Middle Nation Book Discussion: the Crusades Through Arab Eyes | Session One

Welcome all. This is the first and hopefully not last, discussion of the crusades from Arabis, by the author Amin Malouf. So a quick intro. Amin Malouf is a Lebanese French. He's, I think, given right now in France.

He's a Christian Maronite. He has some bibliography regarding, you know, his his written some novels. And he also writes, you know, in cultural things and cultural aspects and that kind of stuff. This book is one of his is one of his productions. It's called the critics for Arab eyes.

What drew, the group's attention middle nation's attention to that book is that it is one of the few books that does, tell the story of the, quote, unquote, crusades through Arab sources exclusively. It does not include any Latin sources in its narrative, which makes it valuable for us in the in the Muslim world because it's all and it tells us as Muslims and tells the the rest of the world the story through our own eyes and the unspeakable horrors and all of that to our own eyes. And we always attach, you know, trust to our narrator to our historians and to our narrators because they are naturally Muslims. So we we hold that to be very, very reliable indeed. So the crusades.

Right? Where to start? So the crusades is is let us start with two single quotes just to understand what we're dealing with here. The first quote is by the the Roman historian Tacitus. It's called or it says, new Romans create a desert and call it peace.

And the second quote is by the the the man who died, I think, this year or the year before, Henry Kissinger. When when in the in the aftermath of the nineteen seventy three war, the Arab ministers or foreign ministers asked him after they had achieved victory, why did it seem right now in the eve of the war that the UN was willing to implement resolutions two four two and all of that? He said simply because before Israel had the the the the the military supremacy, and there was no reason for for The US The US or for Israel or for anyone to implement two four two. In other words, we didn't have to do it. We implemented this in our own way, and it was successful until you guys rose up.

So why am I saying this? Because it's important to understand that when the West says something and do something different than what they say, it's not a contradiction on their side. They're doing exactly what they mean. It's just that what they mean and their actions what what their actions mean is that when they say peace, for example, they mean subjugation. They mean domination.

They mean that it's not it's not a zero sum game where all parties involved will be will will benefit. No. They mean that we will exclusively benefit, and you will only benefit in so much as it will help your own subjugation. If you will benefit even slightly like us or equal to our own benefit, then that that doesn't work. This is this is a loss on our side.

K? So because we will continuously read that the causes of the crusades were noble, but however, when they came to the East, they did this and that and the other. And we will say, wow. How how could they say that and then do that? And it's no contradiction on their side.

They're doing exactly what they mean, but what they're saying and what their actions imply always mean different things because their psyche is different than our own psyche. We apply our own morale moral understanding of their words, and they apply their own moral understanding of their words. So this is important for us to to to to understand moving forward inshallah. So, of course, as I mentioned, the crusades by Amin Haluf relies heavily on the Arab sources or exclusively on the Arab sources, so it does not give a reason for the start of the crusades. Okay?

So in order just to put some context into this into this discussion, we have to understand what was happening in Europe at the end of the eleventh century. So at the end of the eleventh century, the there was political chaos in Europe, say the least. You know, kingdoms were weak. They were not very strong kingdoms, and the feud system made the nobles very, very, very powerful. And they always had this tendency to to to just be independent of their of their own kingdoms, and they always had, you know, military conflicts between them and the and their own kings.

Many of the times, they were in direct conflict, and they were so powerful that they were able to challenge those kings and become kings themselves sometimes. Okay? The second thing is that the power of the church was very, very much on the rise, and the pope was able to make up armies and to consolidate their powers by making those armies and orders to make those armies go into holy war. This is the first time Yanni, the popes were able to mobilize armies under the pretense of the holy war, something that was, I think, the foundation for had been laid down by someone called Augustine of the poor or something like that, which is, again, because you have to understand that in the Christian scripture, you you see always peace and turn out a chicken, all of that. But for for the first time, we're now seeing that holy war is justified, and it can be waged even by the pope in Rome.

The the the power grab between the church and the kingdoms in Europe was very intense. And in many times, the armies of the church would, you know, wage wars against those kings of Europe to ensure that the church was free and it was independent of their of the of the king's reach. And the church, as we wish as we should see, was even able to mobilize the armies and signal to mobilize armies to the East starting the crusades, and it this was a strong signal to those kings of Europe that not only are we able to challenge you here in Europe, but we are also able to mobilize armies to the East, meaning that you cannot simply make us disappear or make the power of the church disappear anymore. We're we're just more powerful than that. And it it also so happens as we should see in the book inshallah that the Eastern Romans, aka the Byzantines in the East, they after the famous battle of Massacre, they started, you know, appealing to the church in Rome that please help us.

