[Ol' Sparky]

In fact, the crusades were a DEFENSIVE war against, guess who, Muslims?

By Thomas F. Madden, the author of A Concise History of the Crusades and coauthor of The Fourth Crusade, is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri:

The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.

[rmlew]

I have nothing against the Crusaders going to kill the Turks and Saracins. My problem with them is unpleasant incidents like them expelling all the Jews out of the Rhineland during the First Crusade.