we have to fill in the vacuum why0.92
00:11:40.500well because they're greedy because they're racist because there is they're imperialists
00:11:45.320because i suppose there is lamophobes uh at the risk of being anachronistic and and this is now0.53
00:11:50.640what's supplanted the truth so that hang on i want to go to s i'm going to go as a georgetown
00:11:56.280alum i want to go to esposito specifically when they say peaceful coexistence and you look at i
00:12:01.340want to remind the audience that since really uh i guess the um the first century right uh i guess
00:12:12.980it's from 73 that really the jews have been driven out of to a large extent uh the holy land and
00:12:20.060particularly Jerusalem, which was always kind of the crown jewel, at least in some parts, right?
00:12:26.360And sometimes they're gone. And so it's really a Muslim-controlled entity. When you had0.99
00:12:33.240peaceful coexistence, if you did have peaceful coexistence, it's because the Christians1.00
00:12:39.700surrendered after these waves of jihad. There was some resistance put up, but the resistance0.96
00:12:47.660essentially collapsed i'm going to say pretty quickly but it was gone relatively quickly and1.00
00:12:53.720it was really submission which is part of the way islam rolls if you pay uh if you pay a duty or if0.97
00:13:02.020you pay a tax or if you either convert or just submit to their control you can live at least0.99
00:13:08.280somewhat peacefully they break out in in violence all the time but when esposito and this guy say
00:13:14.720it is because the west was essentially the christian part of the west in that area was conquered
00:13:21.240and in islam controlled it this is except for constantinople correct yes correct but if you and
00:13:30.100i i read that book and you know it's very fuzzy i mean ultimately what you're saying is that what
00:13:35.080esposito is saying is that yes islam conquered subjugated these uh populations and then they
00:13:41.340became according to islamic doctrine what's called vimmies and vimmies are basically a protected
00:13:47.120class usually jews or christians who by paying tribute uh do not get killed but they may
00:13:53.600essentially live as at best second class citizens so it's openly understood they're being discriminated
00:13:58.420against yes and that's something that they accept so the peaceful coexistence only because they're
00:14:04.700not fighting back and when they fight back exactly that's right and or not even fighting back because
00:14:09.760because they're not even asking for equality that's the whole point they know their place
00:14:15.180as second class citizens it's almost like you know pre-civil rights movement america0.95
00:14:20.520you know 1800s okay you can be black and you know i won't kill you but as long as you know0.86
00:14:25.560your place kind of thing that mentality the the split in the roman empire between constantinople0.97
00:14:31.520in in in rome and constantinople uh as um as the new rome they weren't particularly close
00:14:39.340What did it take to actually have Constantinople reach out to Rome and reach out to the Pope and reach out to the Western Christendom in the church and really the noble families, the nobility and the aristocracy in Western Christendom to say, hey, look, we've got to put the flag up here.
00:14:58.160This is a problem, and we need your support.
00:15:04.120Because that was not an easy move for them to do, given how proud they were.
00:15:07.500and quite frankly, some of the disdain they had for the older part of the Roman Empire.
