MODS DELETE THIS THREAD IF IT IS OFFENSIVE TO YOU

I wanted to know everyone's thoughts on the Crusades. Whether you thought they were good,bad,a fail or a win,etc. I want to know everyone else's opinions first before I share mine but I will go ahead and post a couple of Crusader pictures.
Join the Teutonic Knights poster!

Crusader ships sailing.

Hope you enjoyed and please post your opinions.

I think the byzantine empire thought they were okkish

I feel like this thread got buried. Anybody else have opinions?

I honestly think the Crusades were pure foolishness.. as more people have died in the name of religion than in all other wars combined.. but after saying that, I have to say I have always loved this image...

If (only)historical thread.

But beware : today's wars and fights in lot of places in the world still take religion as an argument, as you know.
And crusades were war for religion.

We are lots from multi-ethnic and multi-religious countries, and should be all brothers : this is not the case everywhere, and a lot of people, woman, child, still dies today for religion, like it was in the Middle-Age

This is just my (very very) moderate opinion, and feeling about your thread, and I do not know and even do not want to know what is the actual Teutonic Order ? And what goals and kind of "action" he wants to do as stated in your picture.

ZebraUp wrote: I honestly think the Crusades were pure foolishness..

Have you thought about the possibility that we might have some information that they did not have. With the information they had, crusades were reasonable. At the time they made decision about first crusades, muslims were already conquering the core areas of Christianity. Later crusaders lost their vision about their mission and started raiding Bysanth.

ZebraUp wrote: more people have died in the name of religion than in all other wars combined..

I don't think there are any trustable statistic about people dying because of their or someone else's religion. Contemporary reports from South-American Indians show some amazing number of people killed in rituals but there are really not much information. Let alone knowing how many people have died in wars. We don't even know how much civilians have died in crusade war against terrorism.

But if we want to point finger at something, we find worlds most destructive ideology from among non-religious views. It is estimated that governments supporting atheistic socialism are responsible of murdering 90-100 million of their own citizens on the last 100 years. And this number does not include the people killed in wars or murdered in Nazi Germany. Some people forget that Nazis were just another type of socialism.

So maybe crusades happened 1000 years ago are not the biggest of the problems of mankind.

ZebraUp wrote: I honestly think the Crusades were pure foolishness.. as more people have died in the name of religion than in all other wars combined.. but after saying that, I have to say I have always loved this image...

The crusades in the main we're just a series of "Behaving badly tours".

Onsekone you wrote :
"But if we want to point finger at something, we find worlds most destructive ideology from among non-religious views. It is estimated that governments supporting atheistic socialism are responsible of murdering 90-100 million of their own citizens on the last 100 years. And this number does not include the people killed in wars or murdered in Nazi Germany. Some people forget that Nazis were just another type of socialism."

Woospy :

TRUE : Nazi were not Christians. They have never hesitate to kill a priest.

BUT BEWARE OF ANACHRONISMS : actual Socialism in Europe as nothing to compare with National-Socialism in 1939 except part of the name. No democratic politic today as you are Onsek, Socialist or Liberal, would make this comparison. It would be a dangerous anachronism without any sense. As you know true heirs ("heritiers" in french) of the National-Socialism are to be found today in groups in all countries that prone racism or segregation as a politic argument (like kkk in United States, and others in Europe, etc, etc...)

Ps : personally i am not socialist or liberal, i am just trying to find the best and avoid the worst in each ! Not easy !

Skystone, that would be the case if we judge crusaders with our own cultural context, what we should not do. If we want to judge, we should do it by their cultural context. And in that perspective only the last crusades aimed for Bysanth were "Behaving badly tours". Yes, there were killings of civilians, but at that time, it was normal superpower politics.

Woospy, that's why I did not include killings made by Nazis to my numbers. That said, history has a way of repeating itself. If we, in Europe didn't have for the moment counterforce to socialism, I would not be surprised to see gulags rise around Europe. At least in Finland I've seen green and left-wing movement driving some amazing legislation to limit the freedom of speech and the freedom of political association. And we have already seen some political trials.

onsekone wrote: Skystone, that would be the case if we judge crusaders with our own cultural context, what we should not do. If we want to judge, we should do it by their cultural context. And in that perspective only the last crusades aimed for Bysanth were "Behaving badly tours". Yes, there were killings of civilians, but at that time, it was normal superpower politics.

Woospy, that's why I did not include killings made by Nazis to my numbers. That said, history has a way of repeating itself. If we, in Europe didn't have for the moment counterforce to socialism, I would not be surprised to see gulags rise around Europe. At least in Finland I've seen green and left-wing movement driving some amazing legislation to limit the freedom of speech and the freedom of political association. And we have already seen some political trials.

The counterforces are alternation (alternance in french) and vote like in all great democracy.

No gulags in perspective.

Allied wrote: MODS DELETE THIS THREAD IF IT IS OFFENSIVE TO YOU

I wanted to know everyone's thoughts on the Crusades. Whether you thought they were good,bad,a fail or a win,etc. I want to know everyone else's opinions first before I share mine but I will go ahead and post a couple of Crusader pictures.
Join the Teutonic Knights poster!

Crusader ships sailing.

Hope you enjoyed and please post your opinions.

With all due respect to "Allied" who launch that thread :  

1 - it is very courteous to let others speaking before him,  

BUT  

2 - i think this would be (may be) more honest to give us his own opinion before ...