Muh Crusades

What's up, Veeky Forums?

Whenever I see people criticizing Islam or Jihadists, inevitablely i see people saying "but muh crusades!" So lets talk about the crusades. How bad were they exactly? Everyone makes it out to be the end of the world tier fighting, so what was it like? how many people died etc? How does it compare to the Muslim conquests in Europe, Africa and Asia? Thanks.

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Which crusade?
The Albigensian Crusade was particularly bad, akin to a genocide of Cathars. The northern crusades were nasty too, pretty much everyone surrounding the Teutonic Knights hated them, and they killed fellow Christians too.

Good night, sweet princes

>killing the progenitors of leftists
>bad

Depends which ones.
The famous ones that involved setting up kingdoms in the Middle East were entirely justified response to Muslim aggression.
Some of the later ones... not so much.

Don't forget the 4th crusade which dealt a death blow to the ERE and led to the rise of the Ottomans.

Muslims had been raiding Europe as far as even Paris over a hundred years before the First Crusade.

One side massacred the other and massacres were avenged with more massacres. Christ would have had a thing or two to say to most of the Crusaders when they reached his gates but the Muslims weren't the victims and certainly not any sort of good guys faction.

This was before WW2 so people didn't give a shit about war crimes and since both sides considered the other foreign infidels Chivalry and all but the most stringent Christian and Muslim ideals were ignored.

I used to actually say 'but the crusades' bullshit myself as Doctor Who brainwashed lefty teenager but I didn't know shit at all.

People pretend the Crusades were unprovoked invasions to capture Jerusalem for religious reasons or just to have a war to glorify the kings of the day and sometimes those were factors but there was far more to them than that.

The crusades are way too simplified and overblown by people.

if anyone uses it in a political argument they probably don't actually know what they're talking about.

>When you haven't retaken the holy land in 800 years.

Muslims are the ones who started it. Any westerner saying the crusades were evil imperialist attacking poor innocent muslims are, without exception, cultural marxist fools spreading misinformation.

On the flip side, anyone saying the crusades were purely good noble causes that did nothing wrong are LARPing faggots

youtube.com/watch?v=mLBws-4kzG8

>real crusades history
>cultural marxism
>without exception
meme

As a mere concept, the Crusades were completely moral and just wars unlike the Jihad was.

In practice however there were a lot of morally wrong things that happened and the Crusades went off track in regards to defending Christendom pretty much the moment land started to be conquered by the Crusaders as the various leaders of the First Crusade started dick waving and claiming land before the campaign had even been properly won.

So if people ever say to you that the Crusades were inherently wrong then they are stupid since they pretty much saved Europe. But you can point ot a lot of different things Crusaders did that was not good. The Islamic expansion on the other hand was pure unprovoked conquest and barbarism for no higher reason than spreading Islam.

>So if people ever say to you that the Crusades were inherently wrong then they are stupid since they pretty much saved Europe.
Europe didn't exist at the time.

That's the best one though

Honestly, the christians suffered the worst from the crusades

For the muslims it was more of a perpetual annoyance. One of their caliphs even offered Jerusalem back just to get them to stop bugging them. So long as they controlled rich and fertile Egypt, they would eventually retake the Levant.

Then explain why the Christians of Egypt welcomed the initial arab invaders with open arms?

Source?

I don't even know why I need to "explain" that either.I said nothing about Egypt or the Christians living there.

Maybe they didn't like the Byzantines and thought the Arabs would be better? I don't know, I don't know what your point is.

I'm skeptical of any rumours of Christians "welcoming the glorious Muslims invaders" anyway since we always hear this twaddle spoken about the Visigoths in Spain, which is total fucking nonsense.

because even arabs are better than the orthopoor fucking shits, and copts knew it

Certainly not end of the world tier, but we should dispel with the notion that the Christians gave a fuck about the holy land. There was a trade imbalance between the middle east and mainland Europe that the ecclesiastical authority didn't benefit from, and also, most of Europe was busy fighting each other over bullshit and putting most of their money towards weapons and soldiers, not tithing and indulgences. Pretty clear telling that telling the lay lords they couldn't fight anymore wouldn't work, so the church authorities sent them east for gold and shit, under the guise that the holy land was worth taking back fuh jesus

All Abrahamic religions are the same. Which book of the trilogy you most favor is immaterial as the corruption exists in the core.

The Crusades and international terrorism are pressure valves spewing forth the same product, indistinguishable only by the eras they taint.

not an argument

Christedom then you faggot.

The Crusades basically formed the idea of a Europe in the minds of Christians anyway.