00:15:14.960Yeah, no, that's correct. You know, especially, think about it, the First Crusade's only about
00:15:20.70040 years right after the first schism, around 1054. So that, again, itself really highlights
00:15:27.540the fact that, you're right, he wouldn't have taken that extreme step and swallowed his pride,
00:15:32.420the Byzantine emperor had it not been such a dire situation. And if you look at a map,
00:15:37.980you have to recall Asia Minor, what we call today Turkey, was right before this, you know,
00:15:43.12050 years before this, it was still primarily Christian, Armenians, Greeks, and different
00:15:49.320groups. And then the Western part was primarily under Byzantine authority. And then the Turks
00:15:55.720come out of the East, and then they start causing, you know, havoc. I just recently just again,1.00
00:16:00.360put this in context, you know, the Armenian genocide, the remembrance date was, I think,
00:16:05.080April 24th. So as usual, I did a little research and writing about it. And, you know, you start
00:16:10.660realizing that actually the genocide, which most people, the dates usually is 1915 and 16th during
00:16:16.640World War I. But if you really understand it, the genocide by the hands of Turks, Muslim Turks,
00:16:22.520against Christian Armenians in that region goes back over a thousand years ago. It goes to
00:16:27.500literally several decades before the events that we're describing in the first crusade because it0.93
00:16:32.380was then when the when the turks really rushed in and the you know they came from the east so who's
00:16:36.840in the east of anatoly it's the armenians and it was greater armenia was a much larger region at
00:16:41.980the time and the the sources of again i mean i was telling you about the horrific atrocities by the
00:16:47.700turks it's especially against these armenians and they literally talk about tens if not hundreds of
00:16:52.400thousands of christians and these are primary sources eyewitness accounts being just butchered
00:16:57.340in the most sadistic way thousands of churches being ritually desecrated instead of flame
00:17:02.480crosses being broken and burned and statues being decapitated the whole nine yards okay0.99
00:17:08.200so that's what these seljuk turks were doing and they kept going further further westward into0.92
00:17:14.180asia minor until they were right there on the straits right vis-a-vis constantinople so that's
00:17:20.180how dire was and that's give me a second hang on it just wasn't individual bad guys i want to make
00:17:25.600sure people understand this. This was just not individual bad hombres going into a village or
00:17:30.380going to church. You used the term ritual desecration because it was a weapon and
00:17:37.880instrument of their conquering. Give me a minute on ritual desecration. What did they do?
00:17:44.340Oh, okay. Think about what ISIS and these groups do, which is not just attack, kill infidels,
00:17:50.380but make sure that they go and literally ritually desecrate, let's say, a church and0.95
00:17:55.040break the crosses and burn it and gouge the eyes of icons and behead statues, which happens all0.63
00:18:01.720the time in Europe nowadays. So we actually have the same pattern being shown, which the point
00:18:08.340ultimately is, you know, again, if you read a typical secondary modern history, it'll tell you,
00:18:14.600it'll just say, yes, the Turks ran in and engaged in violets and so forth, but they won't underscore
00:18:20.020this point. They'll miss it. Maybe they won't get, they won't connect the dots and realize, okay,
00:18:24.480this wasn't just one group attacking another group, medieval warfare. This was one group that
00:18:29.840was propelled by an ideological animus, okay, which is what we call today jihadism. And that
00:18:36.120definitely comes out in the sources, both of them, the Muslim and the Christian sources.0.99
00:18:39.960The Muslim sources boast about it, okay? I'm thinking now of, they're talking about destroying1.00
00:18:45.080this major cathedral in Armenia and how they sent this large crucifix to be as a trophy to the
00:18:51.540caliph in baghdad okay and you see that still happening uh today i've seen so many videos of
00:18:57.140isis types including right now what's happening to armenian churches at the hands of azarabijan
00:19:02.240where they're literally erasing them from their ancient territories that were ceded
00:19:05.820recently from the the 2020 war so yes bottom line is definite ideological animus was infused
00:19:14.220in these uh jihadist attacks though they won't come out in typical history books it'll just seem
00:19:19.080like one group attacking another. What was the call for help? What was the call for help? Where
00:19:24.120did it go? And what was the response in the Christian West? So the emperor and others,
00:19:30.580of course, reached out to the pope himself. But we also have letters from the emperor to people
00:19:35.300like Count Robert of Flanders, who was a friend of his, because, you know, despite what we always
00:19:41.060hear, this sort of ideological divide between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholics wasn't as
00:19:46.900stringent or real as we like to think sometimes, and there was lots of cooperation that went on,
00:19:52.520and to your average layperson, certainly they didn't even understand, just like they don't
00:19:56.660today, the schismatic fights and what they were about. But so we have these letters and
00:20:02.780correspondences of basically calling for help, calling for aid, saying, you know, this is
00:20:07.700happening to fellow Christians. And again, the idea that you're asking me, so what caused them
00:20:13.560to respond. And I think it's because learning that such atrocious cruelty was being inflicted
00:20:20.780on fellow Christians. And see, that's the point, you know, the Franks and the West are Catholics,1.00
00:20:25.640whereas the East, the Byzantines, Orthodox, Armenians are Orthodox. And that didn't add
00:20:30.960in any way, shape or form that never comes up. You never hear, you know, right before the first
00:20:35.640crusade that there were some debates or even the Pope himself was saying, yeah, well, they're
00:20:39.920heretics, they have it coming to them. Okay, that never appears. And again, it just shows you that
00:20:45.100in reality, despite these supposed schisms, which were real, the average Christian, even the Pope,
00:20:52.100you know, why did Pope Urban II comply? And he didn't require anything. He didn't tell
00:20:57.040the Emperor Alexius, oh, now you have to agree to papal authority or anything of that sort. Okay.
