One of the more annoying comments on the Rainbow article is this one:
Someone should tell the H8ers – who merely highjack the word “god” to spread their H8 – that the alleged “christian cross” was STOLEN (in 1081AD) by the
Christian Crusade leader, Godfrey de Bouillon, from the Muslims. That’s right, the Christians STOLE the symbol of the cross from the Muslims in the
First Christian Crusades. When will the Christians give the Stolen Cross symbol back to the Muslims?
The charitable interpretation of this
comment is that he thinks Godfrey took an object that was believed to be the True Cross from someone in the Muslim world who happened to have it in his
possession. I don’t know whether this is in fact the case. But let us say for the sake of argument that it is true. Even if we accept this (which I don’t
necessarily) that still leaves an enormous amount of misleading stuff in a few sentences. 1. he confuses the symbol which has many manifestations, and
an actual physical object (in this case, the True Cross or some relic thereof.) 2. he assumes that just because a Muslim possessed it at this time, that
the True Cross was rightfully his. 3. the phrase “Christians STOLE the symbol of the Cross from the Muslims,” makes it sound as if the Cross was once a
symbol of the Muslim religion and is only a symbol of the Christian religion because they somehow took it from the Muslims. I am not aware that the cross
has ever been a Muslim symbol. 4. Finally, if we were to interpret this statement purely at the symbolic level, it suggests that Christianity did not consider
the cross a significant symbol until they “STOLE the symbol of the Cross” during the First Crusade. The cross has been a significant symbol in Christianity
from the earliest times, in ritual, in art and in architecture. The image above is from approximately 430 AD, and can be found here.This poor soul either has no idea what he is talking about regarding the historical symbolism of the cross, or he is confusing two quite separate concepts:
an object and a symbol. Or possibly worse.