The truth about the Crusades

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝟒𝟔𝟑 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒.

Every time someone trots out the Crusades to lecture Christians or the West, they leave out four centuries of history. I'm putting it back on the record.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲

Muhammad died in 632. Within three years, Muslim armies had taken Damascus (635). The next year, Antioch (636). The year after that, the entire Holy Land (637) — the spiritual center of Christendom, gone. Armenia became the first Christian nation fully conquered (639). Egypt, the Coptic Christian power, fell two years later (641). By 650, Muslim forces had reached southern Italy and Cyprus, taking thousands of captives as "𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴" and "𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘶𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴." Then came Spain — Muslim armies crossed from North Africa in 711 and overran most of Iberia by 715.

In roughly 80 years, Christianity lost the Middle East, North Africa, and most of the Iberian Peninsula.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 — 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝𝐥𝐲

This was not exploration. This was conquest. In 717, Muslim forces besieged Constantinople itself — the capital of Eastern Christendom. The siege lasted a year before they were repelled. Had it succeeded, the path into Europe would have been wide open.

In 730, they invaded France. Charles Martel stopped them at Tours. In 792, the ruler of Al-Andalus called for a second invasion of France. Repelled. In 848, a third invasion of France. Repelled again.

In 827, Muslims invaded Sicily and Italy, persecuting monks and pillaging Christian communities. Sicily would remain under Islamic rule for 250 years. In 846, they invaded Rome itself and forced the Pope to pay tribute. By 909, they had taken Sardinia.

This was relentless, coordinated, and existential.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭

In 937, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher — built over the site Christians believe is the tomb of Christ — was burned to the ground. More churches in Jerusalem were torched alongside it. In 1009, the Church of the Resurrection was destroyed. By 1012, Al-Hakim's oppressive decrees against Christians had begun in earnest.

Christian pilgrims could no longer safely visit the sites of Christ's ministry. The holiest city in Christendom was ruled by a hostile power systematically destroying the faith itself.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩

In 1071, Muslim Turkish forces shattered the Byzantine army at Manzikert and occupied most of Anatolia. Constantinople was now directly threatened.

In 1094, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos sent envoys to Rome begging Western Christendom for military aid.

In 1095, Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade.

𝟒𝟔𝟑 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞. 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. 𝟐𝟓𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐥𝐲. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐲.

Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.

The Crusade Victimhood Lie

Islamic conquest was the aggressor. Christian Europe owes no apology for resisting its own subjugation.

The lie begins with a cropped photograph of history.

We are shown the Crusades, but not the centuries before them. We are shown Christian armies marching east, but not Islamic armies smashing west. We are told to mourn Muslim victimhood while the conquered Christian world — Syria, Egypt, North Africa, the Holy Land, Spain, and parts of Anatolia — is quietly dragged offstage, as if these were misplaced during a clerical error.

This is inversion of the actual history.

Before the Crusades began in 1095, Islamic conquest had already torn through vast Christian territories by force of arms. These were not peaceful transfers. They were religious imperial campaigns of siege, slaughter, plunder, enslavement, taxation, subordination, and the replacement of Christian sovereignty with Islamic rule. As the map above illustrates, by the time Christian Europe mounted its counteroffensive, Islamic forces had already established Al-Andalus in Spain, raided Rome itself, conquered key Christian heartlands across the Middle East and North Africa, and continued pressing into Europe for centuries afterward.

The Crusades were brutal. No honest account denies that. But they were not the opening crime. They were a late, violent, religiously charged counterstroke after Islamic expansion had already carved deep into the Christian world. The modern narrative wants history to begin when Europe finally answered back. It wants us to forget the conquest, the conquered, the jizya, the dhimmi system, the sword at the throat — and remember only the moment Christian Europe stopped retreating.

That is not moral clarity. That is fraud.

The conquered non-Muslim under Islamic power was not welcomed into equality. He was ordered into submission: convert, pay the jizya tax in humiliated submission, accept dhimmi inferiority, flee, be enslaved, or die resisting. This was not tolerance. Tolerance does not arrive with cavalry, seize your city, tax your unbelief, and call your survival mercy. The hadith literature reinforces the doctrinal core: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.”

This matters because the same inversion now paralyzes Western judgment.

Every time someone says, “Look what Christians did to Muslims during the Crusades,” the answer is simple: start the story where the story actually starts. Start with Islamic conquest. Start with Christian lands taken by Islamic armies. Start before 1095.

