Why the Crusades?

The Crusades only started after five hundred years of Islamic jihad had conquered and annihilated, or forcibly converted, over two thirds of what had been the Christian world.

Shortly after the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem in 638, Christian pilgrims were harassed, massacred, and early in the 8th century, 60 Christians from Amoriem were crucified.

The Muslim governor of Caesarea seized a group of pilgrims from Iconium and had them all executed. Muslims extorted ransom money from pilgrims and threatened to ransack the most holy churches in Christendom such as the Church of the Resurrection if they didn’t pay exorbitant taxes.

In the eighth century a Muslim ruler banned all displays of the cross in Jerusalem. He also increased the jizya and forbade Christians to engage in any religious instruction, even of their own children. In 772, the Calipha al Mansur ordered the hands of all Christians and Jews in Jerusalem to be branded.

In 789, Muslims beheaded a monk in Bethlehem, plundering the monastery and and slaughtering many more Christians. In 923 a new wave of destruction of churches was launched by the Muslim rulers. In 937 Muslims went on a rampage in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, plundering and destroying the Church of Calvary and the Church of the resurrection.

In 1004 the Fatimid Calipha Abu Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim unleashed a violent wave of church burning and destruction, confiscation of Christian property, and ferocious slaughter of both Christians and Jews. Over the next ten years, thirty thousand churches were destroyed and vast numbers of believers were forcibly converted or killed.

In 1009, Al-Hakim ordered that the most holy churches in Christendom – the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem – be destroyed. He heaped humiliating and burdensome decrees upon Christians and Jews, forcing Christians to wear heavy crosses around their necks and Jews to have blocks of wood in the shape of a calf around their necks. Ultimately he ordered Christians and Jews to either accept Islam or flee his areas of control

Christians remained in a precarious position and under threat throughout the Middle East. When the Seljuk Turks swept into Jerusalem in 1077 they murdered over three thousand people, including many Christians. It was at this point that the Christian Emperor of Byzantium, Alexius l, appealed for help to the Western Churches.

Nowhere was the call for the launch of the Crusades talking about either conquest or conversion, they were merely to remove the Islamic invaders from the lands that had been previously Christian, to restore religious freedom to the Holy Lands.

The politically correct dogma that the Crusades were unprovoked, imperialist actions against peaceful, indigenous Muslims is simply not true. Such propaganda reflects a hostility for Western civilisation, and often against Christianity itself, rather than any historical research.

Many thanks to anatadaephobia from MYTelegraph for allowing me to post their article. (Cheers)