We need your help against the Trix because they are invading Anatolia or modern day Turkey, and we need your help. So, of course, the the church in Rome and the pope saw this as a golden opportunity to interfere and to send armies to the East. Also, we have to take into consideration that the European society at the time was very, very strictly hierarchical, and only the eldest son would inherit their father's estate, meaning that the other brothers of the son, the other children of this nobleman who had just died were knights, and they were nobles, but they had no land and they had no wealth, meaning that they would have to carve out their own and you have to to to to look at that. They have to carve out their own estates elsewhere. And this usually came through pillaging and through stealing other people's lands because where else could they get lands?

And you also have to understand that Europe's resources back then and until now are meager. They don't have resources there, and so they have to whatever meager resources that they have, they have to fight over. Right? So whenever when when the k when the court for the crusades came, those knights found the golden opportunity and the church found the golden opportunity to change those knights, those thieves, those pill those those those people who are pillaging and groping. Overnight, they became knights of the of the church, knights knights of the of Jesus' eyes, and and, of course, he's Tala and that he's not he's he didn't tell them any of that.

So they they became the defenders of Christianity overnight. Those thieves became the defenders of Christianity overnight without having to break the church's peace or the god's peace. And at the same time, there there is a way for them to rape and pillage and do all of what they do and steal, but in the East, in the Far East. So Europe would be safe. And this, of course, meant that there would be less conflict in Europe because now all of the military power was in the East, and they were coughing up kingdoms and counties there.

Also, we have to take into consideration the Italian republics, like Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and these were merchant republics. They saw in the East huge wealth, and they thought that, again, greed please, you know, underline this word, greed. They saw that their trade was not enough anymore. They wanted more. And so when they saw the court for the Crusades, they thought, okay.

We can help those Crusaders, and we will have, you know, more privileges in the newly established kingdoms and counties in the East. We will have, you know, less taxation and more more help in in setting up our marketplaces and our motels and so on and so forth. And so we find them using their merchant fleets, helping the soldiers, transferring weapons, and helping the crusades in general, establishing their kingdoms in the in the East. Also, there were you the the the miserable peasants who were yeah. They were suffering under the the the the constant turmoil because of the raid and fetish that has been happening in Europe.

So when the call for the for the crusades came, they found some some respite because they thought, okay. We're we're this is not working here. So at least if it it's going to be yeah. If it's not going to be better there, it's not going to be worse than here. So they had this chance to to join the armies of the Crusaders and to go to the East.

And finally, the the religious aspect is that when pope Urban the second was preaching for the first crusade in Pelhamon, he he he called it a pilgrimage, and this is the conflict or the contradict the seeming contradiction that we see. Those pilgrims were going to save on the, quote, unquote, Jerusalem. They were armed, and they killed many as many people, Muslims, Christians, and Jews on their so called pilgrimage. And, however, they were convinced that this was a pilgrim. This is the the the the psyche that we're dealing with.

And there was also this end of time feeling that was, you know, taking over Europe at the time because at this time, it was one thousand years since the birth and the death seeming death seeming death of We know as Muslims that he was raised him to the skies. So it was it had been a thousand years since the absence of the of the of Jesus And so a millennia was, like, haunting the the minds of the Europeans. Like, this is the end of time. We have to do something. And so this was the religious aspect.

Our beloved speakers, do you have any comments on what has just been said?

I have lots of comments, but I believe, inshallah, you know, finish up and then we can discuss it.

If you

want like, I think, you know

Yeah. Please go ahead. Interesting.

There was also like, I was watching, you know, this historical Neil deGrasse Tyson, you know, Reykjav Sagranda. And I I think he did a good job regarding the crusades, especially this background that we're speaking about because it's very interesting. Like, you know, one thousand years, you do nothing and suddenly you decide, you know, do do this. It's kinda interesting. A very interesting player.

Like, he gives some idea about the players that were involved in the, you know, the background of it. But even the Vikings, you know, who were Germans by, like, by their nature. And he says that exactly they were, you know, in the Scandinavian, and they didn't like, they started the population started to grow, and they didn't have the resources. Right? So what they decided was, you know, we need to probably do some trade.

