Washington Redskins to retire controversial team name following review

[Oexmelin]

The point is if the Crusades were a shameful act that the West should feel contrition for, why doesn't the same apply to any the original Muslim conquests?

I think that point is best discussed separately from the naming of sports teams - which I suspect is Sheilbh's point.

[Sheilbh]

The point is if the Crusades were a shameful act that the West should feel contrition for, why doesn't the same apply to any the original Muslim conquests?

I'm not sure it's anything to do with shame. This is a question of whether it's something we want, now, to be honouring or naming school teams after.

And, you know, "Western" opinion has always shifted on this - rationalist 18th century historians looked on it pretty negatively (but this was a time when the Medieval was really being defined as barbaric/backwards in contrast to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment); in the romantic (and colonialist) 19th century it was seen far more positively by historians and writers, artists etc (but again the Medieval came back into fashion). There's no answer - every record of civilisation is record of barbarism but our moods and perspectives and attitudes to them change and, generally, reflect our times not some truth about the past.

Personally though, I'd be inclined to say the difference is longevity. The Frankish incursion into the Middle East is a fleeting and devastating moment moment - looting Constantinople, cannibalism in Syria, the destruction of Oriental Christian communities. It's a small scale, pale version of the Mongols or Tamerlane turning up. The Muslim invasion results in a civilisation that lasts for 1500 years from 650 to the current day.

All invasions are probably equally awful, I think there's a tendency that I certainly have, to view invasions that result in a long-term presence, the construction of great cities and civilisations and sort of peaceful territories/spaces more sympathetically than predatory, flash in the pan invasions that last a couple of hundred years and leave very little (castles?) - so the reconquista is judged far less harshly than the crusades though historically they could be framed in a similar way. The invasion may be the original sin but it's kind of mitigated by what is built after - so you need to win and you need to not just strip everything that isn't nailed down.

[Camerus]

What about the English invasion and conquest of North America? That has lasted for centuries now and clearly cannot be considered a "flash in the pan" - yet it would be hard to argue, notwithstanding the achievements of the North Americans, that the passage of time has gradually increased its moral acceptability. However views on it in 200 years will likely yet be different, and in 500 yet again.

I strongly suspect the current trend of Crusades being treated morally differently from the Muslim conquest is more an example of "who, whom? " morality than any other factor.

[Razgovory]

I wonder though... my high school was a Jesuit all-boys school.  It's team name is the Crusaders.  Is a name like that going to last?  I'm sure they'd get huge alumni pushback if they tried to change it, but if area sports leagues threatened to kick the school out if they don't change it?

My HS team was the Crusaders too.  Small world.

I think the name will come under pressure, but I think it's a totally illegitimate beef.  It's grounded principally on the fact that Crusaders were aimed at conquering land from Muslims.  Well guess what?  Muslims conquered it to begin with.  How is one conquest acceptable and the other not?

The HS team for the Catholic school in my town is also "The Crusaders".  Everyone in town just calls them bunnies.  Nobody seems to remember why, but Raz knows!

[Valmy]

Crusader rabbit was a cartoon way back in the day wasn't it?

[grumbler]

Though I know the two words are not at all perfect parallels, but one might argue that both are just the same concepts in different languages.  Or something like, "I don't believe in God, I believe in Allah!"

But you're point is a fair one...but might not be if the Islamic world had US-like high schools and teams. 

Except that a crusade is not an explicitly religious concept, whereas a Jihad is.  There have been many crusades against things like alcohol or crime or racism. 

The Caped Crusader isn't so nicknamed for his Catholic piety! 

It's certainly a name I would avid in a multicultural society, but having such a name isn't shameful.

[Razgovory]

Crusader rabbit was a cartoon way back in the day wasn't it?

Yep.  That's where the name comes from.

[Sheilbh]

Except that a crusade is not an explicitly religious concept, whereas a Jihad is.  There have been many crusades against things like alcohol or crime or racism. 

The Caped Crusader isn't so nicknamed for his Catholic piety! 

Yeah that's fair. I mean the concept itself was described as a holy war at the time and my understanding is Crusade was a later portmanteau (derived from "cross-ed") to position it in a slightly more neutral way by Renaissance and Enlightenment writers (who were at pains to distinguish themselves from their backward Medieval past).

It's since been used in other ways as you say but even then I slightly wonder when that started happening and the context because, and this could be nonsense, but it feels like quite a high Victorian/Edwardian style. I can imagine you know a "Crusade against Idleness" or "Crusade against Inebriation" - lots of women in sashes with big hats. It is striking that we possibly did still use it in a moral context against "bad things". Even the old Harold Wilson line "Labour is a moral crusade or it is nothing". None of it's explicitly religious, but it's all moral exhortation - which is possibly different from similar modern versions: the war on cancer, the war on drugs, the Green New Deal - which are all in some way about the total commitment of the state not something individual or moral.

And you know my understanding is that jihad is also used in that way in the Muslim world as well, so there are public health campaigns that are jihads and I'm not sure that's a million miles from our use - I've definitely heard of jihads on smoking.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It would be better for a speaker of Arabic to chip in, but I don't think we have one; my understanding is that jihad simply means struggle or striving................so its most important meaning is an individual's struggle to be a better person. Unfortunately we Westerners generally came across the word first as it was used by violent Islamists, so it became naturalised into the English language in that restricted sense.

Similarly we have an Al-Quds fast food joint in Preston, might sound a bit dodgy but simply indicates that it is owned by Palestinians.

[Sheilbh]

It would be better for a speaker of Arabic to chip in, but I don't think we have one; my understanding is that jihad simply means struggle or striving................so its most important meaning is an individual's struggle to be a better person. Unfortunately we Westerners generally came across the word first as it was used by violent Islamists, so it became naturalised into the English language in that restricted sense.