Oh then you're completely wrong.
Christianity didn't need the crusades to survive.

>implying the crusades weren't just unsuccessful attempts at spreading Christianity to the desert and gaining benefices for landed men

also, you're right about them saving Europe... from themselves. Infighting in western and central Europe was literally destroying the land

I'm not so sure of how you're aware of how 1000 years of alternative history where the Crusades never happened would play out, but okay.

Does "Ensured that Christianity would survive" work better for you?

Islamic Conquests
>Only goal is to spread Islam across the known world
>Conquered subjects are almost entirely Christian and are forced to either convert of pay Jizya

Crusades
>Only goal is to capture Jerusalem and establish a Christian Kingdom
>Subjects are both christian and muslim and the latter aren't forced to convert or pay jizya (Contemporary Muslim scholars noted the far better treatment that Muslims received from Christian rulers than Muslim
>All further Crusades in the Levant were for the sole purpose of either recapturing lost holdings or as pre-emptive strikes to secure the safety of Jerusalm

Also tell whoever uses the 'MUH CRUSADES' argument that it's very telling that the closest comparison they have to contemporary muslim behavior is 11th-13th century barbarism

How did it ensure the survival of Christanity?

>Conquered subjects are almost entirely christian

lmfao let me go find the the christians in africa

>crusades
>slaughter a bunch of Cathars and Orthodox Christians because we're filthy papists

Much of Northern Africa was christian at the time of the first Islamic conquests

t. butthurt orthoLARPer

I'm not Christian (I'm a polytheist), I was just pointing out that the crusades did some pretty nasty things.

t. Butthurt Baltic pagan

They really really weren't primarily about spreading Christianity to the Middle East, you know the Middle East was already filled with Christians. Seeing the Crusades as a form of proto-imperialism is the most pleb interpretation of the Crusades and is the sort of dumb shit OP is talking about.

>from themselves. Infighting in western and central Europe was literally destroying the land

Correct, that's one of the ways in which they saved Europe. Don't know where I implied otherwise.

The Crusades saved Europe because they gave Christians a common enemy they could actually fight and formed the earliest idea of a common European identity, which would result in Europeans cooperating more frequently to fight later external threats such as the Ottomans. The Crusades formalised the idea of a Christian/European identity, and a big part of the reason Europeans ruled the world is because that identity existed.

They diverted Muslim attention away from the heart of Christendom until the Muslims got absolutely shitter shattered by the Mongols and no longer presented a threat Until the Ottomans came along of course.

Both of those were completely justified.

>I'm a polytheist

This is true.

To summarize the causes of crusades, because some here seems to lack knowledge:

In late X century, demographics went up in Europe and there was a lot of violence throughout France, Spain, Italy mainly from lords against unarmed people. To stop this, the Church made many councils and established laws against it, they named this movement God's peace.

One day the Basileus ask the catholic church to help him repel Muslims. At the end of a council a pope named Urban II made a speech saying Christians brothers were slaughtered in the Near East, (which was not true, though there were incidents, as European pilgrim went to Jerusalem for centuries)

The speech became so famous thousands people went crusading in the Near East, ending up creating Latin kingdoms here and here, the objective wasn't even to take Jerusalem or cleaning the heathens, as a movement of this size wasn't predicted.

In the end there were fights, sieges and sometimes slaughters, like there are in wars. But Christians and Muslim were living together before and after, trading and shit.

I'm not a pagan.
I worship certain individuals, and pretend they are god's and goddesses.
It comes down to roleplaying.
Good taste in games.

Muslims also think that killing of non-believers are completely justified, so what.

>murdering purer forms of christianity in the name of protecting christianity is justified

???

You know the Coptic Christians in Ethiopia are some of the oldest Christians in existence right?

All of North Africa and the Middle East at that time was Christian too, ever since Rome converted. There aren't many now because of well, the Islamic policy of offering the choice of death conversion or taxation to infidels.

That shit's more shallow than fucking Scientology.

t. lithuanian

TIL. wow, it seems my western education has fucked me in the ass

Crusades were interesting, but ultimately pointless. Didn't prevent the spread of Islam in Europe (More than 44 million Muslims in Europe since 2013) and they don't need majority numbers for their growth to be nascent. Especially with Christianity being taken over by irreligious beliefs.

The wars with the Avars and Sassanids did that already. The Crusades just married that idea to Frankish Christianity with its obsession with martial values, pilgrimage, and relics.

>They diverted Muslim attention away from the heart of Christendom
Muslim attention wasn't on the heart of Christendom then.

