The bombing of civilians and the killing of children in Iraq and Syria seems to be most often cited.
Let's take this at face value and say this is indeed what motivates the Islamic extremists. Its stupid, but let's say you're 100% correct and this is the sole thing.
How is a reason "
I'm a Muslim Frenchman and going to attack French civilians, because France kills innocent Muslims in Syria" not an inherently Islamic reason? You can find the justification for that in the Koran too.
Furthermore if you're going to claim it is indeed not, and this is a normal human reaction, please explain how people worse than, say, LePen are somehow wrong. Their reaction is milder and more justified than the reaction by Islamic extremists.
Plus, far from helping the Byzantine empire, the sack of Constantinople by Western Crusaders and their partitioning of the empire during the Fourth Crusade fatally weakened it and is what led to its final defeat by the Ottomans.
Yes, some 130 years later the Crusades evolved into something much different than what they were initially intended to be. That doesn't change the initial aspect of the Crusades one iota.
Actually, it was the complete failure of the Eighth and Ninth Crusades and Edward I being forced to negotiate a ten-year truce with the Muslims (he cared more about what was happening back home in England than about what was happening in the Middle East, in any case), after the expiration of which came the final collapse and reconquest of the Crusader Kingdoms in the Levant.
The first crusade would be averted, had the bigoted Islamic leaders allowed Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. Since Christian pilgrims were allowed to make pilgramages to Jerusalem after the end of the Crusades, the later can be argued to have been a victory for Christians. It wasn't an overwhelming victory by any means, but they achieved what they initially set out to do, whereas all Muslims managed to do is stem the mission creep the Crusaders developed.
If the end result for war is something party A desired and party B wanted to prevent, then party B sure wasn't victorious. In this case party A - Crusaders - desired to open up Jerusalem and party B - Muslims - wanted to keep Jerusalem
Christianrein. Party A got their result, party B failed. Who won the war?
Even that's not true, since the entire context and focus of the Qur'an was on the polytheists of Mecca, and that's how pretty much all exegetes understand the verses in the Qur'an.
Only if you accept the 'interpretation' that Islam is not the universal faith, that the Koran is not the ultimate word of God and that Mohamed is not a pattern of conduct for all mankind, but just dealt with a special case which was not a precendens of how to act in the future.
I believe the Islamic word for Muslims who believe that is "an apostate". Nice try though.
Even as projection, your argument there is terrible.
You know, you're great at asserting things.
Analysis ... not so much.
Jews certainly existed at the time Christianity was established, and we can get a clue as to how Christianity might have treated Muslims from the way they treated Jews.
Can we? What do you base this on?
It wasn't until the Western imperialism, conquests, and colonialism of Muslim lands starting in that period that the Crusades were recast as a precursor invasion to what was happening contemporaneously.
I find it interesting that they picked the Crusades and not, say, Mongol invasions. The latter were worse by an order of magnitude. Do you have any comment on that, perhaps?
McHrozni
I hope I was "a fare to remember!' Actually I know I was.