Spain was conquered in 711. Rome was raided in 846, with Arab forces sacking Old St. Peter’s and St. Paul Outside the Walls, prompting Pope Leo IV to build the Leonine Wall for protection. Vienna faced major Ottoman sieges in 1529 and 1683, both determined bids to break deeper into Central Europe. For centuries, Barbary corsairs from North Africa raided European coasts, capturing and enslaving Christian Europeans across the Mediterranean.

Spare us the fairy tale.

Islamic conquest was not the victim of Christian aggression. It was the aggression that Christian Europe eventually resisted. The Crusades can, and should, be condemned where they were savage or excessive. But condemning Christian brutality does not require lying about Islamic brutality or pretending the aggressor was the innocent party.

This inversion has modern consequences. It has worked so thoroughly that even the British Crown now often sounds less like the guardian of a Christian inheritance than the curator of a grievance exhibit. King Charles III has spent decades praising Islam and framing relations in the language of interfaith understanding. In historical context, it looks like a civilization apologizing for surviving.

The King does not owe Islam repayment for the Crusades. Europe does not owe apology for refusing its own subjugation. Yet the modern ritual continues.

Look at the image above: the New Magi — Keir Starmer, King Charles III, and Pope Leo XIV — kneeling with chests of “Colonial Guilt,” “Empire Restitution,” and “Moral Reparations,” offering them to a seated Islamic figure. False historical guilt turned into a gift-bearing ceremony.

The Vatican itself supplies a particularly stark symbol. After the 846 raid on Rome, Pope Leo IV built defensive walls. Today, the Vatican accommodates Islamic prayer within those same protected boundaries. One pope built walls because Islamic raiders reached the tomb of Peter. Modern leadership offers hospitality and calls it dialogue. Symbols matter. Memory matters. This is institutional amnesia dressed as virtue.

The deception is not harmless. It functions as moral disarmament. The West is trained to feel guilty for resisting, to soften its borders, to treat Islamic political expansion as grievance rather than conquest. The lie about the Crusades becomes useful precisely because it disarms the instinct for survival.

This pattern extends beyond medieval history. Documents like the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum” describe a “civilization-jihadist process” aimed at destroying Western civilization from within. Patrons like Qatar continue to back related networks. The sword has simply learned new language.

There is no Crusade debt. There is no Western obligation to apologize for resisting Islamic conquest. The record runs the other way: Islamic forces advanced, conquered, raided, enslaved, and subordinated. The Crusades were brutal, but they were not the beginning of the story. They were the delayed answer to a conquest already centuries old.

The next time someone tries to shame you with the lie of Islamic victimhood during the Crusades, reject the entire frame. Tell them the story starts earlier. Tell them Spain was conquered. Tell them Rome was attacked. Tell them Vienna was besieged. Tell them Europeans were enslaved. Tell them the Vatican walls were built for a reason.

Now you know the history, and you can defend yourself without apology.

This essay is meant to arm people against historical manipulation, moral blackmail, and the lie that Western civilization owes apology for resisting conquest. Share it with anyone who has been taught only the cropped version of the story.

In 732 AD, MusIim armies entered France after they had already conquered Spain completely.

French forces attempted to stop the invasion. At the front stood Charles Martel of France. He blocked them near the town of Tours. The battle was brutal—sword against sword.

The MusIim commander was kiIIed in the fight. The invaders retreated and fled France. That battle stopped Islam from spreading further into Europe.

But today, the foolish politicians are allowing what some men prevented with their bl00d.

Wake Up People, Islam Is Not Compatible With The World.

Fast Facts; The Christian Crusades were launched after 400 years of Muslims invading, attacking and killing Christians

However, progressives and educators paint the Christian crusades as unprovoked Christian violence.

 Violent Islamic conquests across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe were carried out for more than 400 years before the First Crusade, when Western Christians decided to fight back against the m*slims who were killing them, then raping their women.

Historians say Muslims spent hundreds of years engaging in unprovoked Islamic expansion and aggression against Christians and the Crusades were a defensive counteroffensive to reclaim sacred sites stop the killing of Christians.

Muslims killed about 270 million non-Muslims from Islamic expansions across 1,400 years.

This includes direct killings in battles, massacres, enslavements leading to death, famines from disrupted societies, and related persecutions - not just the initial 400 years.