The failings of a bunch of cucked retards in the 21st century are not the fault of people from the 11th.

The Crusades worked and 1000 years later people stopped caring.

>formulated his idea of "just" war, and declared that a war to "convert infidels or pagans" was inherently unjust

>still believed Albigensian Crusade and the persecution of the Waldensians was not only completely "justified", but necessary

>t.aquinas

why are christcucks so hypocrytical

le cuck

The Crusades had more secular motivations than religious ones. They were actually a lot like /pol/.

Instead of having a bunch of knights (neet stormweenies) being fags and shitting up Europe (Veeky Forums), the Pope (moot) created the first crusade (/pol/) so they could fuck off somewhere else.

> The Crusades worked
Worked for opening a door into Europe for Turkey by destroying Byzantine Empire. Crusaders even lost fucking Jerusalem in a what? Hundred years? Truly majestic success.

>le fourth crusade mem

Do people actually think it was meant to attack Constantinople?

Are Christians the original dindus?

Always going on and on about how the "evil communists/atheists/Jews/secularists/revolutionaries/Muslims" killed those poor and surely innocent Christians, while at the same, always downplaying the severity of any violence committed by Christians (even against other Christians, though of course, one side will say "they weren't 'true' Christians!", as if it were some sort of justification).

There's:
-the Persecution of the Paulicians
-the Albigensian Crusade
-the Bosnian Crusade
-the Fourth Crusade/sack of Zara and Constantinople ("but m-muh Pope disavowed it so it's totally fine!")
-the Hussite Wars
-the German Peasants' War
-the Schmalkadic War
-the Thirty-Years War
-the Eighty-Years War
-the (French) Wars of Religion
-the Inquisition
-the Beeldenstorm

There are other examples that aren't 'events', per se, but well known: for example, ultra-reactionary clergy in Spain (and probably other countries) funding (for example, Bishop Juan Soldevilla y Romero) strike-breakers or even death-squads to terrorize lower-class city dwellers, the well-known corruption of the Catholic Church since at least the Middle Ages (seriously, just pick up a history book or even Medieval secular literature), evangelicals donating funds to fundamentalist Christian leaders in Africa that simply cause more suffering for actual Africans, and so on and so on. And then Christians will complain that somebody tried to reduce the influence of their religious either completely or somewhat.

With a track record like theirs, I'd find it hard to disagree that the influence of Christianity (and religion in general) needs to be reduced.

They kept Muslims out of Europe and stopped the Christians in Europe from killing one another every 5 seconds what more do you want?

> meant to attack Constantinople
Maybe not, but how you can say that it worked if results clearly differ from its original intent? It is a results that matter here.

also this meme Christcucks have built up about "persecution" under the Romans, which was sporadic and unenforced at best. In reality, early Christians would attack pagan temples and riot in an effort to purposefully be arrested int the hopes of being executed and martyred, such that several councils - with the most notable being one at Carthage - were convened to debate on whether it was acceptable to, one, seek out martyrdom purposefully, and, second, if a Christian who had chickened out and had as a result not been martyered could still come back to the Church.

Well the Fourth Crusade obviously didn't but on the whole they did their job.

Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod published the "Encyclopedia of Wars" which recorded most wars throughout history, 1,763 in total, and of those only 123 wars or 6.92 percent could be described as religiously motivated and roughly half of those wars, 66 in all were waged by Islamic nations.

It's time to end this meme that all religions are equal.

Their only job was Jerusalem being Christian and lost in in like 1300, IIRC. The first one was based, but thats one out of how many?

> They kept Muslims out of Europe
It was Byzantines who protected Europe from the Muslims and crusaders friendly fired them to fucking death.

that's a big empire

>killing heretics is bad
Fuck off cucks, death by sword at least gave them the possibility to accept Christ after their death.

> could be described as religiously motivated
What was his criteria? If you really want, you can always crusades weren't religious, but some war, that was waged by Muslims are clearly is for the Islam to blame for.

>hurr reformation tier division in Europe happening in the 13th century would have been good guys!

Fuck off, they were cancers on any notion of Christendom just like protestants were.

No no no.

Read the thread, it was mostly about giving Christians someone else to fight besides themselves. Basically shifting conflict out of Christian lands to somewhere else, as well as shifting the religious conflicts between Christians and Muslims onto the Muslim territory for once.

Actually taking Jerusalem wasn't even on the cards at the outset of the Peasants' Crusade which was a prelude to the real First Crusade. They were just marching through the Muslim lands with some vague notion of fighting the Muslims and protecting Christians.