00:21:02.620So the reason I believe they were propelled to it is just shocked at the horror that what was
00:21:08.260being inflicted on fellow Christians, shocked at what was happening to Christian pilgrims,
00:21:13.320shocked at what was happening to the Holy Land, the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Resurrection,
00:21:18.120which had been destroyed before and was being attacked periodically, even after it was rebuilt,
00:21:24.720lots of sacrilege. So it was actually what propelled them. And historians now know this.
00:21:30.160Again, this is one of those stories that was, you know, much fabricated, the motivation,
00:21:35.620the cause you can still grab history books by august voices like sir stephen runciman who's
00:21:42.920a great writer and uh you know he'll give you the idea that he's that basically yes they responded
00:21:48.260because it was an economic opportunity and uh you know it was an adventure and there was all
00:21:53.220these second sons who had no uh nothing to inherit and so they had to go there now historians after
00:22:00.540careful research decades worth going through vast archives and correspondences and letters
00:22:06.040it's become abundantly clear uh unequivocally so that these men were first and foremost propelled
00:22:12.140by a sincere pious uh desire to help their fellow man okay it was actually love okay altruism the
00:22:20.780the muscular variety where jesus himself says no greater commandment than to love god with all your
00:22:26.220heart and to love your fellow men. So they were loving God during the crusades because, I'm sorry?
00:22:31.640The Pope specifically focused, actually went and gave this amazing, I guess, sermon in the fields.
00:22:41.580But there's definitely, if you look at the first crusades and look where he went, there's a focus
00:22:47.660on the Normans in Normandy. We call them the Franks and they were called the Franks, but
00:22:52.040the normans why are the normans uh why are they kind of the center of gravity i would say for the
00:23:00.300first crusade and when the pope had looked at the whole universe of what he was going to do
00:23:03.900he focused on nor the normans and normandy yeah well the normans are they're they're characters
00:23:11.720um so as we know the normans are the descendants of the north men the vikings who eventually i
00:23:18.080think with some sort of treaty with one of charlemagne's descendants settled in normandy
00:23:22.680in northern france essentially and were christian and but i think they kept something of the viking
00:23:28.700spirit still alive in them and they were a very um you know bellicose lot but they were also they
00:23:34.900were still amongst them you had very christian uh piety so they made for a very uh they they
00:23:40.780they were the ideal crusader because they were adventurous they were militant they were religious
00:23:46.080and pious um and they seem to have been giants a lot of them are really large and and the way
00:23:51.880they're described in the sources um among them bohemund uh who ends up he's in the he's one of
00:23:57.480the leaders of the first crusade and he ends up becoming essentially the prince of antioch after
00:24:02.460it was conquered in 1098 and anna the daughter of the aforementioned byzantine emperor describes him
00:24:09.240and you can just tell she's awed by him she's just you know there was a he's just this giant
00:24:14.340and just kind of like he terrified her just looking at him.
00:24:17.420So I imagine there was a lot of that going on
00:24:19.940that these Eastern peoples and the Byzantines had not seen.
00:24:23.100But it is true that amongst the Franks generally,
00:24:27.020that's the word even in the Arabic today,
00:24:29.060when they talk about crusaders or today in Arabic,
00:24:31.540if you want to say someone's European or Europeanized or looks European,
00:24:35.480you say Frank, El Frange, because that's in the Arabic mentality,
00:24:40.080goes all the way back to the Crusades.0.86
00:24:41.740That's what a white person is or a Christian is.0.81
00:24:44.340And generally that was the Francia. Okay. But the North, of course, you have the Norman who were different in their own slight culture. But of course, as time goes by, they get, they do become conflated with the Franks to some degree. But yeah, they, again, they do stand out. They'd stand out for their, their martial prowess. That's for sure. As do other, other Franks.0.73
00:25:07.740We're going to get to that in a second.