Right? So this was their first that's like in the, you know, like, fifty years prior or hundred years prior to the first crusade where they started to go to the, you know, Bledeshem for trade and so on. So already they were interacting with that region like it's not and we already know from, you know, from the and what happened with later on with the Sahaba that there was already, like, contact between the room and, you know, the Muslim world. Like, it wasn't just separate, suddenly they decided to come. But there already were some historical tensions between the parties.

Right? So, you know, they started coming. They started trading and so on. And, of course, already from these first instances, they were just pillaging and destroying everything along the way. And as you mentioned, you know, this Peter Hermit, he stands up right after this pope speech that we need to go and, you know, save Jerusalem and whatever.

And the first crusade was really, as you mentioned, you know, just mobs. It was really thugs and peasants. It was, like, called even the peasant crusade or something. That's before the first official crusade, but it's it's crazy. Like, you know, we see it as some knights and, you know, these nobles and so on, but it was just really a bunch of crazy Europeans, you know, going on a pillage trip.

Right? And I it's subhanAllah. Like, really people need to see it in the context of thugs going out on an expedition, right, or something. Just loot whatever you can on the way. So, yeah, it's just that for me, was very interesting to see the the Vikings played a role in that.

Right? And they even you know, very interesting, the European experience for the Viking because then they took the Northern France and so on. Right? And France later on took Rome as part of it, and that's why the French you know, the Franks have a part in the Crusades. Right?

It's not like Romans going or something, but it was the French. So, yeah, very interesting background, and I think you put it very beautiful. Like, you're doing such a great job. So please continue.

Am am I audible?

Very clear.

Okay. First, brother Amar, I just wanted to thank you for for hosting. You're absolutely the right man for the job on this. You're doing a fantastic job, and your knowledge of the history and the context is second to none. What what you said in your introduction, I think, is very important with regards to a number of aspects of it, I think.

First of all, I would say with any book that we choose in the Middle Nation discussion first, I read this book many, many years ago. It's decades ago now, actually. Probably when it around the time when it first came out. So it's good it's good for me to actually reread it because it's been so long since I read it. There's there's so many how can I say this?

I mean, this is all part of our our trying to establish our own epistemological sovereignty as Muslims, as an ummah, that we have to learn. It's it's a shame actually that we even have to learn it and don't already know it, but learn the our own framework for events like this, for historical incidents like this and historical context like this and things that happened to us, we have largely only learned about it from their perspective. Even as you said, so called crusades, we use this term crusades. That's their word. That's their word for what they were doing.

That's their word for what they were, the crusaders. But that's not how the how the Muslims understood them. That's not the word that we used about them. They were the they were the French. They were the Frankish it was a Frankish invasion.

It was an occupation. That was the way that we understood it because that's what it was. But we still even talk about it in their language, and we we understand it according to their terms. So we have several books. For for for anyone who doesn't know, we have a book discussion group on Telegram, and we have an ongoing discussion about the.

We have spaces on the weekly or every every couple of weeks, and we've gone through a number of other books. We have a book recommendation list on the Telegram channel of books that that by no means is it a comprehensive list, but they are books that are helpful to building the intellectual foundation that you need, in my opinion, for sort of dealing with dealing with the world, dealing with the West, and and having having own intellectual sovereignty for for how you approach how you approach the world and so forth. So this book is no exception, obviously, with any book that we choose for the Middle Nation book discussion group. I think the point isn't just to read it. The point is to learn or or to help build, as I say, our our epistemological sovereignty, to help us with our own psychological decolonization, and as I say, to make us effective or more effective and more useful in how we engage with issues in the current day.

It's to try to increase our overall understanding about ourselves and about our ummah and about the West and about the relationship between us between us and the West and how and how that operates. For us, this this book discussion group isn't just a sort of a pastime as many book book book clubs or book discussion groups might be just a sort of a a pastime or a hobby. It's not a pastime for us. It's training. This is training for us.

It's intellectual training. And I think that one of the most important things for us to be able to to understand with regards to the world generally, but also the way that we look at at this book, the the Crusades Through Arab Eyes, is to understand realpolitik, which is something that we talk about a lot on the channel. Realpolitik, in other words, basically, the way things actually work in the world so that you can navigate the world more effectively, more realistically while keeping your morals intact. So for most of us, as I say, when we talk about crusades, the Frankish invasions of the Muslim world, we talk about it like a fable. It's a fable to most of us.