The First Crusade is like a fucking Monty Python sketch or something. Nobody really had a fucking clue what they were doing and it's not surprising the conquest of Jerusalem was hailed as a miracle. It was a total disorganised shit show.

Jerusalem became the focus of later Crusades because it had recently been in Christian hands, that's all really. Once the Kingdom of Jerusalem fell the goals of Crusades sort of became vague again.

You know that main stream Catholicism is actually a papist heresy, right?

>catharism
>heresy
but nah, obviously crypto paganism with an absolute monarch at it's head is the purest form of christianity ;)

If it was about shifting the conflict out of Christian lands than what about all religious wars in Germany and such from [ ]

catharism wasn't heretical, because it wasn't even Christian in the first place

>hurr everyone got it wrong until Muh nun fucker figured it all out +1500 years later

The Byzantines were definitely the biggest barrier up until the end of the 11th century, but part of the reason the Crusades started to begin with is because the Byzantine Empire had been perceived to be failng. You know, since the Turks had just taken most of their land?

The Byzantium you posted was a distand memory by the time the First Crusade rolled around.

>downplay Christian martyr
>over emphasize Christian brutality

Do you have even a sliver of self awareness you hypocritical piece of shit?

Conflicts inside Christendom still occured and heretics were still purged, but the idea was to lessen their frequency, not stop them entirely.

I hardly even believe that people could formulate the basics in +200 years later with certainty that was enough to claim being the true Christianity, therefore Christians killing Christians is pure autism and crime against faith.

> The Byzantium you posted
It's actually Ottoman Empire, user.

Yeah I just realised, similar borders.

read my post again

The fact that a council had to be convened just to address the issue should speak on the prevalence of early Christians going on and purposefully trying to get themselves martyred.

Sorry, but your 'poor innocent Christians being massacred by the cruel pagan Romans' just doesn't stick once you read and realize it went more like 'fanatic and bizarre cult members purposefully attack temples and other buildings in attempts to fulfill death-wishes'.

christian """"martyr"""" is a meme

> the idea was to lessen their frequency
Does it really worked? Like can you see conflicts to be less frequent during crusades time?

I'm not sure but the author I'm quoting did provide a list of the wars that he considered religiously motivated.

This, hell the Gnostic heretics known as the Cathar had multiple peaceful opportunity to recant through missionary work. It wasn't until their supporters murdered a papal legate and the Southern nobles did nothing to bring justice to this crime that a crusade was called at all.

Name the council then, because Roman sources almost never mention the reason for death being destruction of Roman property.

> United States War of Terror
Also, if 66 of 123 was Muslims doesn't it mean that 57 out of 123 was Christians?

>The Islamic expansion on the other hand was pure unprovoked conquest and barbarism for no higher reason than spreading Islam.


then how do you explain the many Christian "heretics" who welcomed the Muslims with open arms, because the Church establishment was stifling, with its persecutions and oppression.

and how many part of Egypt and the Levant continued to be Christian-dominant (despite being Muslim ruled) for centuries after the conquests of the 6-7th centuries.

The Paulicians are a famous example of Christian 'heretics' who sided with Muslims against the Byzantine Empire due to the persecution they faced under the Orthodox Church.

Some of those wars listed are Indians and many of the others are Christian vs Christian. I don't see any of the Muslim wars listed.

>I don't see any of the Muslim wars listed.

I meant to say I don't see any of the Muslim civil wars listed

>my history is so real and correct that I have to say that 5 times in the intro

read these

-Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance", H. A. Drake, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8018-7104-2, p. 403; "Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries", Ramsay MacMullen, 1997, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-07148-5 p.15

Ok sure, but can you name the council where what you mentioned was being discussed.

You seemed confident about your statements, surely you can provide which council these things were discussed?

The Encyclopedia of Wars doesn't have a tally, the above seems to come from some Christian apologetics articles responding to what Sam Harris once said.

Latin detected

Deus did not Vult the crusades, only men. And men are not god. We do not become the enemy to beat the enemy, otherwise we are the problem.

Crusades were quite lame compared to all the Muslim invasions.

The only reason Europe isn't Muslim today is because God willed it.

Too be fair the inferior christians were up against the greatest Empire known to man.

Of course they would give up lands and pay the devşirme to avoid total annihilation.

...

...

This picture is a shit meme. Uses the broadest possible definition for "Muslim conquest battles", including even minor raids that didn't entail any "battle" at all, and the narrowest possible definition for "Crusade battles".

Cringe

>cultural marxist