00:25:09.600We're going to get to the call and all that.
00:25:11.200I want to thank our sponsors, Birch Gold.
00:25:31.360It'll give you, I think, a better understanding of fiat currency
00:25:35.400and physical gold in the history of this country, also in the history of the world and why it's been
00:25:40.700a hedge for mankind for 3,000 years, a hedge against times of financial and geopolitical
00:25:46.180disturbance or turbulence. Remember, that's a fancy term for war, just like we say kinetic
00:25:54.300activity. Go today, talk to Philip Patrick and the team, particularly with what's going on in
00:25:58.540the Middle East. Hey, isn't it wild? We're here talking about the first crusade that went in the
00:26:03.480And guess what? We're talking as President Trump's heading to Beijing, heading to China about the Middle East War and what part Beijing is going to have in sorting this out, this great powers talk President Trump's going to have.
00:26:19.600Brother Ibrahim, Ibrahim is with me, the author of a trilogy of amazing books about the Crusades.
00:26:25.900We're talking now about the Crusades for young men.
00:26:28.740And we're going to pivot now to the first crusade, a couple of the big personalities and what happened with it.
00:26:34.620Chapter, chapter 845 War Room, 845 War Room.
00:26:39.120You get a free, no obligation, talk to a data specialist about Medicare and your Medicare plan.
00:31:24.300Stephen K. Band. Raymond Ibrahim is with me, the author of just three incredible books. So well,
00:31:33.400they read like novels. And if you want to give young people in your life, and particularly young
00:31:39.080men in your life, I strongly recommend you always start with Volume 2, Defenders of the West,
00:31:44.760these vignettes about these great warriors. Every young man you have will be jacked up
00:31:50.940after they read it. The whole trilogy you got to read, starting with the overall war,
00:31:56.220a sword and scimitar, and then you've got Defenders of the West, and then you've got
00:32:00.560Two Swords of Christ about the military orders, the monks of the Knights Templar
00:32:06.640and the Hospitallers, St. John. Just enormous, incredible stories. The Normans, and the reason
00:32:13.720is this is a multi-part series we're going to do, Raymond. The Normans are so important for the
00:32:19.620whole story. They had just, and this is the Normans, just to keep it simple, are really the Vikings
00:32:25.380mixed in with French gals, right? It's, they came down and went up the rivers and into France,
00:32:33.440and they became a military powerhouse. They eventually took Malta and Sicily, and they had
00:32:39.480a whole empire based on their military prowess. They took England, in 1066 at Hastings, they
00:32:47.060redefeated the Saxons, and then had a role. And of course, if you read, you know, if you're a kid
00:32:52.840raised on Robin Hood, the Normans were considered not the good guys, right? They were kind of
00:32:57.420hammers. They had a certain Viking way about them. But that's why the Pope particularly knew that,
00:33:03.760hey, the odds are so long that I'm going to form a Christian army in the West and march that army0.94
00:33:12.580or take it by sale to one of the most inhospitable places in the world, the Middle East,0.99
00:33:18.000and I'm going to take on a group that has essentially conquered most of the known world in their area in five or six hundred years.0.96
00:33:28.900That would be the Islamic forces, now with the Seljuk Turks, but they had already conquered so much coming out of Saudi Arabia.0.90
00:33:36.280The odds are that are a billion to one.1.00
00:33:38.600I guess I'm going to go find the baddest hombres I can find, and that's the Normans.1.00
00:33:44.000Particularly, you had this system where the lead son gets everything.0.57
00:33:48.400You've got these other lads who are not in order of going to control anything, and they're a little rowdy.
00:33:56.480And so the culture has a problem with the male martial attitudes of these people.
00:34:03.520Why does the pope decide to go there, and what's the message he gives in that field?
00:34:08.600no just i'm going to answer that but before i do because you brought up a very interesting point
00:34:13.120about the normans and the battle of hastings and you know they did something else actually these
00:34:18.060normans uh a little around the time of the battle of hastings and before the first crusade which is
00:34:22.300they conquered islamic sicily uh reconquered it and that was also another pivotal event that is
00:34:27.880a sort of precursor uh to the first crusade and it happened again my dates are a little fuzzy but
00:34:33.160I want to say 1060s or maybe 1070s, where they go in and they conquer from the Muslims, the Arabs, the Saracens at the time.
