Islam History By Thomas F. Madden ***Guest Op-Ed***

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common.
Generally portrayed as a series of unprovoked holy wars
against Islam, they are supposed to have been the epitome
of self-righteousness and intolerance -- a black stain on

the history of the Catholic Church in particular and
Western, Christian civilization in general. Since September
11, variations of this theme have been used to explain --
even justify -- Muslim terror against the West. Former
President Bill Clinton himself, in a speech at Georgetown
University, fingered Muslim anger at the Crusades as the
"root cause" of the present conflict.

But the truth is that the Crusades had nothing to do with
colonialism or unprovoked aggression The Crusades were
not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights
but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in
which Muslims had already captured two thirds of the old

Christian world. At some point, European culture had to
defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were
that defense.

Their entire subsequent history is one of Western reaction
to Muslim advances -- they were no more offensive than
was the American invasion of Normandy.

• Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From
the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion
was always the sword.

• With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out
against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death.
Palestine, Syria, and Egypt -- once the most heavily
Christian areas in the world -- quickly succumbed.

• By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered
all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh
century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern
Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul.

• The Byzantine Empire was reduced to little more than Greece.
In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the
Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers
and sisters in the East.

• The end of the medieval Crusades did not bring an end to
Muslim jihad -- Islamic states like Mamluk Egypt continued
to expand in size and power, and the Ottoman Turks built
the largest and most awesome state in Muslim history.

• Under Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks came within
a hair's breadth of capturing Vienna, which would have
left all of Germany at their mercy. At that point Crusades
were no longer waged to rescue Jerusalem, but Europe

itself.

• It is often asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands
and ne'er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity
to rob and pillage in a faraway land. Recent scholarship
has demolished that contrivance. The truth is that the
Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people
got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.

• The Ottoman Turks conquered not only their fellow Muslims,
thus further unifying Islam, but also continued to press westward,
capturing Constantinople and plunging deep into Europe itself.
By the 15th century, the Crusades were no longer errands of
mercy for a distant people but desperate attempts of one of the
last remnants of Christendom to survive. Europeans began to
ponder the real possibility that Islam would finally achieve its
aim of conquering the entire Christian world by the sword.

• In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna. If not
for a run of freak rainstorms that delayed his progress and
forced him to leave behind much of his artillery, it is virtually
certain that the Turks would have taken the city.

• Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact
that the world we know today would not exist without
their efforts. Without the Crusades, and from a human
standpoint, Christianity might well have followed

Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction.
Of course, God would have not allowed that. Mt 16:18

From: A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden