The impact of the Crusades on Islam

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You have asked for a description of the impact that the Crusades had on Islam. Please read the excerpt below taken from Thomas Madden's 'Concise History of the Crusades', published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Ltd., 1999, pp. 213-215. It is a good summary of the impact of the crusades and describes how the crusades may well have added years to the life span of the Byzantine Empire. It also goes into detail about the long-term effects of the crusading movement such as the slowing of the advance of Islam, the destabilization of Muslim power, and the hindered unification of Islam into a single state. Even the crusades that failed or did not happen created enough of a disturbance with the Muslim powers that they were forced to divert resources from conquest to their own defense in the event that a crusade DID materialize. Well, for more in depth information, please read the following excerpt:

"For medieval men and women, the crusade was an act of piety, charity, and love; but it was also a means of defending their world, their culture, and their way of life. It is not surprising, then, that the crusades lost their appeal when Christians no longer identified themselves first and foremost as members of one body of Christ. By the sixteenth century, Europe was dividing itself along political rather than religious lines. In that new world, the crusade had no place.

It is easy for moderns to dismiss the crusades as morally repugnant, cynically evil, or as Runciman summed them up, "nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God." Yet such judgments tell us more about the observer than the observed. They are based on ...