What about the Crusades?

The unholy trinity. The Crusades, the Inquisition and the Church doing nothing during the Holocaust. The three grenades thrown at Catholics by people who know even less about Catholicism than they do about history. If these don't work, toss in some nonsense about Galileo or clergy abuse. Or just shout and scream.

I wrote about the attacks on the Church's record during the Second World War in an earlier column. It's a virtual blood libel, with a tiny trickle of truth but oceans of bigotry and anti-Catholicism. As for The Crusades, it's not only secularists who moan on and on about them, but Muslims as well. Which is a little ironic, in that they started the thing.

The Crusades were almost entirely defensive in nature, an attempt to gain back Christian lands that had been conquered by Islamic armies, often with the utmost brutality. Palestine, Syria and Egypt were at one point almost entirely Christian. By the eighth century Moslem armies has conquered North Africa and most of Spain and were determined to move into other Christian territory.

Catholic Spain was invaded by Islamic soldiers and occupied; it was only armed resistance by the Christian knights and people of the region that led to the country being liberated.

In the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks declared war on Asia Minor, modern Turkey, an area that had then been Christian for a thousand years. This was prolonged and deliberate world war, started by a loose coalition of Islamic nations and directed against the Byzantine Empire.

In 1095 Pope Urban 11 called for Europe to take back these Christian lands. What followed was a number of attempts over more than a century to win back large chunks of the Middle East for Christianity. The last Crusaders were defeated and expelled by 1291. There had been horror and heroism, grace and grime. Both good and bad men had taken up the cross. But did they really have any choice?

When Islamic armies initially invaded Christian lands they did allow Christianity and Judaism to be practised but no new churches were to be built, the public display of Christian symbols was banned and Christians had to pay tolls to enter churches and holy sites. Non-Moslems were second-class citizens and massacres and horrors, though not official state policy, were common.

The Seljuk Turks were particularly oppressive. They killed unarmed pilgrims, forbade Christian services and destroyed churches. Islam's intention was to move further west and take all of Europe. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Moslem troops forced Rome to be evacuated and also besieged Vienna.

Once in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, the Crusaders' battles were conducted like any other military confrontation of the era. When Jerusalem was taken in 1099 no quarter was given, as was the standard of the time, and innocent people were slaughtered. Just as when cities fell all over the world, and very similar to what occurred when Moslems took Christian strongholds.

Unless we place these events in their correct historical context we merely play politics and exploit history. It may be emotionally comfortable for secular zealots and Moslem fundamentalist alike to assume the Crusaders to have been robotic killers but it is a rape of truth. Anachronism only supports ignorance.

Once under Christian control, Jerusalem and the greater Christian kingdom always had a Moslem majority and Moslems were allowed to practise their faith. Nor were there any major attempts to convert them to Christianity. The region returned to Moslem rule and eventually to the Ottoman Turks, who united large parts of the Islamic world and were the most thorough imperialists of the Middle East.

Today the Christians of what was once the hub of Christianity are declining in number and are often persecuted. In Egypt the Christian community is marginalized and frightened, and in Israel and Palestine there is confusion and ambivalence, with towns such as Nazareth and Bethlehem haemorrhaging young Christian men and women.

The Crusades should not have happened. Nor should the Islamic wars of conquest that did so much harm to Christians and Christianity and which provoked and produced the Crusades. A crucial difference, surely, is that Christian leaders and even Pope John Paul 11 have apologized for the wrongs done so many years ago, whilst numerous Muslims and atheists are still distorting the facts and abusing the results for their own agendas.

Broadcaster and T.V. host Michael Coren contributes to C.L every other month. He is a prolific author, broadcaster, and newspaper columnist.