ISIS executes 19 girls for refusing to have sex with fighters

[Eddie_Raja]

Johnw1104 said:

Eddie_Raja said:

That's what the anti-religeous types never seem to understand - at most religion is an excuse for things people do.  There is always a socio-economic reason for everything, including the crusades.  

 

Take some college courses people, people do things because they need or want to, and then they use religion as an excuse for themselves and others.  They aren't some army of God, they are angry sociopaths.

I agree with your sentiment, people want to get things done and coopting religion is often a good way of doing it... We've seen terrible things can be achieved without religion whatsoever (Stalin/Mao etc)

The crusades, though, while having some benefits to the land owning dukes and kings (not many) who participated, were indeed primarily motivated by a desire to recapture the holy land for Christendom. It was the kick that got it moving and the glue that kept these disparate classes and cultures together. I'm not anti-revisionist history (I revise myself every time I study it) but I find people are so eager to rewrite history that they just flip it on its head and declare black is white. To fail to appreciate just how all encompassing faith was within the minds of the people of this time is to render any analysis of the Crusades fatally flawed from the start.

What I learned is it was the same situation as why the Vikings sent raiders everywhere: To get rid of the access wariors before they caused trouble at home.

 By the time of the crusades, 90% of the land in Europe was tied up in dozens of treaties due to marriages and agreements.  As such largescale warfair was becoming obsolete and there wasn't much fighting anymore.  Yet, you have all of these people (Knights, English Longbowman) who were trained 12 hours a day since 7 years old to fight.  

These wariors were creating tons of problems starting fights and feuds back home (much like our over-armed Police officers today).  Thus the pope said hey those dang muslims took "Our" land, and the Europeans saw an excellent opportunity to give their fighters purpose.  They would have found some dumb way to use them either way.