Were The Crusaders Really Like Radical Islamic Terrorists?

Were The Crusaders Really Like Radical Islamic Terrorists? 

This morning, again, I read of radical Islamic terrorism working violence, this time in Orlando against a gay nightclub, where it killed or wounded over 100 people.  It breaks my heart.  No, I do not stand in solidarity with the gay men who were killed, but their guilt before a Holy God is no greater than mine.  Homosexuality has never been my struggle, but the Holy Spirit has recently convicted me of my habitual sins associated with a haughty and prideful attitude. I am just as much a sinner, although our sins are different.  I deserve to be killed for my sin just as much as they did, and I pray for mercy for them just as I do for myself.  So I weep for them, mourn them, and decry the violence brought against them. 

As I look at the response of various politicians to this kind of Satanic exercise on earth in the form of Islamic terrorism, I hear them say lots of things that are just ill-informed and simply not true, trying to downplay the horror of what the most fundamentalist followers of Islam do in the name of their god.  I heard again today what I've heard so many times, even from our President, that, "We Christians ought not to judge too strongly.  After all, haven't you heard of the Crusades?" As a teacher of Christian History, I must object to that comparison.  I know that this blog is usually expositional Bible teaching.  With your permission, may I diverge slightly and correct this misunderstanding for you? 

1. The Crusades were preached and pursued by those who knew Christ poorly, not by those who knew Him well. There is no properly-understood Biblical support for what the crusaders did.  If the Moors, Turks, and Saracens were the enemy of Christ, Bible-believers would have known to pray for them, to love them, to work for their salvation, not for their destruction. The Bible was never read by a smaller portion of the people before or after that time.  The few extant copies of the scriptures were in a language almost nobody spoke and locked up in rooms almost nobody could access. The Leaders of the church were not saved.  The "professional" Christians (priests, bishops, cardinals, etc.) were in it for their own kingdom, not the Kingdom of God.  The simple tenants of the faith were lost to the church during that time.  The scalpel of the reformation had not yet been brought to bear on the cancerous, leprous, scabies-infested, gangrenous corpse that was the medieval church.   Am I saying that nobody knew Christ? No, God always has his remnant, but the overwhelming majority of those who thought they knew Christ knew nothing of Him, and their lives and choices bear out that lost state, as scripture tells us that it will. 

In contrast to this, it is plainly and clearly the teaching of Mohammed that those who are opposed Islam are to be killed.  In fact, dying in the process of killing the infidel is the only guaranteed way to make it to heaven. While Crusaders did not have the scriptures to read for themselves, much less upon which to build their lives, and so their ignorance worked itself out in actions that amounted to apostasy, the radical Islamic terrorist does in fact understand the teachings of their scripture, and they act in accordance with it. The two are not the same. 

2. The Crusades were not unprovoked.  You often hear that the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad, rotten Christians decided to go attack the Moors, Turks, and Saracens and capture Jerusalem of their own instigation, out of the corruption of their blackened souls. Not true! The first crusade arose as a military response to the aggression of the Turks, who in 1065 attacked Jerusalem and killed over 3,000 European Christian pilgrims who were in Jerusalem visiting holy sites.  The Turks then turned their aggression north, and the Byzantine empire called upon their brethren in western Europe to help defend them.  The "Christian" crusaders were not the aggressors.  They were acting in defense of the Byzantine empire and to regain the peaceful access to Jerusalem.

3. The Crusades were a military action.  Today, in almost every state, the ecclesiastical powers and the political ones are separate. Even in nations such as the UK, where church and state are united, it is not the Archbishop of Canterbury who has the power of the sword.  We moderns can't really conceive of what the power balance was in Medival Europe.  The Pope had armies.  In fact, he had great armies. More than that, it was believed that the power of the sovereign rule of the political states rested ultimately in his hand.  He made emperors and kings.  Therefore, when he commanded a king or emperor to fight, it was a political-military mandate.  We think that the command by Pope Urban II to attack the Turks was like some television evangelist enticing a war.  It was nothing of the like.  This was the power reality of the day.  The crusades were the mobilization of one political body and military unit to defend an ally against another political body and military unit.  In that sense, the crusades were very much like the multinational union of forces which attacked and occupied Afganistan after the attack on 9/11.  

