When did the word 'crusade' become positive?

Statalyzer

Statalyzer

10,000+ Posts
Obviously, referring back to "the Crusades" will evoke a negative mental response in most people .... murder, abuse of religion, etc.

But how did it become a positive word when taken out of historical context? To say that someone is embarking on a crusade is usually to imply they have some passionate reason to give their all for an important cause, not to imply that they are so narrow-minded on one objective that they are willing to trample on anyone in their way to get it.

And then you have Christian private schools or small colleges who name their sports teams "the Crusaders". Why would you do this? "Let's go Sunny River Christian School Murdering Fanatics! Yeah!" Might as well name your team the Inquisitioners or the Iscariots. I bet they'd be upset if a Muslim School called its teams the Jihadists or the Terrorists or something.
 
Vikings, Raiders, Trojans, Pirates, Spartans and.......Sooners. All could be viewed as violent, maruading, or land-thieving pieces of **** if you took their mascots to heart and took the name of a sports team so seriously.

Its just a name. Big f-ing deal.
 
I'll say August, 1095, but maybe my memory is wrong. Of course it wasn't in English. If you want the English word it'd be a little later.
 
I hear what you are saying, but I think the problem with your point of view is that "most" people probably don't even really know about the crusades.

Equally important, the crusades are one of those historical events/periods that evoke romanticism even in people who know about them. It's sort of like romanticizing the Confederacy -- even intelligent people do it. There's something about the plight of the lost, misguided cause that sometimes evokes more positive images than it should.

This can easily turn West Mall-ish, but I think that there is also a deep-seated desire among many (not all by any stretch) Christians to have a presence in the Holy Land. I'm not sure that we would provide the same level of support for Israel if that nation was located somewhere in Turkey. So I think that there is still a connection between the historical crusades and modern day support for a "friendly" Holy Land.
 
Why does the period of Muslim expansion from 632 to 732 AD not evoke the same criticisms as the crusades?
 
yeah Coel....the crusades are constantly used as a symbol of how evil Christians were, but most don't know that it was in response to a century or more of moslem conquests........clearly it was not a great response, but they weren't all they are cracked up to be in terms of loss of life either from what i understand.
 
What arguably started as a justifiable response to Muslim aggression somehow morphed into soldiers raping and pillaging the church of the holy wisdom, desecrating the relics of the saints they claimed to fight in honor of. We can discuss and debate the series of events that led up to the crusades and whether the first crusade was morally defensible, but there is little doubt that the later crusades especially are some of the darkest times in chrisian history.
 
Granted.

But do we hold the period of Muslim expansion to the same standards? Or, do the Muslims themselves regard Islam's expansionary period according to the same standards that Western society regards the crusades?

You say that Christians destroyed their own church and plundered their own relics. But that is not the usual argument for condemning the crusades. The more usual assertion is that the crusades were an exhibition of European aggression against the Muslims.

I don't mind condemning the crusades. They were certainly damnable in many aspects. Beyond that, the crusades were also outstanding for their pretentiousness and comic buffoonery. But I'm not sure the period of Muslim expansion was any less damnable. Or, I would like to hear an explanation as to how the crusades are more worthy of condemnation than the period of Muslim expansion.

For it is often claimed that the crusades are responsible for sowing mistrust between Islam and the West. No doubt they play a role in that mistrust. But we rarely hear about the Muslim aggression that preceded it. Does that period not bear any responsibility for our current "clash of civilizations"? And if it does, why is it that we never hear about it? Why is their no equivalent word, dripping with negative connotation, to describe the Muslim period of expansion?
 
I don't think this is what you are looking for, but "jihad" drips with negative meaning for me and probably most in the Western world.
 
Eisenhower wrote "Crusade in Europe" and it was published in 1948. So we've used it in a positive manner for at least 60 years.
 
What I always find humorous is the arrogance of the memory of the Crusades on all sides.

What I mean is that the Crusades never accomplished much. At a time when Islam was spreading over half of the known world, (usually at the end of a sword), the Crusaders held a handful of small towns strewn along the coast of the Med.

Whenever the ruling Caliphs chose to turn their attention to them, they wiped out the Crusaders with relative ease.

Here's a Map of the Muslim world circa 1300 AD. The Crusaders held a few fortified towns along the eastern coast of the Med.
 
To say they were wiped out with ease is a bit of an overstatement. Granted it was incredible luck that the holy land was taken in the first place, but it was terrible leadership on the Christian side that led to Saladin's victory. King Barbarossa later drowning inexplicably in the third crusade may be one of the most important events in histroy that hardly anyone knows about.
 
There also seems to be quite different modern views of Crusades (I use the term a little loosely here) that conquered present day christian areas such as Sicily and Spain, and others that took place in the Levant. The modern map shapes the way that we look at them.

At the time of the Norman conquest of Sicily, the island had been ruled by Muslims for more than 200 years. The same family that led that campaign played a central role in the 1st Crusade which followed a few years afterward. In large part we view them differently because we see Sicily as a deeply Catholic place while we view Jerusalem and Palestine quite differently.
 
I think that the (big C) "Crusades" were always viewed positively in the west until 20th century review, ergo the names for sports teams, etc. I think the negative understanding is a function of the idea that other cultures have values and rights, which is a fairly recent idea in the west (and nonexistant in many other places).
 
Newsflash: Muslim schools with overt references to jihad in their charters receive "charter school" grant in aid funding in Texas and many other states as we type. No parallel among the Crusaders. But you're losing sleep over a mascot's name.
 
taken in context, the crusades as a whole were nothing compared to the genocides of totalitarian non-religious regimes of the 20th century, plus the crusdaes occurred around a 1000 years ago. more died during the roman and greek conquests than during the crusades. do many people focus on the crusades because of anti-chrsitian sentiment. again, as has been stated before, the muslims really started the crusades but you don't hear much about their actions.
 
How about from the beginning. From the current PC context it is negative, but that is recent as several posters have cited positive examples from the past century.
 
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