Joelcool7 said:
I'm getting that from what I was taught in Social Studies. The Muslims began moving North towards Constantinople and Christians began being persecuted or at least thats what the church told everyone and what was recorded in the history books. Constantinople and the Byzantine empire called on the Catholic Church for help. The persecution and advances of the Muslims caused the Catholic Church to unite the Christian nations in a war which they considered holy.
I don't know why it took 400 years, actually I do the Christians were to busy fighting amongst each other to stop the Muslims from taking over. But when Constantinople was threatened and the Muslims began moving towards other Christian territories they got afraid and fought back.
Keep in mind Emperor Constantine built the first big christian church in Constantinople. Constantinople and Jerusalem were the two biggest Christian landmarks. Its like Jerusalem and Mecca is to Islam. Muslims controlling those two cities would be a horrible thing for the Christians especially if persecution was occuring as the Christians claimed it was.
As I said Muslim nations may have been better then the crusaders. But it wasn't an unprovoked war. Its not like one day for no reason the Catholic Church declared a holy war on Islam and marched into Jerusalem. It was hundreds of years of war and/or persecution that lead to the crusades.
I admit Muslims back in the middle ages were more civilized then the Catholics. But Muslims were still pretty violent and weren't entirely innocent in the Crusades or other wars. Also keep in mind the Catholics killed the protestants the same way today the Sunni's kill the Shiites and vice versa.
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Sounds like your persecution arguement is solely based on one single time frame and has nothing to do with the holy lands, but everything to do with treatment of those in and around Greece/Turkey where the wars were centered at that time of the beginnings of the first Crusade. Additionally, what grade was this social studies class? Was it university level or high school/middle school/younger. I'm betting the latter, which I'm sorry to inform you is generally never accurate as they focus on history from a single viewpoint.
I also never claimed the first Crusade was unprovoked or one sided. You are also still focusing on one single, minor, part of my general history of Islam as mentioned in this thread.
Also, it took 400 years before the first Crusade even started because Christian Europe didn't care who controlled that area, unlike what you are trying to suggest. The holy land was only a tool used by the religious authorities to gain support and unify behind a common enemy who was encroaching on Christian Europe from both sides. Afterall, if you take a real study of Islamic history, even just focused on Jerusalem and the other religious cities you'll see that during those 400 years and the continued years after the Crusades, Christians and Jews where allowed full freedom of religion. Until the modern wars for Israel/Palestine after WWII, but that is an entirely different topic.
I think you need to admit that your one minor topic in an Social Studies class might not be entirely right or in depth on this topic as you think it is.