4. Even given all the above qualifiers, the numbers do not compare. I have argued that the Crusades were not unprovoked, were not done by what we would today call real Christians, and were, in fact, political-military operations.  Even if you don't buy those arguments, the numbers simply do not compare.  If you try to get a hard number on the death toll of the crusades, you can't find consensus.  A cursory "googling" will return numbers as small as 100,000 total deaths and as large as 4,000,000.  Most reliable sources, though average in at 1,000,000 total deaths, on both sides (Crusader, Moor, Turk, and Saracen). Let's use that number.  The crusades lasted for 1,105 years.  That's an averaged death toll of  905 deaths (rounding up) per year. Even one death in an unjust war is too many, but this number is far smaller than the same figure, in comparison to the modern cost of terrorism today. 

A picture of Coptic Christians awaiting beheading by ISIS fighters. 

Let's limit our death toll comparison to those deaths caused by Radicalized Islamists.  I will not count the deaths caused by the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate under Mohammed, although those numbers are large.  Nor will I count deaths caused by Islamic nations fighting a legitimate war for national independence from a Western power.  Those are political numbers.  We will look only at how many Christians have died because of their faith at the hands of a radicalized Islamic group (governmental or non-governmental militia) from 2000-2010. According to several sources, including a careful study by Gordon Cromwell University put out in 2010, supported by other universities and governments, including the Vatican, in the decade from 2000-2010 alone, there were 1,000,000 Christians killed for their faith worldwide at the hands of Muslim governments or militia groups.  That's 100,000 per year, more than 100 times the annual death toll from the crusades.  The numbers simply don't compare, and the problem is escalating.  While there are no hard academically-verified numbers more recent than 2010, There are some terrifying snapshots.  170,000 Christians in ISIS-controlled territories are estimated to have been killed in 2014-2015 alone. Three thousand Christian martyrs died at the hands of Radicalized Islamic militants in Nigeria last year alone. 

In conclusion, to say that Christians are "no better" than ISIS or their ilk because we have the Crusades on our ledgers is just not true. I reject the foundational belief that the Crusaders were real Christians.  I also assert that it was a real political-military operation.  I also see reasonable provocation for their start (although they went on way too long) in the sacking of Jerusalem and the aggression toward the Byzantine Empire by the Turks.  Lastly, the numbers simply don't add up.  

Now, having said all of this, please don't feel empowered by these arguments to blow off the Crusades.  Whether or not we need to carry the guilt of them around with us, much of the world feels that we do. Can I suggest the following talking points the next time someone brings the ISIS = Crusades argument to you? 

Step 1: Apologize for the Crusades.  Nothing will throw your opponent off guard more than your heartfelt, honest apology for the sins of our "fathers."  Look them in the eye and say something like.  "I want you to know that I reject completely the hostility exhibited by my forefathers and renounce their actions as anti-Christ and completely without Biblical foundation. On behalf of the true Church of Christ, I ask your forgiveness for their offense."  After you pick them up off the floor, continue. 

Step 2: Tell them about the sacking of Jerusalem in 1065 by the Turks, the 3,000 Christian Pilgrims killed, and the aggression toward Byzantine.  Explain to them that the Crusades were not unprovoked. It may be helpful to compare the attack on Jerusalem with 9/11.  About the same number of innocent people died at no fault of their own.  Compare the response of America and its allies to that of Europe in the Crusades. 

Step 3: Help them see the Crusades as a military operation, not only a "Holy War."  When the proper understanding of the political power of Pope Urban is achieved, it becomes clear that the Crusades were not purely a religious exercise.  It was one multinational military union combatting another. 

Step 4:Compare the numbers.  When they see that were talking about a death rate 100x greater in the modern era, the last pieces of their argument should fall apart.  It's just not true. 

Step 5: Don't live like a crusader.  Don't be the Christian who hates, judges, takes, and condemns.  Read the Bible, Get to know Christ, and live as He lived.  If we can do that, nobody will ever raise this argument again.  

"By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35