You know? Salahdin is like a Marvel superhero. Most of us don't really have that much information about what actually took place, but I think it's extremely useful for us to understand what really happened, how the Muslims dealt with what was really going on at that time, how the leaders dealt with it. You know? Because if we understand the reality of how these events actually played out in the real world, it can give us, I think, a better appreciation of how things play out in our own lifetimes and the situations that we are facing.

You know? Palestine was occupied a thousand years ago by Westerners, and it's occupied now by Westerners. You know? They did it in the name of religion, so called then, and they're doing the same now, so called. So we're looking at a continuum.

We're looking at a living continuum of conflict that stretches between us and the West, that stretches from the time of in the battle of Muttaq, through the Crusades, through colonization, through colonialism, through neocolonialism, obviously, through Zionism, so called globalization. It's it's it this is all a continuum. The so called crusades because, I say, that's I I I almost hate to use the term, but, I mean, it is the term that's used in the book. And, again, the book is written in English, so it's sort of for a Western audience, but it's basically their own PR term for themselves, crusades or crusaders. But the the Frankish invasion, the occupiers, they embody the Western or the or the West's what you can say, their recurring posture towards the Muslim world.

It's a consistent recurring posture, invasion, exploitation, aggression, you know, wrapped always in the rhetoric of principle. We see it time and time and time again. So when you read this book, you'll see very clearly what I've said many, many times on the channel. They have never changed. They have never changed.

This is one of the reasons why I think it's crucial for us to read history, to read our own history, especially from our own sources. Because like I've also talked about on the channel, history isn't the past. History is a continuum. We're living in history now. You know?

And they have been consistently aggressive, consistently materialistically driven, and they have consistently cloaked their actions in moralistic or ideological rhetoric, ideological language. And as brother Omar said at the beginning, we have I I think that we consistently make a mistake where we say that there's a contradiction between what they say and what they do, but the the contradiction is because we are interpreting their rhetoric according to our own value system, according to our own cultural ideological belief based dictionary. They have a different dictionary. Their words mean different things to them than those same words mean to us. So like he said, when they say like, he he began with a quote about you you you make a desert and you call it peace.

Okay. That's what they really mean. They're not lying when they say, for example, we're going to liberate. For them liberate, when it's when you're talking about other people, liberate means subjugate. They have different dash definitions.

They work on a completely different cultural dictionary than we do, and they're just the same now as they were then at the time of the crusades. And you'll see that when you read the book. The the it this this book could almost have been if you just change some of the some of the the the names of the actors, some of the names of the characters, this book could have been written yesterday about what's going on right now. So I think it's important that we approach history from our own from within our own framework and with clear eyes because our rulers and our commanders, let's be honest, our own rulers and our commanders at the time of Crusades, they weren't angels. These weren't Malarika.

Yes. They were believers. They were Mumminin, but they were also practical realistic men, and they were often ruthless, and they were cunning, and they were politically calculating because they had to be. Realpolitik as was essential to their decision making as imam was. This is the difference between the moral framing of events that we often do where where we turn history into a fable, you know, truth versus falsehood, imam versus kufr, and so on.

This is the difference between that and the sort of lived reality of actually navigating power and power dynamics and power relationships. To achieve victory, the leaders of the Muslim world at that time and today, the leaders who are on the side of the truth, sometimes had to engage in what we would consider very unsavory behavior and unsavory actions, but they were pragmatic actions and they were necessary actions. I mean, you'll see, for example, again, this is something that we we we talked about on the on the discussion group some time ago. When people are very hostile towards our current Muslim governments, and they say, like, they're doing nothing on Palestine. They should have been able to to, you know, end the occupation by now.

But, look, from most of the history of the Frankish invasion, the occupation of the Frang in Palestine, the Muslims didn't take that matter seriously enough according to our current moral standards, our own modern standards. They failed. They capitulated. They were inactive, and they were blameworthy. If you go by the standards that you all are imposing today, even more than what you've seen over the course of the the the Zionist occupation in terms of in terms of what we would regard as inaction.

