Washington Redskins to retire controversial team name following review

[garbon]

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

Coachella doesn't count as an actual place.

I'm sad that it is increasingly common to be the place in the Desert that people are familiar with rather than Palm Springs.

[Sheilbh]

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

Coachella doesn't count as an actual place.

I'm sad that it is increasingly common to be the place in the Desert that people are familiar with rather than Palm Springs.

Maybe the Andy Samberg movie will change that?

[garbon]

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/

I guess that's because it is near Mecca.

[Malthus]

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

My favorite WTF moment from the Crusades is how Richard I came to be associated in the popular imagination of the late medieval period with cannibalism. 😄

Fact is that the *First* Crusade definitely had an "invasion by alien locusts" feel to it, but that was certainly not true of *subsequent* crusades - because by that time European powers were part of the local landscape and there had been a lot of (involuntary) cultural exchange between European and Local cultures. In the same way as "Normans" were not the alien threat that the first Vikings were. Of course, in both cases they were still a military threat, but just not with the same sense of disconcerting alien-ness to it.

In the case of the Crusades, the First Crusade definitely had incidents that would give rise to concern by the locals (above and beyond those normal to war at the time), such as incidents of cannibalism on the locals by the invaders ... which seem to have later been attributed, completely incorrectly, to Richard I.

[Sheilbh]

My favorite WTF moment from the Crusades is how Richard I came to be associated in the popular imagination of the late medieval period with cannibalism. 😄

Fact is that the *First* Crusade definitely had an "invasion by alien locusts" feel to it, but that was certainly not true of *subsequent* crusades - because by that time European powers were part of the local landscape and there had been a lot of (involuntary) cultural exchange between European and Local cultures. In the same way as "Normans" were not the alien threat that the first Vikings were. Of course, in both cases they were still a military threat, but just not with the same sense of disconcerting alien-ness to it.

In the case of the Crusades, the First Crusade definitely had incidents that would give rise to concern by the locals (above and beyond those normal to war at the time), such as incidents of cannibalism on the locals by the invaders ... which seem to have later been attributed, completely incorrectly, to Richard I.

Yeah - absolutely. The reactions at the time seem to basically go from "WTF IS HAPPENING", to a sort-of self reflection and loss of credibility and authority by the Abbasids, to, by the end, a sort "The Franks are at it again" attitude. At which point the Mongols arrive and the region has another "WTF" moment.

But I think the flipside is that from the perspective of the region the First Crusade is the one that has this shock, alien arrival aspect. But maybe from our Western perspective I think arguably the later Crusades are sort of the ones that discredit the whole enterprise because the first ones you can say are products of European society, but sort of are motivated by religion while later on it was just the Venetians turning up and looting anything that isn't nailed down

[Tonitrus]

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.

I know it has been gone over in many great replies since, but doesn't that say more about the differences in the evolution of each of the languages?  Or has "crusader" always had a lower-key meaning?

[Oexmelin]

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

Yes. The book is probably by Amin Maalouf - it draws from Ibn al-Qualanisi, Ibn Jubair, and a few others from the 11th and 12th centuries.

[HVC]

In the case of the Crusades, the First Crusade definitely had incidents that would give rise to concern by the locals (above and beyond those normal to war at the time), such as incidents of cannibalism on the locals by the invaders ... which seem to have later been attributed, completely incorrectly, to Richard I.

Googling brings this up as the second result

http://languish.org/forums/index.php?topic=11039.0

you're part of the problem!

[grumbler]

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.

Jihad doesn't "simply" mean struggle or striving, it mans struggle to support moral standards (which are defined in the Koran).  I don't think any Arabic-speaker would use the term outside its Muslim meanings, because it was a concept so important to Mohammed (and the Hadith that came after his death).  They distinguished between the internal jihad (the struggle to obey god's laws) and the external one (the one to extend the blessings of Islam and protect the faithful from harm).  Even the external one didn't necessarily involve violence; that majority of conversions to Islam came from contact with Muslim traders, not Muslim warriors.

I agree that "jihad" has an unfortunate a context in English as crusade does in Arabic, but I would argue that the terms are very different in how secular their meanings have become in their own languages.

[Malthus]

My favorite WTF moment from the Crusades is how Richard I came to be associated in the popular imagination of the late medieval period with cannibalism. 😄

Fact is that the *First* Crusade definitely had an "invasion by alien locusts" feel to it, but that was certainly not true of *subsequent* crusades - because by that time European powers were part of the local landscape and there had been a lot of (involuntary) cultural exchange between European and Local cultures. In the same way as "Normans" were not the alien threat that the first Vikings were. Of course, in both cases they were still a military threat, but just not with the same sense of disconcerting alien-ness to it.

In the case of the Crusades, the First Crusade definitely had incidents that would give rise to concern by the locals (above and beyond those normal to war at the time), such as incidents of cannibalism on the locals by the invaders ... which seem to have later been attributed, completely incorrectly, to Richard I.

Yeah - absolutely. The reactions at the time seem to basically go from "WTF IS HAPPENING", to a sort-of self reflection and loss of credibility and authority by the Abbasids, to, by the end, a sort "The Franks are at it again" attitude. At which point the Mongols arrive and the region has another "WTF" moment.

But I think the flipside is that from the perspective of the region the First Crusade is the one that has this shock, alien arrival aspect. But maybe from our Western perspective I think arguably the later Crusades are sort of the ones that discredit the whole enterprise because the first ones you can say are products of European society, but sort of are motivated by religion while later on it was just the Venetians turning up and looting anything that isn't nailed down

The best example of this process is the "crusade" of Fredrick II "Stupor Mundi" which actually succeeded in getting Jerusalem!

... via a backroom deal with his buddy, the Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt, that basically leased the territory to the Christians for a decade. Much to the disgust of other "crusaders", who (I) wanted to see Fredrick occupied for years fighting in the holy land, and (I I) thought that crusading meant fighting the infidels, not doing deals with them.

[Valmy]

Frederick knew how to get it done.

[The Minsky Moment]

Except his own succession.

[Threviel]

Also gaining back Jerusalem for christianity while excommunicated and the pope not lifting the excommunication.

[Caliga]

They went with 'Washington Commanders'.

I am: ok with that.

[ulmont]

They went with 'Washington Commanders'.

I am: ok with that.

Go commies?