What is your opinion of the Crusades?

Muslim armies had conquered much of northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Spain, which had been some of the most heavily Christian areas in the world.

Thousands, and possibly millions, of Christians died during this drive to eventually bring the entire world under Islam.

The First Crusade was launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to check the advance of the Muslims and regain control of the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

If this defensive war was not fought then we would probably all be Muslim today.

I am sure that some atrocities were committed by individuals of both sides during this war but by most people's judgment this was a just war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade

With love in Christ.

I believe that the crusades, while approved by the Pope, were in reality an attempt by the Roman empire to increase its size, power and wealth. They were poorly planned and showed bad military strategy, particularly not typical to the Romans(perhaps blinded by tweaked biblical doctrine). While I believe in God, I think that the Pope around this time would have had to submit to the will of the Roman authorities anyway, I mean we saw what happened when King Henry XIII couldn't get a pardon for divorce from his wife. He just started a whole new church and made Catholicism illegal. I agree with David in that the Pope isn't needed. we've seen previous popes' so-called authority over military power. It was normally just the corrupt church pretending to speak for God in favor of the ruler in return for some kind of payment.

But even with all the negative aspects of the crusades, they were a much needed European and middle eastern interaction that brought new products and technology to the empire and Europe at large.This partially contributes to their interesting society. So we take them with a grain of salt and look at the positive.

Reasons for thought:

False religious sanction is very often is used to control and manipulate.

Any ruler can go conquer and kill then say God or some other deity approves of it( it has been happening for ages).

We've seen through King Henry VIII that even if the Pope/clergymen do disagree with the ruling party, will really just do what it wants(claim God/diety is still with them; clergy is wrong/;etc)

No different from a Jihad sanctioned war. Many christians either conveniently forget history or attempt to justify such things. Any war or cruel act committed in the name of religion is an atrocious act of hypocrisy. The history of Britain is terribly bloody all in the name of religion and change the masses into controlled thinking. I personally think that religion has done more harm to the world than good.

Biggest waste of time and saddest loss of life.

Why?

To have control over a 60 by 200 mile piece of land?

Especially when Jesus said (to the Samaritan at the well)

"The hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you people worship the Father." John 4:21

Literal Israel lost its signifcance a long, long time ago.

In my opinion, the crusades were religiously sanctioned evil.

and finally it ended up with miserable defeat despite pope's persistent glad tiding for victory.

I think that a religion that has to be spread by hurting other people isn't moral and shouldn't be taken seriously.