The the the the Muslim leaders at the time of the crusades were even more inactive than what you would accuse the Muslim world of being during the Zionist occupation. I mean, if you go by the standards of most people, most people today, especially online and social media, most of the people who condemn the Arab world or Muslim world for inaction compared to most of the period of the Crusades of the Frankish occupation, the Muslim world and the Arab world today has been immeasurably better. They have been immeasurably more proactive. And you see that, in fact, you're applying a very ignorant metric to judge both the Muslims in the past and the Muslims now. You have to understand what was really going on at that time in order for you to understand a proper perspective on the way things are happening now, the way things are transpiring now.

Because if you regard them as failures or you regard them as cowards or you regard them as passive, you have completely misunderstood what the Muslims back then were dealing with and the Muslims today are dealing with. You haven't wrapped your head around realpolitik. You understand? Because, listen, during the height of the crusades, during the height of the Frankish occupation, Roughly for every one European occupier there was, there were at least 20 to 30 Muslims. They were vastly outnumbered in Palestine.

The French were vastly outnumbered, and the Muslim empire at that time was the biggest and the strongest and the most advanced, the most educated, the most sophisticated in the world. Yet it took them around two hundred years to dislodge this comparatively tiny occupation force. Why? Because it's not straightforward. It's a not straightforward set of circumstances.

It's very complex. It's very complicated. And if you compare that to the Zionist occupation, which which, again, we have a a complete reversal of status with regards to if if you look at the at the Crusader occupation versus the Zionist occupation, it's a complete reversal of the power dynamics because the the the Israel has been backed by and is backed by the biggest and the strongest and the most advanced and the most sophisticated empire in the world today, has been, while the Muslim world is now comparatively weak because the the the Muslim world has suffered colonization, exploitation, fragmentation for the last hundred years or more. So the the power dynamics are

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us, please know that we cannot hear you.

I will disconnect. And so if you wanna take over brother, do.

Yes. Sure. Sure. Insulting our people and insult Okay.

Let's just give him a minute if he's able to rejoin. Okay. So until, our staff is able to rejoin, we're just going to give context to what actually is saying or was saying regarding the fragmentation of the Muslim world and the numerical superiority of the Muslim world as as opposed to the numerical inferiority of the of the invaders of the French. And I believe there were many points that mentioned that we have to take to heart. The first of which is that we should if we are going to apply epistemological decolonization, then we have to start calling those invaders by their true name, which is incidentally the name that was the name that they were referred to by the Muslim historians, which is the French.

If you if you if you, yeah, if you if you are a history enthusiast and you start reading the the original resource the original sources of the time period, the writers of the time period, you will notice that never very, very I don't think that any historian any Muslim historian quote those invaders, crusaders. They always refer to them as that kind of thing. And, interchangeably, they would call them, the Christians or the the or anything like that. So there was no religious reference except in the Christians in the Christians reference. However, they would always call them the French or the French or the invaders or anything like that, which gives you a sense of how the Muslim historians were aware of the true, what do you call, of the true motives behind those people.

They knew that they weren't coming to, quote, unquote, save Jerusalem or anything like that. They were coming to just take land and steal land and steal resources, and is back. Sir, are you able to speak right now?

I don't know what happened. I seem to have gotten kicked out. I don't know at what point I got cut off.

But I think I probably missed her off in the yeah. And the you were talking about the the superiority and the complexity of the situation and that the Arabs were currently, the the Muslim states are in a weaker position than they were even back then during the crusades.

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Like I said, it's basically a reversal of the of the power dynamics as was in the case in the crusades. But in the in the time of the crusades, like I said, it took them two hundred years to to navigate that situation and coordinate a way to get out of that situation and achieve victory.

Whereas now, we are in a much less advantageous position where We're nearing the end of the Zionist occupation of Palestine, and yet people still accuse our leaders and our governments of being inactive or being complicit or being passive and so on and so on. This is all because you don't understand geopolitics, and you don't understand realpolitik. And so I hope that by reading this book and looking at what the what the leaders were grappling with in those times, it might give you a better appreciation of what the leaders are grappling with in these times. And I guess that that that will be the end of it,

Thank you so much for this brilliant intro. And please listeners and speakers take this to heart because this is going to be inshallah the frame frame of reference that we are going to get back to often when we are talking and speaking about the the the we have to the crusades or this conflict, let's call it, throughout our discussion of the book. Okay. So just to to give another intro or just to give a bit further of context to to this discussion, we also need to understand. So we understood right now the the context in Europe, which was, as we mentioned, there was a political context, there was a religious context, there was a social context, and, of course, yeah, yeah, there was a an economic context.

