Re: Crescent and the cross
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My understanding, and of course I could be wrong, was always that after the rise of Mohammed in 711, Islam spread throughout the Middle Eastern world basically by Muslim warriors approacing a city, telling them that they had to pay taxes to them. If they accepted, they paid the taxes and basically everyone was ok. If they refused, they were attacked, conquered and forced to pay.
[/ QUOTE ] wrong. Muslim warriors approached a city and told everyone there that they had to convert to Islam. Those that refused were killed. Islam was spread by the sword.
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This is completely and utterly wrong. Cities were forced to submit to Muslim rule and non-Muslims were discriminated against to varying degrees, but forced conversion was the rare exception. Large non-Muslim communities existed throughout the "Islamic world"; Egypt remained majority Christian for centuries under Muslim rule,for example. Islam also spread beyond the Islamic empires largely through trade routes.
The idea that each side was as bad as the other in the Crusades is also wrong. When the Crusaders took Jerusalem they slaughtered every Muslim and Jew in it, as well as large numbers of Eastern Christians. When Salah ad-Din took it back noone was slaughtered, those who wanted to remain were allowed to and Jews were invited back. Neither "side" (who was fighting who varied; there was more than one Muslim dynasty involved for example) was a model of civility in modern terms but the balance of aggression and atrocity lay formly with the Crusaders (it's misleading to call them Christians, as there were large numbers of Oriental Christians who sided with the locals).
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