Rick Fischer
Aug 26, 2017 · 1 min read

I think you need to rethink your inclusion of the crusades among those “lowlights”. By the time of the first crusade in 1095, Islam had been expanding through war and forced conversion for over four hundred years. It was threatening France through the Pyrenees and Eastern Europe through Constantinople and as far east as India.

Islam spread rapidly across northern Africa and Spain, the Middle East, eastward to India and toward eastern Europe, and did so through conquest and conversion by the sword.

The first crusade was the first organized military response by Europe to this existential threat, striking back at the heart of the Islamic empire. Military resistance continued for two hundred years in roughly four military expeditions labeled The Crusades by historians. The crusades stopped when Islam stopped sending armies of conquest into Europe.

Surely you can’t be arguing that European nations did not have the right of self defense against invasion by an imperial, aggressive power? Or are they only allowed to fight on their own soil and not take the fight to the source?

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