00:34:42.560So that may as well have been one of the reasons that someone like Pope Urban II did target them because they already had that experience.1.00
00:34:50.640They've proven their mettle against the Muslims and were successful.0.96
00:34:54.660They were proving it in England as well against the Saxons.0.95
00:34:57.220So definitely he saw them as the creme de la creme of martial violence.
00:35:03.540As to your other question, your main question, this is also the time of the truce of God and the peace of God.0.58
00:35:11.160And the church is trying to basically tame these men, the Normans, the Franks in general, from fighting amongst each other.
00:35:19.920And this is why part of the message of Pope Urban and other ecclesiastical authorities right around the First Crusade was, you know, okay, you have this violence, this violent impulse.
00:35:32.740Well, let's marshal it and use it for a good cause in defense of the widow, of the orphan, of the poor pilgrim who's traveling.
00:35:40.300Why fight the actual enemies of Christ, not your fellow brethren?
00:35:44.400And I think that very much resonated with them because it's true.0.99
00:35:48.580um and this is you see this now as a major shift uh the first crusade whereby you know knights and
00:35:55.300these landed barons and normans are who normally fight with each other um because they have a
00:36:00.800proclivity for that sort of thing now start uh gearing it towards a much more noble cause which
00:36:06.420is fighting uh again in keeping with christ's commandment for their fellow man and for god
00:36:11.520himself uh by liberating the holy land so i think that is definitely one of the reasons it resonated
00:36:16.660with these particular kinds of men. And he sent emissary now to preach that gospel,
00:36:22.900essentially, that we have to recruit there. But it's very specific. You can walk us through it,
00:36:28.420but they were actually calling for the organization of a Christian army to essentially go on a crusade,
00:36:35.380a pilgrimage, to the Middle East and take back not simply the Holy Land, but to take back
00:36:41.700Jerusalem as the great poem. I think it's from Tasso in the Middle Ages. Jerusalem delivered, sir.
00:36:50.040And this, you know, here we really come to one of the very first obvious points that most
00:36:55.500people don't notice. Most historians don't mention the people who will tell you that the
00:36:59.240crusades were waged for cynical reasons. It was about second sons trying to get land and this
00:37:03.920sort of thing. If that was the case, you know, what they're doing, these people with this
00:37:08.420interpretation is they're completely missing the extreme labor that went on that went hand in hand
00:37:13.840with crusading so first of all a lot of these men who were landed and uh were rich and godfrey of
00:37:20.560bouillon raymond of toulouse who were captains of the first crusade they actually mortgaged their
00:37:25.120land and uh some of them were in debt just to raise money so they can go crusading and they
00:37:30.440already had land they lost their titles they gave it up they um just to go and fight in the holy
00:37:35.220one number two you know what why can't they if you want to be cynical why don't you just attack
00:37:40.500your neighbor like they had been doing why travel thousands of miles on horseback or on foot for the
00:37:46.220average pilgrim through dangerous enemy hostile enemy territory where most crusaders and the
00:37:52.860people who went on the first crusade about 70 percent of them either died or actually gave up
00:37:57.500and went home just from the actual from the journey itself because of the starvation of the
00:38:03.000disease, lack of water. When you hear about these stories about, you know, crusaders turning to
00:38:08.340cannibalism, it's because of that, because of extreme duress, where they were in positions
00:38:13.260of starvation, and they would, you know, eat corpses. Muslims had done the same as well,0.99
00:38:17.900for example, during the siege of Constantinople in 717. But so my point is, there's a lot of
00:38:24.460easier ways to have gone about it than doing this. And also another very obvious difference between
00:38:30.120the Crusaders and the Muslims, which really highlights the idealism or the idealistic0.96
00:38:36.660nature of Crusaders. That is to say that they weren't out just to conquer. They were out
00:38:40.880specifically out to reconquer the Holy Land itself. And that's not what Muslims ever did.1.00
00:38:46.420What Muslims always did is right from their first base, beginning in Arabia, they attacked1.00
00:38:51.520their immediate neighbors, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Persia. And then once they consolidated those1.00