You can never ever disregard the economic context from this conflict or from any conflict that the West is engaged in just to I mean, let's yeah. And let that sink in and let pin this point in your in your mind. Okay. So the context in the Arab world or in let's not let's call it in the Muslim world. That's more accurate because Muslims are Arabs and other ethnicities as well.

Okay. So in the context in the Muslim world was as follows. When oh, the if you guys if both our listeners and our speakers have read the book, you will see that it starts with the Namaskian judge who went to to al Khalifa al Abbasi in Baghdad, and he was complaining and submitting his former complaint about what had happened in Jerusalem, and we will get into this inshallah, and telling him that how can they be sitting in the palace in Baghdad while their Muslim brethren are being tortured and savaged and massacred in in. But this is exactly what what was wrong with this situation. The caliphate in Baghdad was no longer the supreme Muslim leader of the Muslim world.

And, again, brothers and sisters take this to heart. So two hundred years ago at at you know, two hundred years have passed since the golden age of the Muslim of the of the Khalifa of Baghdad where he was the the supreme leader of the Muslim world. In those two hundred years, a lot of things have happened, Not to get into this not to get into them, but during the end of this period, a great sultanate had risen in Central Asia, which is called the great Seljuk sultanate. This was a sultanate that had the most land since the days of the Abbasids. And those Saddocks were Sunni Muslim Turkish leaders.

They had established a fast empire stretching all the way from the borders of China to the and the Levant, and they even tried to enter Egypt, but they couldn't. However, after the famous battle of Mazenkari in October, they were able to invade Anatolia and establish a presence there. Right? But at the end of the third monarch's reign, which is Mariksha, this was he was the late the last the last hero of the great soldiers subjects at. Right?

After that, yeah, I mean, savage disintegration afflicted this great sultanate, and we start hearing about the subjects of Asia, the subjects of Iraq, the subjects of and the subjects of or the Roman subjects who who were living in Anatolia. And not only were they disintegrated in that, these were, you know, firmly established houses in each of those regions. No. Even in Bledeshem, there was disintegration. Even in Iraq, there was disintegration.

And in Asia, maybe the the house that remained intact was the Sardisov Room, and that's and that is going to be apparent in how they dealt with the the the first and the first wave and the second wave of the French who were coming to Beit HaShem to invade. So, essentially, what I'm trying to say is that the caliph in Baghdad was powerless, and even his patrons, the subjects, were were not as united as it should have as they should have been in order to pay attention to the coming threat from the West. That's why when al Tariq al Sallahari was going to to complain to the caliphate, his complaint fell in deaf ears because what could the caliphate do? All he could do was, you know, issue a formal investigation and and and inquiry into what had happened and blah blah blah. But the point I'm trying to make is al Qadhi Abu Saad should have known, Basrir, that he would have should have gone to to the people who hold more power than Khalifa, maybe the soldiers or something like that.

Because they were the ones who were able to take a stand if they wanted to to take a stand against the the the French. So it's important to know that the Abbasid Khalafa was weak. There was a Seljuk sultanate in different regions of the Muslim world, and there was also Egypt was kind of yani. What can you say? It was kind of isolated from this whole thing because it was under the the the Egyptian palace in Cairo.

They were not interested in the in the in the in in this power struggle. They only were interested in keeping their possessions in Ladisham, and it's interesting to know that Jerusalem was actually under Fatimid rule right before the invasion of the Franks. Brother Karim, please go ahead.

Yeah. You know, like, regarding the Fatimids, you know, we know they're but I think they really had some problems with seeing, you know, the Sunnis have the power that they had at the time. So Allah knows if they had no interest. You know? Like, from what I read from different sources, I'm not sure how, you know, reliable.

But I do think that they, you know, like, they kinda supported more the western factions, you know, to somehow fight the Sunni. Right? That that's from my understanding. I don't know if you had read about that. Like, if you can maybe expand on that because I do not think that they were completely like, they didn't care.

I do think that they want it to be, you know, part of it. And when they saw someone fighting against Sunnis, they were like, yeah, Allah, let's support. But then they saw that, you know, backstabbers. Right? Like, Azul Taz just wrote in the group.

You know? Don't give them your back. Right? That's something that already that experience shows you. Right?

So as you said, they did have Jerusalem, and they thought that, okay. Here, the line will be drawn, you know, as we decided, and the crusaders just kept on moving forward. And the Fatimids are like, what are you doing? Then we decide, you know, and so on. And then, yeah, you know what?