For the early Arab conquests (632-750), which covered the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and parts of Europe and Central Asia, scholars estimate violent deaths from battles and sieges of over 1 million.

Experts say the Christian Crusades were not the start of conflict but a long-delayed reaction after repeated invasions, church destructions, enslavements, killings, rape and tribute demands.

When cities were captured, nearly 100% of the population was killed, and survivors were taken as sex slaves.

For example, during the siege of Syracuse, which fell in 878, the city's population plummeted from around 70,000 to just 3,000 survivors, who were taken as slaves.

Timeline:

635: Christian city of Damascus captured

636: Christian city of Antioch in Syria captured

637: Jerusalem and much of the Holy Land captured

639: Armenia, the first Christian nation to fall

641: Egypt, a major Coptic Christian center, captured

650: Southern Italy and Cyprus, captured

711-715: Spain (then a Christian Visigothic kingdom) captured

827: Sicily captured Christian monks k*lled.

846: Rome attacked, m*slims destroy churches including St. Peter's, and force the Pope to pay tribute.

909: Sardinia captured

937: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is burned, along with other churches in the city.

1009: Caliph al-Hakim orders the destruction of the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulchre) in Jerusalem and imposes harsh anti-Christian measures.

1012: Muslims force conversions or death, seize property of non-Muslims, and impose harsh restrictions.

1071: Anatolia (modern Turkey) captured

1094: Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos appeals to Western Christendom for military aid against the Turkish invasions threatening the empire.

1095: Pope Urban II calls the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in France, urging knights to aid Eastern Christians and reclaim the Holy Land.

The first Crusade launches in 1096.

Muslims have now infiltrated Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Australia & the US and are carrying out their jihadist terrorism through the democratic political systems and the woke left liberals who are easily fooled.

Islam always has been, and always will be a violent religious political system!

Muslim Armies Had Been Killing Christians for Centuries. The Crusades Were the Reckoning.

Long before the First Crusade launched in 1095, Europe had already been

losing ground to Islamic conquest for over four hundred years.

THE CENTURIES BEFORE

It started in 638, when Muslim armies took Jerusalem, one of Christianity's

holiest cities. It didn't stop there. Egypt fell. All of North Africa

fell. By the early 700s, even Spain had been conquered. Christian

territory that had stood for centuries kept disappearing, one region at a

time.

THE FINAL STRAW

On August 26th, 1071, the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes led his

army against Seljuk Turkish forces under Sultan Alp Arslan at the Battle

of Manzikert. The battle was catastrophic. Part of Romanos's own army,

made up of ethnic Turks, defected mid-battle. By nightfall, the emperor

himself had been dragged in chains before the sultan who had just

destroyed his army.

The defeat opened the floodgates. Within decades, nearly all of Anatolia,

the heartland of the Byzantine Empire for a thousand years, fell under

Turkish control. Byzantine historians would later call it the empire's

death blow.

THE RESPONSE

Weakened and desperate, Byzantine emperors began appealing to the West for

military help. In 1095, Pope Urban II answered, calling on Christian

Europe to take up arms and reclaim what had been lost.

What followed was brutal, and it's remembered that way for good reason.

But it didn't start there. It started centuries earlier, with a city called Jerusalem in the year 638

 Seven Thousand Pilgrims. No Weapons. No Warning.

THE JOURNEY

In November 1064, seven thousand unarmed pilgrims set out from Germany for Jerusalem, led by four bishops. It was meant to be the journey of a lifetime, walking the same roads Christ had walked.

THE AMBUSH

On Good Friday, 1065, just outside a village called Kafar Sallam, Bedouin raiders fell on the column without warning. Survivors later described the attackers falling on them "like famished wolves." The pilgrims who could still run fled to the village and barricaded themselves inside.

THE SIEGE

The Bedouins surrounded the village for days. During a truce negotiation, Bishop Gunther of Bamberg reportedly knocked one of the raider leaders unconscious with his bare hands and took hostages of his own. It bought the survivors just enough time.

THE RESCUE

The governor of the nearby city of Ramla, a Muslim official, eventually marched out with his own soldiers and drove the raiders off, saving what remained of the pilgrimage. Those who survived finally reached Jerusalem days later.

WHAT'S LEFT

Thirty years after this pilgrimage, Pope Urban II stood before a crowd at Clermont and called for what would become the First Crusade. Historians still point to journeys like this one as part of what built the pressure that led there.

