The Signs

Through no fault of their own, the people in England speak English, which is surprising since the Christians lost the Crusades but no one talks about that these days. The Holy Wars seemed to have simply fizzled out and everyone went home. England is cold and damp and rainy. The Muslims probably figured it would be too much of an effort to teach any more lessons, in particular, language lessons to those damp foreigners who lived in such a sad wet land. The sign of the cross, the painted symbol on their uniforms was all they came away with in the end.

In any event, Arabic is not a fun language to learn. Though it is the primary language of Muslims. The truth is; the majority of them speak Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Indonesian Hindi, Persian and Chinese. When you are dealing with such diverse peoples and massive populations things get a little complicated.

In America, in Florida, every one speaks Spanish and sign language but the official language is English, that is, for the time being. The liberals have pretty much taken over the culture so you can speak whatever you want to. Vulgar seems to be in vogue these days.

Apparently sign language has gone out of style. People go through stop signs and traffic signals as though they were pretty decorations on the highway, placed on the roads by the government for your amusement. No one can read anyway so it does not matter. Cars flip upside down here in Florida with great frequency. They become unrecognizable heaps of tangled metal because speed signs also have little or no significance to people who are interested in speed and not so much in rules and signage. Things like a drivers license, insurance and registration are just words to the many individuals living here these days. Perhaps they don’t have such words or items in their language or their countries of origin.

It makes you wonder what it would be like today if the Egyptians had become more successful and powerful in their day and their influences survived through history to modern times. Would we be required to read and speak in Hieroglyphics? And what about road signs? Imagine the symbols and images nightmare that would create for your morning commute.

Authors Note: In 1291, one of the only remaining Crusader cities, Acre, fell to the Muslim Mamluks. Many historians believe this defeat marked the end of the Crusader States and the Crusades themselves.

The only good thing to come out of the Crusades was Enlightenment in the form of the Renaissance from between 1400 and 1600 AD. The Renaissance was and remains the only moment in history from the dawn of time to the present day, where there was true intellectual growth. It evolved well beyond the sign of the cross and settled somewhere near heaven (without all the blood shed.)

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