Wow. You've been reading a lot of revisionist literature. Arab expansion, at worst, falls into the same category as the expansion of groups (even Christian barbarians) like the Franks. You are cherry picking Arab expansion to fit your worldview. Sorry, Christians were busy killing themselves and the Sassanids at the same time. And, because of that, opened the way for Arab encroachment into Europe. Please spare me your us versus them bullshit reading of history.
We seem to have had this discussion before:
First, there is no such group as the Byzantines. Please, quite living living in a Western European dominated way of thinking. It was the eastern half of the Roman Empire. You are already showing a prejudice against historical reality. Spare me, please.
You mean the same Roman Empire that Christian Crusaders sacked in 1204?
Further, let's be clear, a large part of the call for the First Crusade was in response to the loss of Armenia and Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks afrer the Battle of Manzikert. This battle did not need to take place and only did because Romanos violated the terms of peace between them from a year prior. Also, the historical record shows that the Alp Arslan proposed a treaty that was highly favorable to the Romans prior to the battle but that it was rejected by Romanos. So, the battle took place. The Eastern Roman armies were crushed. And, the Seljuks took hold of large tracts of land in the aforementioned territories. It was in regard to the settling of these former Roman territories, which saw rather large scale Seljuk mirgration in the decades following 1071, that Alexios Komnenos called upon Urban to raise the crusader army.
So all of this to grudgingly admit that the Seljuk Turks provoked the war in a "gotcha" manner that allows you to flex you amateur wiki-historian muscle.
"I know history PA-RAI-AH!! *smile*"
Not quite.
Aside from your admission that Armenia and Anatolia was annexed without provocation from the Byzantine Empire (prior to your "yeah, but...Alps' peace treaty!"), Islamic culture had been expanding north since 636 AD. You really think it was going to stop on account of a peace treaty in the midst of a weakening empire? With time, it would just keep going.
The crusades started as a product of territorial disputes that were ignited by a violently expanding Muslim Empire. You tried your damnedest to avoid mentioning the fact that it was the Muslims that began to breach European boundaries by bringing up Ramanos' refusal to adhere to a coerced peace treaty, but conveniently leave out that it was only after Arslan took Anatolia and Armenia.
Who cherry picks again?
Would like to see your stats for that.
The official death toll for the French Revolution is over 600,000--which I don't believe takes into account for the Napoleonic Wars. A couple other books I've read put it closer to one million.
Both Catholic and Protestant inquisitions combined are responsible for a fraction of that many deaths.
That said, the French Revolution was rationalism taken to a religious level. Bad things happen whenever things are taken religiously. Thanks for re-affirming my point.
Yeaaaaaaah--Nice try, but no dice.
Religion is not self-evidently equated to violence. That's your
argument. Not your itinerary.
Your tune has been, 'It's religious, and therefore it's violent.' Not, 'It's violent and therefore it's religious.'
The simplest explanation is often the most correct: cultural mentalities are relative according to the differing philosophies that are being endorsed by said mentalities--whether the given philosophy keeps religious connotations or not.
Oh, wait, I thought we established at Nuremberg that "only following orders" wasn't an excuse. Yet, now, here you are trying to weasel out of every individual Christian's picking up a sword and killing Jews, Muslims, Gypsies, or each other by claiming they were only following orders. Try again or admit you would've acquitted Goering.
I'm not excusing anyone for anything (I can easily admit that the influence of the Vatican has been misused in the past). I'm saying that killing people is not, and never has been, the product of a general mentality cultured by Christianity as an applied philosophy--which is why it's silly to assume that a Christian would have been just as likely to kill those soldiers as a Muslim.
