Studies on Muslim Religion Carried Forward

The time we spent on the split between the Sunni and the Shiite Muslims will be useful to me as an officer in the fleet because it helped me understand our involvement in their conflict as well as some of the beliefs their culture holds. I have not spent much time studying the history of the Muslim religion outside of what I know about the schism between the Sunni and the Shiite. Simply knowing this difference is insufficient to get a sense of their entire history and to be able to recognize who they support and who they fight with. A critical piece of information to note is that there are radical groups originating from both groups of Muslims which are at work in the same region. There are many Muslim extremist groups which exist in the East, such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIL, and Hamas. The Salafi movement unites most of these groups, and some profess alignment with either the Sunni or Shiite branches of the Muslim faith. This is where this knowledge becomes useful to me as an officer. I should be able to differentiate extremist groups based on their affiliations and their extremist ideology. There exist passages in the Quran which can be taken out of context, such as this one:

“O you who believe! When you meet those who disbelieve marching for war, then turn not your backs to them. And whoever shall turn his back to them on that day – unless he turn aside for the sake of fighting or withdraws to a company – then he, indeed, becomes deserving of Allah’s wrath, and his abode is hell; and an evil destination shall it be.”

This passage makes it seem permissible to kill in the name of Allah all those who do not believe, and it is used by extremist groups. It is important to note that while Sunni and Shiite Muslims do have their differences and extremist groups do exist in that region of the world, conflict is not so quickly come upon. Sunni and Shiite’s do not condone violence on their own. The actions and dealings of extremist groups is not easily known to outsiders, as they act so sporadically. The information useful to me is that the majority of Muslims in that region are peaceful and do not align with any extremist groups. Recognizing this fact allows for making acquaintances with peaceful Muslims while not offending them with profiling or stereotyping.

Source

https://www.cfr.org/interactives/sunni-shia-divide#!/sunni-shia-divide

The Quran

Word Count – 408

Was the First Crusade Just?

I think the Crusaders in the first crusade were not justified in continuing on to capture Jerusalem after defending Constantinople because the Pope simply wanted to be in possession of the city. The First Crusade was a military campaign by western European forces to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. Conceived by Pope Urban II following an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios, around 60,000 soldiers and at least 30,000 non-combatants set off on their quest. After campaigns in Asia Minor and the Middle East, great cities such as Nicaea and Antioch were recaptured and then, on 15 July 1099 BC, Jerusalem itself.

The Seljuk Turks won significant victories in Asia Minor against Byzantine armies beginning in 1071 BC. As a result, they gained control of the cities of Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem by 1087 BC. The Byzantine emperor Alexios noticed the Turk’s expansion into the holy land and used their aggression as a chance to gain the help of western armies in his battle to control Asia Minor. Alexios’ appeal to the west for troops was met with fervor by Pope Urban II and thousands of European knights who had just defended Constantinople from the invading Turks. Pope Urban was specifically interested in leading a force to help out the Byzantines because this would give him a chance to build up a great crusader force and to take back Jerusalem for the Church. His thinking was that leading a crusade to Jerusalem would unite the churches once again and secure his place in history. The campaign of violence was justified to the crusaders as being a fight for liberation and that the objectives were “just and righteous ones.” The problem with this argument, however, is that it assumes the crusaders were taking back what was rightfully theirs to take, which is incorrect. The land of Jerusalem belonged to neither the Turks nor the Church. The taking of Jerusalem did not include concern for the city’s people, as they were killed in the conquest, but it rather only satisfied Pope Urban’s desire to control the holy land again and to gain legitimacy from it.

The bottom line is, being in control of Jerusalem carried so many implications as to the legitimacy of your religion that it would be hard to resist taking the chance to secure it for yourself. This was the whole source of the conflict in the crusades. There were two groups who fought to take control over “holy land” that neither had complete rights to control, yet they both felt strongly about the potential for future gain and had a desire for legitimacy so strong that it was worth going to war over.

