The Crusades

Based on reading this article, What I found most significant is how this event was able to affect both Islam and Christianity. To begin with, Islam was created in the 600's B.C., by Mohammad. There were similar things that Islam had with Christianity. For example, both of these religions are monotheistic, or believe in one god. This being the fact, they both needed to work in order to bring as much people to their religion as possible to make it stronger, and the way they accomplished this was through missionary work. The significant places where Christianity managed to spread were east of Europe, while Islam spread through the middle east, Africa, and parts of Spain. Being Monotheistic, they had disagreements, and each religion attempted to be more successful than the other. Christianity was able to be an agent of the powerful, due to the fact that in 1095, Pope Urban, the pope of the Christian church at that time, gave a speech to all the Christians, motivating them to join a Crusade to end the growth of Islam, since it's harming their church and holy land. Additionally, he stated that for all the people that joined this, they would earn a free ticket to heaven, in which many people desired, because of the image of Heaven being the most beautiful place in the world. People would also believe him since they're assuming whatever the pope says comes directly from God. As stated in the text, this would also relate to the speech Osama Bin Laden gave, since they each had the same motives for people to join them. Then, there were many wars fought between the Muslims and the Christians, where not only did each religion fight, but had an opportunity to get to share each other's religion, so cultural diffusion was established, where each religion took part of the other, through trade and brought it back with them. However, they didn't achieve their goal, since Islam continues to grow.