 - ALMOST 1300 YEARS AGO CHARLES “THE HAMMER” MARTEL HALTED THE EXPANSION OF ISLAM INTO EUROPE AND KEPT EUROPE CHRISTIAN -

The Victory Of Medieval Frankish Forces Led By Charles Martel, Known As The Hammer, Over The Forces Of An Agressive Islam In The Battle Of Tours In 732 AD Halted The Expansion Of Islam Into Europe And Kept Europe Christian.

If The Forces Of Islam Had Defeated Charles Martel And His Frankish Army At The Site Of The Current West Central French City Of Tours In 732 AD Our Modern World Would Be Quite Different Than It Is Now. Charles Martel’s 1300 Year Old Impact Is Still Being Felt Every Day In The World Of Today.

 Thousands Were Enslaved. The Pope Sent An Army To Get Them Back.

THE CRISIS

By 1113, the Balearic Islands had become one of the most notorious slave markets in the Mediterranean. Thousands of Christians captured in raids across Spain, Italy, and France were being held there.

THE CALL

Pope Paschal II didn't just condemn it. He authorized a full Crusade, preached in person by the Archbishop of Pisa, with one explicit goal: free the captives and shut the slave trade down for good.

THE SIEGE

A combined Pisan and Catalan fleet crossed the Mediterranean, took Ibiza first, then laid siege to the fortress city of Palma on Mallorca for over a year through disease, a brutal winter, and repeated attempts by the enemy to break the blockade.

THE OUTCOME

When the city finally fell in 1115, the Crusaders freed nearly every Christian captive being held there. The ruler of Mallorca was taken back to Pisa as a prisoner. Piracy out of the islands was crushed for a generation.

WHAT'S LEFT

The Crusaders weren't perfect liberators — when the city surrendered, its own population was enslaved in turn. But the core mission, freeing thousands of enslaved Christians, was real, and it worked.

On May 17, 1395, an Ottoman army of roughly 40,000 soldiers under Sultan Bayezid I crossed the Danube into Wallachia, the Orthodox Christian principality located in present-day Romania. Their objective was to crush Wallachian independence, establish a vassal ruler, and clear the way for deeper Ottoman expansion into Hungary and Central Europe.

Standing against them was a force of approximately 10,000 Wallachian Orthodox soldiers, farmers, and townsmen led by Prince Mircea the Elder, ruler of Wallachia from 1386 to 1418.

Mircea was one of the most significant Orthodox Christian rulers in medieval Eastern Europe.

Outnumbered four to one, Mircea refused to face Bayezid on open ground. Instead, he drew the Ottoman forces deep into the forested and marshy terrain of Rovine. He also scorched the land behind him, cutting the advancing Ottoman army off from food and supplies.

Legend says that on the night before the battle, Mircea disguised himself as a peace emissary, approached Bayezid, and offered him safe passage if he would withdraw from Wallachia. The proud sultan refused.

When the armies finally met, the dense forests and swampy ground kept the Ottoman cavalry from properly deploying. Bayezid’s forces became trapped in narrow, muddy passages while Wallachian archers fired from the trees. The fighting was intense. Bayezid’s Serbian vassals, including Prince Marko Mrnjavčević and Constantine Dragaš, were killed during the battle.

The Ottoman army was broken. Sultan Bayezid I, one of the most feared warriors of his era, was driven from the battlefield. Wallachia remained a free Orthodox Christian principality and was never transformed into an Ottoman province.

Were The Crusades Really Unprovoked?

THE CLAIM

Historian Raymond Ibrahim argues the First Crusade wasn't unprovoked European aggression, but a delayed response to centuries of Islamic conquest, jihad, and violence against Christian populations across the Near East. He points to events like the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 and repeated attacks on Christian pilgrims as evidence.

THE ARGUMENT

Ibrahim argues that Christian atrocities throughout history were condemned by Church authorities, while comparable Islamic violence was religiously sanctioned rather than punished.

THE COUNTERPOINT

Other historians point to the Crusades' own record, including the killing of thousands of civilians when Jerusalem was captured in 1099, as evidence against a clean moral divide. They also point to Islamic law's historical framework of legal protections for Christians and Jews living under Muslim rule as evidence against the idea that Islamic teachings only sanctioned violence toward non-Muslims.

WHAT'S LEFT

Ibrahim has spent years studying primary Arabic and Islamic sources on this exact question. His critics have spent years studying the same period from a different angle.

What do you think actually started it?