Everything you knew about the crusades was probably wrong

The Crusades were a centuries' long series of bloody persecutions that the Christians waged against innocent Muslims in order to (a) steal Muslim wealth and (b) force Muslims to convert at swordpoint, right? Wrong. It turns out that the Crusades were anything but a unilateral war to destroy Islam. The truth, as explained by Robert Spencer, a well-recognized scholar of Islam and the Crusades, is that the Crusades were started as a defensive war against repeated Muslim encroachments; were fought consistent with the rules of warfare as understood by both Christians and Muslims at the time; and, until the decline of the Muslim nations, were not seen as a historical big deal, since the Crusaders basically lost. You should definitely read the whole interview with Spencer, which is fascinating, and which is a useful effort to set straight a historical record upon which Islamic fanatics increasingly rely to work on Western politically correct guilt. Hat tip: The Paragraph Farmer Talking to Technorati: Crusades