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Old Jun 11th, 2003, 11:33 AM       
Italian, your long post is commendable, but it still shows off your "West is best" view of things.

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how much farther into Muslim controlled lands can JERUSALEM get? also, Acre, Syria, Anatolia? do any of those ring a bell?
You distinctly mentioned "lasting until the 14th century." Sure, Jerusalem was out there in the thick of it, and they were forced to surrender to the Muslims in in the late 12th, after about a century of Christian rule. Some of the earliest states only survived for a while as a castle and a few town because they agreed to not attack nearby Muslims... hardly a bastion of Christian might

Antioch, Acre, Tripoli, Syria... in fact, I can't find any reference to a Christian state that lasted well into the 13th... so, either you know about some Lost Kingdom that I don't know about or it was a typo that confused my simian mind. Regardless, the Crusader states that lasted the longest were the ones nestled against the Mediterannean and in the north where they were near reinforcements.

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the Christians weren't running around slaughtering civilians, especially not Christian civilians.
Really? You mean the Crusaders weren't so fired up that they stormed the walls of Jerusalem and killed every Jew and Muslim that they could find? One account from the day claimed that so many pagans had died that they were "up to their ankles in blood" and the survivors made "pyramids of bodies" for funeral pyres in which "only God new the number."

The Crusaders are just as guilty of slaughtering civilians and plundering--Crusaders kept killing and robbing Jews despite the Pope's declaration that they were to be left alone--as the Muslims, so to say that one side is characterized by violence more than the other is bullshit.

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also, are you referring to the hotly disputed primarliy French and Venetian invasion attempt? 'cause you know, that is really considered more of a Byzantine civil war
Yeah, and the French and Venetians reacted badly when they realized they weren't going to be paid for lending their support. Don't you find it a bit impious that they would be marketing themselves as mercenaries in the first place?

Anyways, this argument is going no where at this rate. My original point was that Vinth's claim that the Church was the only reason why we're all not wearing turbans right now is crap. There are too many variables to make a generalization like that, chief among them, I think, is the fact that Muslims don't usually forcefully convert entire populations.
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