THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT THE CRUSADES

A widely held view today is that Islamic terrorism perpetrated by ISIS, and other Muslim brigades is pay-back for the Crusades of the Middle Ages. Contributing to this myth is State Education in Victoria.  
edit.

For example, the Victorian Education Department insinuates this anti-Christian and anti-western myth in a secondary school text, Humanities Alive 2. It says, 
 
Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that The Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?
 
John Esposito[1]more explicitly says that five centuries of peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians were ended by political and papal policies of aggression towards Islam. Many hold this Georgetown University authority on Islam in awe, but his scholarship makes him all the more an apologist for Islam. As for five centuries of peaceful co-existence? The facts say otherwise.
 
Muhammad died in 632AD. Immediately, in quick succession, Islam’s war against the non-Muslim world spread rapidly. And cities and countries fell under the Muslim’s sword.
 
In 633, Mesopotamia fell; in 635 Damascus fell; next in 638, Jerusalem; 643 Grecian states fell; 648, Cyprus; by 698 all of North Africa had fallen; in 711 Muslims invaded Spain but in 732 met its match under Charlemagne. Islam’s northward spread was halted at the battle of Tours.
 
In the centuries following Christians continued to face Islam’s relentless assaults upon them, their families, churches, commercial activity and travelling security. Various popes and political leaders tried to create a coalition of the willing, to counter Islam’s spread, but to no avail.
 
Finally, in 1095, Pope Urban 11 succeeded in persuading nobles, knights, and church leaders to defend Christianity against Islam’s terrorism. Finally at a Council held at Claremont in France, gained sufficient support for launching the first Crusade. Urban cried, “take the road to the holy sepulchre … let each one deny himself and take up the cross.” The assembly rose to its feet and shouted, “God wills it.” But it took 463 years before Christians began to fight back against Islamic terrorism! That fight must continue, for the nature of the battle has changed. Islam now uses different methods. The archbishop of Izmir, Turkey, said that a Muslim leader said to him, “Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you.”[2]And domination is aimed at not by bombs but people.


[1]John Esposito, Islam: the Straight Path, OUP, 1998, p. 58

[2]  Robert Spencer, Onward Muslim Soldiers, Regnery 2003, p55