Continue.

Absolutely. It's just yeah. And, again, as Dostas said, realpolitik is is is the order of of the day. Okay? So, yes, and sometimes the Fatimans were happy to see that the French were coming to the because they wanted to see a buffer between them and the subjects.

Right? However, the Fatimids were in Egypt for two hundred years, and many sorry. Not many. One of one of their famous, think he was called. I I don't remember the name, to be honest right now.

However, he was one of the he was a Sunni vizier, and he fought the French in. So it was not always that the Fatimids wanted to to to, you know, to fight the Sunnis and that kind of thing. It was it was always a power grab. It was always a power struggle. And, yeah, in a real politic is is in in that kind of situation, real politic is more dominant than Al Qida, at least to my own understanding.

Maybe Ustad can expand on that a little. But as I as I see it because at the end of the the Fatehmet era as well, it was by Fatehmet by Fatehmet requests that appeals were sent both to and to the Crusaders. Played no part in this situation. It was just hoping for the stronger person to come and save us, whoever that stronger person might be, whether it's Sunni, it's a or whatever you want. So just like today, you you don't you don't, you know, you don't, for a second, believe that anyone is acting based on APDA purely.

It's it's of course, it could be part of the decision making process, but real politics is always present. It would it will always be a a huge decision making factor. Right?

Yes. Absolutely. And I think that that that there's another thing that we have to bear in mind, and this is a consistent thing really across history in whether you're talking about the crusades or any any other sort of foreign occupation. The the the power structure in the land that's being occupied or that's being invaded generally views the outsiders as exactly that. They're outsiders.

And they they sort of minimize the extent to which they consider them a threat because they don't view them as a permanent feature in their land. They know that they're here for some period of time and they will inevitably leave. That's the same way that, for example, the Taliban viewed the American occupation of Afghanistan. They knew eventually you will leave because this is not your land. And and this is to one degree or another, it is a sensible view, but it also tends to make you underestimate the threat that is posed by these foreign elements.

So there's all sorts of politicking that that that can go on because, for example, in the in this in the first part, we were talking about and his rivalries with other leaders in in in the lands. And his main concern or his main focus was on his rivalries with the people who were there, with his own people, with his own local rivalries. That that was his main focus. And they didn't really see these, you know, strange Europeans coming into their land as something to be taken particularly seriously because you can't be serious. You don't belong here.

This isn't your place. Obviously, you'll come for a period of time, but but eventually, inevitably, you will have to leave. And so their main concern was consolidating their power vis a vis their rivals, their local rivals. And as I say, there there are some to one degree or another, that is sensible, but it also underestimates the danger that's posed by those foreigners. And I think that that that's something that we have seen time and time and time again.

I think that was also the case even with the in the early days of the the Zionist infiltration of Palestine.

Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. I was just and you took it right out of my mouth because I was having the same thought when I saw the when I read about the the Zionist occupation rising in 1948. And here in the Muslim world, if you're a Muslim if you're if you're a Muslim living in the Muslim world and you you read or watch even the the the the media from the time from the time period, you you'd always hear the the the the people in power in the Muslim world saying that these are just a bunch of of of Zionist gangs. We're we're going to go to them and, you know, destroy them.

It's not going to take a week's effort or or something like that. Meaning that they severely underestimated what they were facing in Palestine, and they thought that this was a transient a movement that was by nature that it was temporary, it was transient, that they were not, yeah, I mean, they were not of the of the land and that they were going to deal with this swiftly and quickly, and it wouldn't take much time. And, also, there were some, I think, resemblances regarding the the power structure and the relationships between the power structures in the Muslim lands back then and right now because I also read that the the the the the the kings of Egypt and the the newly established kings of Jordan and the and the and the Syria and all of that, they weren't exactly unified in their visions. So they wanted, of course, to pick up the Zionists from Palestine, but also they wanted to, like, limit the power zones or the power spheres of each of of each other, which, unfortunately, helped, of course, the the the the Zionist parents in Palestine gain an upper hand in the in the power struggle later on.

Okay. So I think we have now a fairly accurate context of the time period. Brother Kram, your hand is raised. I'm not sure if that's glitch or or you actually want to say something.

Probably a glitch. I think it might have stuck from the previous one. So sorry.

No. No. No problem at all. Okay. So now we're going to, yeah, briefly explain or narrate what happened in the first wave.