00:38:57.220areas then they attacked the next region so from egypt they would attack libya and so forth and
00:39:02.100that's the smart way to do it of course because you have your reserves right there you're not
00:39:06.380thrown in the middle of enemy enemy territory that's why it was much more successful and
00:39:10.880pragmatic the islamic conquest because it wasn't idealistic it was just who's the easiest target0.92
00:39:15.720oh it's the guy right next to me i'm gonna attack him the crusaders didn't do that they weren't out0.68
00:39:20.460to conquer anyone they were out to liberate the very important piece of holy land to them uh
00:39:26.400because that's where christ walked so that's where he was crucified resurrected um and that sort of
00:39:31.960thing so so it was very idealistic they threw themselves in the lines then getting there
00:39:36.360itself was a horrific journey that most of them died from and they lost so much money so ultimately
00:39:43.160what we're saying here is that for the first crusade definitely and most of the other ones
00:39:48.140as well too but definitely because we're talking about the first crusade the number one reason was
00:39:52.400sincere piety okay sincere piety let's i want to talk i'm going to drill down a second because i
00:39:57.960think this is a good lesson for young men these uh men were hard they were hard men these guys
00:40:05.600were fighters they were warriors like you said the normans had already conquered sicily they had
00:40:09.780um taken at hastings uh beaten the saxons who were also from viking blood so there was these
00:40:17.560they're taking on the toughest, and they're beating them. And other people associated
00:40:23.300with the Normans. That's not simply the Normans. These men were also, because in the medieval,
00:40:28.520in the Middle Ages worldview, they were also deeply Christian, right? But they had faults.
00:40:35.540They knew they had sinned. Part of this, because indulgences later got so out of control,
00:40:42.940it was one of the reasons that the reform of the church got traction from Luther and others
00:40:49.540about these indulgences. Was it not something that the church said that if you go on this crusade
00:40:55.920and you're there and you go all in on trying to take back the Holy Land, and particularly Jerusalem,
00:41:02.780that you will get a special indulgence, you will get saved, and these guys in their own hearts,
00:41:08.100knowing that they were devout Christians, but not perfect people, that this kind of combined
00:41:13.460two things saying, hey, look, with all the problems I'm going to have, if I sign up for this,0.59
00:41:19.040I got a path to eternal life. Yeah, a lot of that is correct, but I would caution people to keep in
00:41:29.740mind that this has to be understood through a Catholic paradigm, and it wasn't about salvation.
00:41:34.160It was about avoiding purgatory or lessening it in as much as they could.
00:41:41.540And this is actually one of the reasons people try to attack the Crusades, because they make it sound as, oh, the Pope was selling salvation.
00:41:50.600Actually, the idea of salvation was still that it was through Christ, through baptism, through grace, and so forth.
00:41:57.120But because of the Catholic notion of purgatory, unless you lived an absolutely sinless life, you would still have to go there, which was extreme suffering after this life.
00:42:08.980But it just shows you that to these people, they took it seriously, and they were trying as much as they could to avoid that long suffering which they knew.
00:42:16.680And lessening the suffering in purgatory, which obviously came – purgatory became a big issue in the Reformation.
00:42:22.800But in the purgatory, they're making the direct connection that your profession of combat arms can lessen your time in purgatory.
00:42:45.540Right. Because everybody there was kind of they were advanced amateurs or or professionals that in the in the profession of combat arms, I can actually lessen my time in purgatory and get to heaven quicker. Correct.
00:43:00.120Yes. And the flip side of that is because they were armed warriors, they knew they were going to go to purgatory because engaging in so much violence and bloodshed, much of which, of course, was not just, you know, so they were trying to use their weakness, which was making them spend a lot of time in purgatory, to help them get out of spending so much time in purgatory by instead of engaging in unrighteous violence, engaging in just warfare.
00:47:21.280And he was, I think, even when I wrote Two Swords of Christ, I mentioned him as a sort of predecessor of the Knights of the Temple.
00:47:29.880He's the kind of guy they were modeling because he also was monastic, that he never got married because he was constantly involved in warfare.