Similarly we have an Al-Quds fast food joint in Preston, might sound a bit dodgy but simply indicates that it is owned by Palestinians.

Yeah - and it would be interesting to hear the sort of take from the Arab world especially on the word "crusade" because I imagine for them it has the similar overtones of sort of violence and religious fervour. So I wonder if they hear those various crusades that Westerners have talked about and probably think "those crazy Christians"

I read a book a while ago on the Crusades through Muslim eyes - which was about the records from Muslim writers at the time. And it is very striking that the Mongols happen shortly afterwards and, from memory, the Arab writers really see these two invasions as very similar. They are almost locust like, out of the blue attacks that were, at the time, perceived as unprecedentedly brutal and violent, which makes sense.

One thing that would be interesting would be the perspevtives of Oriental and Orthodox Christians on the Crusades both as an event and as a concept. It was devastating for Oriental Christians because they were perceived as potential fifth columnists by one side and as heretics by the other, so really suffered at the hands of both. But also while the Orthodox sort of prompted the Crusades as a way of helping in their own fight against the Turks, it backfired pretty horrendously. I could be wrong but I suspect it's not seen as a neutral term in Orthodox histories, or the views of, say, Armenian or Nestorian or Coptic writers.

[Valmy]

It would be better for a speaker of Arabic to chip in, but I don't think we have one; my understanding is that jihad simply means struggle or striving................so its most important meaning is an individual's struggle to be a better person. Unfortunately we Westerners generally came across the word first as it was used by violent Islamists, so it became naturalised into the English language in that restricted sense.

Similarly we have an Al-Quds fast food joint in Preston, might sound a bit dodgy but simply indicates that it is owned by Palestinians.

Yeah and in English Crusaders doesn't just refer to some event that happened in the Middle Ages either. Unless you think Franklin Roosevelt thought that D-Day was about hundreds of thousands of allied troops landing in the Holy Land and butchering Muslims. We ran into this problem back in 2001 when Dubya used that term when referring to the struggle against terrorism. It just meant a righteous struggle not some ancient historical thing.

[Valmy]

I read a book a while ago on the Crusades through Muslim eyes - which was about the records from Muslim writers at the time. And it is very striking that the Mongols happen shortly afterwards and, from memory, the Arab writers really see these two invasions as very similar. They are almost locust like, out of the blue attacks that were, at the time, perceived as unprecedentedly brutal and violent, which makes sense.

Yes I think we are all aware of that book. We are all Crusader Kings players here for the most part.

I totally get that in the context of modern Imperialism suddenly the Crusades became this big deal, but I have a hard time imagining that during the Ottoman Empire Arabs were sitting around being traumatized by one of many invasions and wars from hundreds of years ago. I mean the conquest of Cilicia by the Byzantines was a pretty brutal and vicious event, complete with slavery and genocide...yet I don't think the memory of that matters much because there is no recent Greek empire dominating the Arabs to put it in a moden perspective. I am sure it was very humiliating and enraging at the time seeing Muslim rulers having to bow and pay tribute to an infidel and seeing so many Muslims enslaved and driven from their homes. But they eventually won several centuries later, so no big deal now.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah and in English Crusaders doesn't just refer to some event that happened in the Middle Ages either. Unless you think Franklin Roosevelt thought that D-Day was about hundreds of thousands of allied troops landing in the Holy Land and butchering Muslims. We ran into this problem back in 2001 when Dubya used that term when referring to the struggle against terrorism. It just meant a righteous struggle not some ancient historical thing.

Although as I say the "righteous" struggle element is interesting and surely linked to this being a workd originally for a divinely sanctioned holy war. So it still arguably has that slight religious element to it. There a righteousness about how it's used.

I totally get that in the context of modern Imperialism suddenly the Crusades became this big deal, but I have a hard time imagining that during the Ottoman Empire Arabs were sitting around being traumatized by one of many invasions and wars from hundreds of years ago. I mean the conquest of Cilicia by the Byzantines was a pretty brutal and vicious event, complete with slavery and genocide...yet I don't think the memory of that matters much because there is no recent Greek empire dominating the Arabs to put it in a moden perspective. I am sure it was very humiliating and enraging at the time seeing Muslim rulers having to bow and pay tribute to an infidel and seeing so many Muslims enslaved and driven from their homes. But they eventually won several centuries later, so no big deal now.

I mean the book, from memory - I read it years ago - is about contemporary Arab reactions and frankly it reminds me of the stuff you read in English history about when the Vikings arrive. So it's not even about Ottoman era writers looking back, it's about the reaction of 11th century chroniclers - who are just like "WTF IS HAPPENING?" Which is basically the response of chroniclers in the east of the Muslim world when the Mongols turn up a few centuries later

Also on that I think there's a query on who won. You know you're talking about Ottoman Empire Arabs and Arabs didn't run the Ottoman Empire. Actually you've got the Crusades, then the Mongols and the Turks intermittently throughout in this age of invasions. So I wonder if it's more like - I don't the end of Rome - there's all these invasions from different people, looting all over the place and now we have a German Emperor for 1000 years

[derspiess]

I think the name will come under pressure, but I think it's a totally illegitimate beef.  It's grounded principally on the fact that Crusaders were aimed at conquering land from Muslims.  Well guess what?  Muslims conquered it to begin with.  How is one conquest acceptable and the other not?

Are there many high school teams named, say, the Rashidun Jihadis?

Gosh I hope so, that would be cool.

There is that high school in California that goes by the Mighty Arabs: https://gomightyarabs.com/

[PDH]

There is that high school in California that goes by the Mighty Arabs: https://gomightyarabs.com/

Coachella doesn't count as an actual place.