Islam is not bad, too many of you are ignorant of history.

[sapphi_snake]

Joelcool7 said:

I realize my post makes it out that Islam is evil. It is not I have Muslim friends and have talked with various Imam's about our faiths. However to argue that Christians were just as bad or worse because of the crusades is really funny to me. During the dark ages all the countries acted like this. Infact what about genghis khan or other leaders in the past.

As I said in my post the Crusades were not unprovoked genocide, it wasn't Christians trying to convert Muslims. It was Christians wanting to visit and worship in Jerusalem. It was about Christian countries wanting to stop the Islamic armies from invading other Christian cities. It was to retake the country and city that the Muslims took from them.

It wasn't all self defence but imagine today that Russia or who ever conquered Washington DC. The invaders force all the americans out of the city and populate it with their own people. Then the American states join together and retake the city in a bloody battle during which they kill the majority of the inhabitants.

Now would America be in the wrong? Sure they didn't have to kill everyone but it was their city. Were the natives wrong to try and retake America from the european's? The Crusades were Christians retaking what was rightfully theirs.

The Crusades were pretty much about Christians trying to convert Muslims. Actually, the Crusades is also the period where you can trace the first anti-semitic sentiments, and the beginning of the institutionalised persecution of Jews. The Crusadesers also attacked pagans and heretics in Europe.

You also shouldn't forget that the Christians that fought in the Crusades invaded Constantinopole (a city ruled by other Christians), pillaged it, and killed many of it's inhabitants. None of the terriroties that the Christians were trying to take from the Muslims belonged to them (the Christians who fought were mainly Catholics and were from Western Europe, so they really had no way of claiming that they had any right to the  Holy Land which had been part of the Byzantine Empire). Sorry, the Christians were definately the bad guys in the Crusades.