Crusade Castling

In 1095, Pope Urban II proclaimed the First Crusade with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to holy places in and near Jerusalem. Following the First Crusade there was an intermittent 200-year struggle for control of the Holy Land, with six more major crusades and numerous minor ones. In 1291, the conflict ended in failure with the fall of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land at Acre, after which Roman Catholic Europe mounted no further coherent response in the East. Some historians see the Crusades as confident, aggressive, papal-led expansion attempts by Western Christendom; some see them as part of long-running conflict at the frontiers of Europe; and others see them as part of a purely defensive war against Islamic conquest. Crusading attracted men and women of all classes. The massacres involved were mainly attributed as being caused by disorder, an epidemic of ergotism and economic distress.

Castling again is a move in the game of chess involving a player's king and either of the player's original rooks. It is the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces in the same move, and it is the only move aside from the knight's move where a piece can be said to "jump over" another. In the end of a castling move the entire positioning of pieces on the chess board seems to require a totally refreshed approach to the strategies employed to win the game. In other words castling incorporates a great degree of the surprise element and is capable of rendering tactics used up to that point void.

And then there is the ISIS or ISIL as President Obama prefers to call the muslim terrorist group that rose to prominence last summer, taking over parts of Iraq and Syria, declaring a new caliphate and beheading two American journalists and many more Europeans and Arabs. They claim to be representing all Muslims everywhere and their aspiration is to establish the new Muslim caliphate, which in the perception of Muslims means the universal, legitimate Islamic Rule. Only that most of their own kind don't think of the ISIS being all that legitimate. The only means they employ in the establishment of their State is violence in all forms (remember Charlie Hebdo?) and their main objective is that this violence crosses over to the lands of Europe and the western world as a whole. In many ways -the Holy Land- crusade in reverse.

In a game of chess Christianity would be white and the Islam would be black. Black is now castling and reversing the religious warfare. Bottom line is that what the planet is experiencing at this moment is yet another religiously motivated war, with lots of underlying violence and long forgotten brutality in the civilised world. Beheadings of journalists, or Christians, who happened to be captured by the islamic terrorist group, in the most primitive way which is diluting all evolution achieved by our species in the last millennium between the first crusades and the current attempt to establish the caliphate. So it seems that mankind feeds itself on this religious hatred or at least uses that religious hatred as an excuse to express its intrinsic brutality which requires an outlet every now and then and reminds us of the genuine difference that the religious impact has on the evolution of mankind. Well, history has shown us that six major crusades later in 1291, the end came with the defeat of the Pope and the fall of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land. By analogy, I would dare to say that the caliphate stands no chance of ever getting established. For those who are not convinced of my prediction I will only say that history tends to repeat itself with an impressive degree of precision.

Post by Theodore Patsellis - PRP Law

tpatsellis@prp-law.com

Corporate Law and International Taxation Attorney with substantial international experience in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and the Baltic Region. High premium in providing preemptive legal and support in Greek, English or German. Additional focus on contract drafting, corporate and statutory compliance, corporate Governance and effective tax planning.