The crusades were justified responses to Muslim Aggresion

My opponent has made many points but unfortunately, with a small amount of critical analysis, these arguments can be easily refuted with facts. My opponent claimed that the First crusade was motivated by Geo politics rather than defending the Christian World at the time. He also makes the assertion that the crusades were initiated in order to assist Constantinople from Seljuk Turks. There is one major and quite fatal flaw in my opponents reasoning. He admits that a Crusade was started to defend Christian Land from Muslim incursions. In fact, my opponent says so himself, "One can see the Seljuk"s were alarmingly close to the Byzantine Capital of Constantinople, in fact the Turks had carried out several failed sieges of Constantinople prior to the First Crusade. " As you can see, my opponent has unfortunately put the nails in the coffin for his arguments by admitting that the Muslims were the first to attack. The topic we are debating here is whether or not the crusades were a justified response to Muslim Imperialism. The failed Seljuk invasions into Byzantine land were unwarranted acts of aggression that demanded a military response. Any logical person would believe a counter attack to be justified. Additionally, I never claimed that the Crusades were a religious war on the Christian's part. I simply stated that the wars were initiated to defend Christian land and gain back land lost to the Muslims. I will admit that Religion was used as a driving force to motivate the common soldier but the essence of the campaign was to keep Europe from falling into the hands of the invaders. My opponent is also forgetting that the Constantinople campaign was a very small aspect of the first crusade. The real beef of the crusades, if you will, was the Christian liberation of Jerusalem, or what is now known as the Levant. Moving on to my opponents second argument, he stated that Crusader atrocities were much worse than their Muslim counterparts. This argument has little to do with the issue we are discussing but even so, my opponent has forgotten about the plethora of Muslim atrocities that took place during the crusades (I'll get to those in a minute. ) But I would first like to address the ones he mentioned. The first "atrocity" that my opponent mentioned was the killing of Jews in churches by Christian crusaders. Now this event is very widely known to scholars and historians when discussing the Crusades. It is also very commonly used by misinformed critics to condemn the Crusaders. What my opponent doesn't know about these killings is that they were not ordered by the Christian generals and it was in fact a very small group of rouge soldiers who instigated the killings. These men were defectors from the military who wanted to steal the gold and possessions of the villagers rather than a large army acting on orders from a high command. No matter which way you choose to spin this information, the truth is that you cannot place the burden of this crime on the Crusaders as the men who perpetrated it separated themselves from the crusaders and their cause. When it comes to the ransacking of Jerusalem in 1099, my opponent is terribly misinformed. It has been said that when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman, and child in the city until "the streets ran ankle deep with the blood. " History and science show this to be poetic hyperbole. A contemporary Muslim source has been discovered that puts the number of the slain at three thousand. Was there violence? Absolutely. In that time, a city that had to be taken by force belonged to the victorious invaders " including people. This barbaric idea actually helped lessen damaging resistance (read Josephus for what happens when this goes wrong) and so served something of a cultural purpose. Thus, while it was a tragedy by today"s standards (although one might wonder at what people in that time might think of our war tactics today), it was not uncommon back then. Further, Muslim cities that surrendered to the Crusaders were left untouched, the people retained their property, and they were allowed to worship freely. The anger crusaders felt after they got revenge on the Muslims is understandable. Hundreds of years of bullying and ransacking of their own cities was purged that day in Jerusalem. How many cities do you think Muslim armies ransacked before the crusades? How many innocent Christian men women and children do you think they slew in cold blood? While the ransack of Jerusalem was a very unfortunate event, a look at the history books will see similar Muslim massacres in cities like Constantinople, Alexandria, Mecca, Grenada, and many others. Lastly, I'd like to thank my opponent for what turned out to be a very interesting and thought provoking debate. I also would like to apologize if I offended you or anyone else watching this debate as that was not my intention at all Sources: . http://www.medievalists.net... . http://www.huffingtonpost.com... . https://en.wikipedia.org... . https://en.wikipedia.org...