Mona, of course you’re right to remind us that the Crusades in the Middle East were aimed at retaking land that had been taken in an earlier Islamic invasion. That’s a fact that’s not widely enough known, and good for Professor Lewis for (repeatedly) pointing it out. As you note, it doesn’t help that the West (including, regrettably, John Paul II) has spent so much time apologizing for them…

However it’s also important to understand that the Crusades were part of a wider movement that was *not* purely defensive/reactive. To put it way too simply, Crusaders had a choice of two destinations: one was to the ‘Holy Land’, the other was to that corner of Baltic/North-Eastern Europe that had remained pagan. Participation in either sets of campaigns was considered equally praiseworthy. The luckless Baltic pagans had been living in those lands for thousands of years, bothering no-one other than their own absurd collection of deities.The attack on them was religious/territorial aggression, pure and simple.

Anyone wanting to know more about the Northern Crusades would do well start with Eric Christiansen’s book of the same name: it’s a great read.

The point is, like it or not, there was a strong ‘jihadist’ element to the Christianity of the Early Middle Ages (the Cathars, if you could find any, might also have a few trenchant points to make on the topic).