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Content: So when Christians today think about the Crusades, it may be with
remorse or embarrassment. Church leaders, including the Pope, have
recently made the news by apologizing to Muslims, and everyone
else, for the events surrounding the Crusades. In the minds of
many, the Crusades were an ill-advised fiasco that didn't
accomplish the goals of permanently reclaiming Jerusalem and the
Holy Lands. Are history books correct when they portray the Crusades as an
invasion of Muslim territories by marauding Europeans whose primary
motive was to plunder new lands? What is often left out of the text
is that most of the Islamic Empire had been Christian and had been
militarily conquered by the followers of the Prophet Muhammad in
the 7th and 8th centuries. Islam had suddenly risen out of nowhere to become a threat to all
of Christian Europe, and although it had shown some restraint in
its treatment of conquered Christians, it had exhibited remarkable
cruelty as well. At minimum, Islam enforced economic and religious
discrimination against those it controlled, making Jews and
Christians second-class citizens. In some cases, Muslim leaders
went further. An event that may have sparked the initial Crusade in
1095 was the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre by the Fatimid
caliph al-Hakim.{1}In fact, many Christians at the time considered
al-Hakim to be the Antichrist. We want black and white answers to troubling questions, but the
Crusades present us with a complex collection of events,
motivations, and results that make simple answers difficult to
find.