00:47:37.220Due to his piety, he was elected to become the first king of Jerusalem.
00:47:40.700And he refused it on condition that he not be called king and instead be called defender or protector of the Holy Sepulcher.
00:47:48.340and he famously said, I will not wear a crown of gold
00:47:51.880where my savior wore a crown of thorns.
00:47:54.460Okay, so that's the kind of man that he was
00:48:17.700You stay in this desert with hostile people all around you in constant warfare.
00:48:23.180Not exactly a great deal or a great bargain, but he chose it, he opted for it, and he died.1.00
00:48:28.920He only lasted for a year before he finally died without giving too much away, but there's good reason to believe he was poisoned by a Muslim.1.00
00:48:37.420But that's the paradigmatic type of character.1.00
00:48:40.960I want to get into all that real quickly.
00:48:44.500I want people, for this exercise, the second book is probably the best, but the other two, and I tell people, get all three of them, because you get the overview of the war, and you can see so many relevant kind of facts of the day.
00:48:58.800The second volume right there, the Defenders of the West, and the third volume about the two military orders, the Knights of St. John and the Knights of Templar.
00:49:06.020Just give me a minute or so on all three of the books, your research, the years writing it, your great love of this time and this tale.
00:49:17.000Thanks, Steve, for the opportunity and just to follow up on what you said.
00:49:20.020The three books can be read in any order.
00:49:21.980And so for someone to grab Defenders of the West, if they really want heroism, inspiring stories, which are based on, of course, the long story, the long war between Islam and the West.
00:49:32.520yeah you're right defenders of the west fills in the spot the first but if you want to read them
00:49:37.380all and if you want to really get it in the first book would give you the most general introduction
00:49:41.880it's assumed that you know the reader doesn't know much so the first book sword and scimitar
00:49:46.120really covers the long history of conflict between islam and the west from the rise of islam in the
00:49:51.2607th century up until america's first war with islam first war as a nation which is the first
00:49:56.140Barbary Wars. So that'll give you the lay of the land. Defenders of the West, it's the same0.71
00:50:03.480terrain, but told through the eyes and lives of these various defenders that I highlight. Each
00:50:09.040chapter is basically a mini biography. And the Two Swords of Christ is like both of them. It's
00:50:14.640really, this is the one that's focused on the Crusades. Because even though I wasn't writing
00:50:18.540about the Crusades, I was writing about the military orders, and they are inseparable from
00:50:22.540the Crusades. So really the book, if you wanted the deepest dive of the Crusades, it's the Two
00:50:27.140Swords of Christ, but it also gets into the religious theology behind it, the rationale,
00:50:34.640the Christian rationale of warfare that we're talking about, because so many people don't know,
00:50:39.140how can you be a Christian and fight back? Well, you're going to see that these guys were as pious
00:50:43.540as they come, kind of like what I just, even more so from Godfrey, what I described, because they
00:50:48.800literally took vows of monks but they were just the most you know like berserk on the field in
00:50:55.740warfare so how did they rationalize it so i definitely get into the theology of of of that
00:51:00.620but it even goes way beyond the first crusade because at least one of those orders outlasted
00:51:05.620the first crusade the crusades and actually still alive till this day the knights of saint john of
00:51:10.900course um so yeah thanks for the opportunity i got into this field because you could just see
00:51:15.860how appealing this sort of thing is. And at one point, we're going to talk about why it's so
00:51:19.580appealing and why it's being suppressed. Social media, where do people go? We go to Amazon to
00:51:26.640get the books. Where do they go to social media and your website? My website is RaymondDeBrahim.com
00:51:32.540and you'll see links to social media and so forth. And definitely check out my YouTube channel just
00:51:37.380by my name. You can also type in Holy War because that's what I deal with. But my website should
00:51:43.300have all of my social media links. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Look forward to part
00:51:50.100two. Thank you, sir. These books are amazing. Give volume two, get it for a young man in your
00:51:57.920life. You'll see a change right away because he reads about the great defenders of the Christian
00:52:02.740West. Birchgold.com. Take your phone out. Text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N at 989898. Get the ultimate
00:52:10.820guide is totally free no obligation to investing in gold and precious metals in the age of trump