Works Cited

https://strangenotions.com/the-crusdades-urban-legends-and-truth/

Cartwright, Mark. First Crusade. Ancient History Encyclopedia. 09 JUL 2018. Web. https://www.ancient.eu/First_Crusade/

Word Count: 445

Sun Tzu vs. USNA

Sun Tzu was a great Chinese military strategist, and his works such as Art of War have carried his name through generations and cultures. The Art of War is not specific to war; it addresses strategy in a broad way, and its lessons have been made use of in business and politics throughout time. The text outlines theories of battle, but it also advocates diplomacy and the cultivation of relationships with other nations as essential to the health of a state.

Sun Tzu makes many generalizations about life in Art of War, one of which is “Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.” I believe one of Sun Tzu’s over-arching philosophies is to have a plan, yet be able to adapt to situations as they arise. This hinge on preparation is evident in Art of War as he writes about knowing your enemy, and being able to defeat your enemy without ever coming to arms. Sun Tzu believed this could be accomplished through preparation, and I believe we Midshipmen prepare to become officers in the Navy in the same way. One form in which I see this idea materialized is in our study of history at the Academy. We learn about the past through a lens focused on future military dominance. We are studying the past in such a way as to be able to anticipate the actions of our enemy in the future. This is one major idea that Sun Tzu puts forth in his writing, and one example is his quote “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” This perfectly captures his take on preparation and its importance in military strategy.

At the same time however, military strategy and history is by no means the core of our curriculum, but rather a facet of our training to become great leaders. The idea behind the Naval Academy is to produce well-equipped military leaders for service in today’s Navy. This mission, while requiring some knowledge of the strategy behind how a war is fought, focuses primarily on teaching us what we need to know to lead warriors. Such higher-level strategic thinking which incorporates Sun Tzu’s teachings may be found in institutions like the Naval War College, where senior officers go to learn real strategic thinking. In short, we are not taught much military strategy here at the Naval Academy, but we can compare some lessons we learn here to the tactics applied in the big Navy.

Works Cited

McNeilly, Mark R. (2001), Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-513340-4.

Sun-tzu. The Art of War. Penguin, 2009.

Words: 427

Christianity in the Ancient Roman Empire

Early Christian practices incited suspicion in the Romans before the 3rd century AD, and for a few good reasons. I certainly would have been suspicious of the Christians if I lived in that time, as it is not unlike the feelings we have towards the fringe religions of today like Scientology or Satanism. Some reasons to give the Romans suspicion are their practice of monotheism, isolation, and their specific rites.

Christianity preached exclusive monotheism, forbidding its members from participating in the state religious cult. To the Romans of the time, these rituals were understood to be essential to the survival of the Empire. The Christians were actively undermining the Empire by not participating. This put Christians in a hard spot as they were viewed by the Romans as being traitors.

What really drove negative opinion of them was their self-isolation and secretiveness within Roman society, while this makes sense from the Christian belief system at the time. Christians were noted for largely avoiding public baths. The impact of this is bigger than you may think, since the baths were massive centers of social and city life, and a subset of people that refused to participate would have garnered hostility from other Roman subjects.

Christians also jealously guarded their rites, especially the Eucharist. They spoke of things such as eating the body of God and calling everyone brother and sister. The New Testament contains descriptions of these events, but no real record or process for how the believers were performing them: Christian talk of “love-feasts” and eating body and blood led many Romans to conclude that Christian meetings were incestual or cannibalistic orgies! This might sound ridiculous with all we know of modern Christian worship, but Rome was a place of varied beliefs and eccentric, violent practices like animal sacrifice and self-mutilation, so was this really out of the question for an unwashed band of weirdos? Others assumed that the quick rate of Christian converts was partially caused by their use of erotic magic, to seduce spouses from the beliefs and relationships of their partners. This was considered perverse due to the fact that Roman wives always followed the belief system of their husbands in the household.

All of these differences led to negative popular sentiment and even anti-Christian mobs, and from the perspective of the Roman authorities, the Christians were the instigators of this unrest. And if there’s one thing Rome had consistently proved to be intolerant of, it was those who willingly caused civil instability. Little wonder that the authorities came down so hard on Christians when they intervened.

