Saladin
ISIS and AlQaeda should learn from a great Muslim leader in the 12th century: Saladin.
He was from a Kurdish family and was born in Tikrit, Mesopotamia; When he died, he was buried in Damascus.
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (Arabic: صلاح الدين يوسف بن أيوب; Kurdish: سهلاحهدین ئهیوبی , Selahedînê Eyûbî) (1137/1138 – 4 March 1193), better known in the Western world as Saladin, was the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria and the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. A Muslim of Kurdish[1][2][3] origin, Saladin led the Muslim opposition to the European Crusaders in the Levant. At the height of his power, his sultanate included Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Hejaz, Yemen and other parts of North Africa.
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Saladin achieved a great reputation in Europe as a chivalrous knight due to his fierce struggle against the crusaders and his prodigality. Although Saladin faded into history after the Middle Ages, he appears in a sympathetic light in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Nathan the Wise (1779) and in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Talisman (1825). The contemporary view of Saladin originates mainly from these texts. According to Jonathan Riley-Smith, Scott's portrayal of Saladin was that of a "modern [19th Century] liberal European gentlemen, beside whom medieval Westerners would always have made a poor showing."[106] Despite the Crusaders' slaughter when they originally conquered Jerusalem in 1099, Saladin granted amnesty and free passage to all common Catholics and even to the defeated Christian army, as long as they were able to pay the aforementioned ransom (the Greek Orthodox Christians were treated even better, because they often opposed the western Crusaders). An interesting view of Saladin and the world in which he lived is provided by Tariq Ali's novel The Book of Saladin.[107]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin#Recognition_and_legacy
While Saladin’s legacy is the retaking of Jerusalem, he is also well known for his generosity and compassion. While he was a military genius and a warrior with a cause, he believed that all people were inherently good, simply misguided. The Christian crusaders who fought against him in the battle to retake Jerusalem were treated with kindness and Saladin made sure to keep every promise made to the inhabitants of the city. He agreed to a treaty allowing Europeans to hold ports on the Palestinian coast and also allowed Christians the right o make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. This taking back of Jerusalem was final in the eyes of the Muslims, and while the crusades lasted another hundred years, the Christian fervor towards the holy city waned as the renaissance and economic growth began to spread through Europe (Setton 621).However 800 years after Saladin's death, still the areas from the Kurdistan region to Tikrit, Syria, and Palestine are in bloody wars. Something must be wrong in the Islamic world.
http://www.inforefuge.com/the-life-history-of-saladin
Anyway, Saladin was respected even by Dante who hated the founder of Islam:
When Dante Alighieri compiled his great medieval Who's Who of heroes and villains, the Divine Comedy, the highest a non-Christian could climb was Limbo. Ancient pagans had to be virtuous indeed to warrant inclusion: the residents included Homer, Caesar, Plato and Dante's guide, Vergil. But perhaps the most surprising entry in Dante's catalog of "great-hearted souls" was a figure "solitary, set apart."Now what we can do might be just to hope that the Mausoleum of Saladin will not be damaged by any Muslim fighters and soldiers.
That figure was Saladin. It is testament to his extraordinary stature in the Middle Ages that not only was Saladin the sole "modern" mentioned--he had been dead barely 100 years when Dante wrote--but also that a man who had...
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993030,00.html
Saladin died of a fever on March 4, 1193, at Damascus, not long after King Richard I's departure. In Saladin’s possession at the time of his death were 1 piece of gold and 47 pieces of silver. He had given away his great wealth to his poor subjects leaving nothing to pay for his funeral.[3] The mausoleum was originally built by Saladin's son, Al-Afdal ibn Salah ad-Din. Saladin's body was interred temporarily at the Citadel of Damascus until the construction of the building was completed in 1196. The madrasah was built later by Saladin's other son, Al-Aziz Uthman.[1] The mausoleum was rebuilt in 1898 under the patronage of the German Emperor William II who financed the repairs after he visited Damascus and found the tomb in a state of disrepair.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Saladin
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Mat 11:4 Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: