Rodney Stark preachin' to the choir

Was visiting the in-laws over the Thanksgiving holidays, and Missus Avdat called my attention to this article in the hometown paper profiling a new book by Rodney Stark titled God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades. I am always leery of mainstream journalism's coverage of religion, but if they've got this one right, then readers ought to be equally leery of Stark's acumen as a historian. In short, the Muslims had it coming, and the Crusaders were motivated by pious zeal, not a desire to loot and pillage.

From the article:

"I suspect that Muslims will hate the book, and I'm sorry about that," Stark said. "That's just the way the world is. I make no apologies or real accusations."

This is a non-apology apology worthy of our best politicians and celebrities. And from an academic! Yeah team!

Stark has a small point, but I'm afraid it may be lost in an attempt to write a quotable and contrarian best-seller. George Marsden wrote that for Jonathan Edwards, "Hell was as real a place as China," and the same was true for Medieval Christians. A plenary indulgence was a powerful inducement to march on the Holy Land, one that modern people have a hard time wrapping their heads around.

On the other hand, one cannot ignore the economic forces at work. It's no coincidence that the Normans conquered England and Sicily in the same century that the first Crusade was launched. The warrior class was running out of turf to fight over in western Europe.

But a book sub-titled The Case for the Crusades would appear to do more than emphasize religious factors neglected in current scholarship. According to the Amazon reviews Stark argues that the Muslims were worse than they're made out to be (an argument in search of a target; seriously, how many apologists for Medieval Islam can you come up with?), and that the West owes them nothing, not even Arabic numerals.

With certain egregious exceptions (i.e., Nazi Germany)I get really impatient really quick with arguments about which culture, religion, society or era was better or worse than another. I mean, who has a computer and a moral compass up to crunching that data?

But what most people don't know is that the current arrangement between a technologically advanced West and a natural resource rich Orient was reversed in the Middle Ages--the difference being that that the natural resource was European wood, rather than Middle Eastern oil. When scholars inform the public that when London and Paris were towns of 25,000, Baghdad boasted a million residents, and that European intellectuals had to relearn Aristotle from the Arabs, and that cynical popes preached Crusades against political enemies within Western Europe as well as Muslims, they are educating people.

But I suspect that Stark's book will just confirm the ignorant in their biases.

Comments

[Thomas J. Bridges]

Thanks for keeping my auto-response to the mention of Stark one of puke and curses. I cannot believe this guy. I wrote a paper about his book on "freedom, capitalism, and western success," and...I suppose I should have expected this next.

And thanks for the conversation about Origen over at AUFS. (It drew me over here to browse).

Peace,
Thomas

[Rasha]

Well, Baghdad was indeed populated by millions when London & Paris were hosting much smaller populations, but thats just not due to Islam.

Islam was created in the 7th century,travel back 3000 years from that time to ancient Mesopotemia, and the regions of Baghdad were still far more civilized compared to the regions of Britain & France, & this was long before Islam.

The regions which Islam conquered-Iraq, Iran, the Indian sub continent, Egypt etc were superpowers, extremely developed regions for many millennia before they became Musim.

While the regions which became Christian-with the exceptions of Greece & Rome, were extremely backward before Christianity & for millennia after Christianity.

Why?

The terrific weather conditions, rivers, fertile soil of all these places. Iran, Iraq, Egypt & the Indian sub continent are cradles of civilization, they'd been great pre Islam & would continue to be so had Islam not invaded them.

If Baghdad supported bigger populations compared to London & Paris, it was the weather & soil conditions which made agriculture easy & gave society opportunity for leisure, life was extremely harsh in London & Paris, not to mention Scandinavia.

And Stark was right, the Arab numerals aren't Arab, 0 isn't Arab either, its Indian. Invented by pre Islamic Hindu\Buddhist polytheists.

I don't see why the West should owe the Muslims their invention, Muslims had blocked the Silk route, so the Arabic numerals came via them, had they not blocked the Silk route, Europeans would have direct access to those.

[Tim O'Neill]

Stark's book might seem to make a plausible case to the non-specialist, but critical analysis shows it is riddled with errors, full of convenient use of selective evidence and undermined by flawed arguments. He manages to debunk a few myths about the Crusades, but his apologetic argument simply does not work.

For detailed critical analysis see:

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2010/05/gods-battalions-case-for-crusades-by.html