Works Cited

Hansen, Valerie. “Chapter 7: The Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity.” Voyages in World History, Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2016, pp. 144-148.

Word count: 430

Democracy, Ancient and Modern

The ‘American’ democracy we have today came from the juvenile form of democracy Athens ran with over 2500 years ago. This early democracy was experimental at best and was revolutionary at the time. While we have virtually rewritten the standard for how a democracy should be operated, we are not very far from our roots.

At first glance, the democracies of today and the ancient democracy of Athens look different. Ancient Athens only allowed a very small group of men resident in Athens the vote; women and foreigners were excluded. Athens’ democracy also demanded a lot of time from its citizens. Adult male citizens who had to vote put a halt to their work to travel to the Athenian assembly (the Pnyx) on a regular basis. These commonwealth citizens also had to debate and vote on important issues like going to war. This dedication of so much time to the democratic system was made easier when the Assembly eventually decided to encourage citizens further by paying them to come to the assembly and to undertake other democratic duties like acting as jurors in the law courts.

It is clear that Athenian democracy was not our modern idea of equal freedom and rights, but more like a select club, facilitated to some extent by a slave population. However, we should not be too complacent as to think that we are more ‘democratic’ now, just because of our progress in equal rights. Just as we may not want to recognize Athens’ democracy as properly democratic, so too an ancient Athenian would not recognize the ‘American’ democracy as a true democracy.

Ancient Athenians participated in a direct democracy, meaning every citizen went to the assembly and voted on the issues. Moreover, if they were voting on whether or not to go to war, the voters did not go home afterwards to put their feet up while the army went off to fight, they went home to pick up their armor too. To a democrat of ancient Athens, today’s democracies, where the majority of voters elect representatives to make most of the decisions for them (and who then rely on professionals to carry out those decisions), would seem to achieve the effect that the Old Oligarch spoke of in his letter. “For if the good men were to speak and make policy, it would be splendid for the likes of themselves but not so for the men of the people” (Oligarch). The American democracy operates just so, however, and only because the power still comes from the people.

With these further considerations, the ancient democracy more closely resembles the democracies of today, yet with all the improvements we have made to the ancient system, our modern efficiency trumps all.

Works Cited:

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ancient-greece-democracy

https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-greece/ancient-greek-democracy-as-similar-to-ours-as-we-think/

Old Oligarch, Xenophon

Historical Accuracy of the movie ‘300’

Ancient Greece was not unified in terms of geography or politics. Mountains, waterways, and islands split the region making political alliances somewhat inconvenient. There was never any sense of “Greece” as a country in the ancient world. Instead, Greece was made up of many city-states, or poleis, each independent from the other and possessing distinct ethnicities and cultures. This true ancient Greece doesn’t fit with today’s definition of a nation, and attempting to explain this relationship would drag out a movie for too long. In an attempt to overcome this barrier, filmmakers have often chosen to focus on the battle of Thermopylae, a historical moment in which Greece banded together against Persian invaders. Taking place in 480 BCE, this battle has been remembered in history as a defining moment of the Persian Wars. Films such as 300, The 300 Spartans, and Last stand of the 300 have chosen to focus on Thermopylae itself rather than the war overall, probably because of the notorious reputation of the battle throughout the ages as the “Greek Alamo.” Take the movie 300 for example. This film does not even pretend to be historically accurate. It made no attempt to explain the complex issues faced by the Greek poleis when faced with the Persian invasion. As mentioned previously, since there was no sense of a unified Greece, the act of joining forces would’ve been a daunting task for the Greeks and a difficult concept to explain to a modern audience within the time frame of a film. 300 avoids this issue by removing itself from the war almost entirely, fixating on the Spartan perspective as the main protagonists for the whole battle. This makes for an interesting and clear storyline, easy for an audience to follow, yet the sense of a unified Greece is lost in the process.

Works Cited

“The Success and Failure of Greek History in Film”, http://etc.ancient.eu/culture/greek-history-in-film/