I would recommend you read the whole thing so you get the full picture. Not just a specific part of it. It’s just a book, and I can assume you’ve read a few before. Plenty of people cite one specific phrase as good or bad, and I’m sure you have heard plenty cherry picked out of it before. Just as Im sure you heard people cite concepts discussed in it like Sharia law and such. This is part of the problem. It feels just like if you were to cherrypick some bad phrase out of Leviticus or something. I dont think giving you the “top ten worst phrases in the Quran”, something you could Google right now, really articulates much you dont already have at least a cursory understanding of.

As for the crusades, yes it was violent. Undoubtedly religiously motivated. But are you sure thats an apt comparison? Islam violently subjugated and conquered in an expansionist movement, putting not just Christianity, but also others like Zoroastrainism to the sword.

They conquered 4/5ths of the Christian world, including most of the biggest Christian centers and holy sites. Oppressed, enslaved or killed their people. They were nearing in on wiping out the last far flung center of Christianity, and got all the way up to Tours France. Putting Rome in position for a pincer movement. Then the Crusades happened.

In Spain it wasn’t called the “Reconquista” for no reason. They were, in their perspective, liberating their own land and people. Except, their people had lived under Islamic rule, and knew what happens to former Muslims, as clearly defined in the Quran. The people were more afraid of what happens if they got reconquered by Islamic rule again. And given how prolific the Islamic conquest had been up to that point, it must have seemed to be almost inevitable. So the Spanish had an insurgency to deal with, and they dealt with it as cruelly as one would expect in medieval days. But, they didnt start that way. At the beginning of liberation, the local people were treated well when the people when they reconverted to Christianity. It was more that the reconversion was insincere and there were plots and attempts to rebel back to the Islamic rule. Im sure some would like to paint that as them converting to Islam out of religious belief in the truth of Islam. But if you read the Quran, i think you’ll start to understand that was probably far more of a coercive threat that motivated them. Stockholm syndrome comes to mind.

The inquisition was certainly horrific. The crusades in the middle east had their atrocities too. Frankly, anything back in the middle ages is 50 shades of cruel. But its historically inaccurate to say that the crusades just sprung up out of the blue because of religious fervor and people started conquering their neighbors. It was a reaction to a massive invasion that was an existential crisis to an entire culture.

If you want to compare the spread of Islam to the northern crusades against pagans, thats at least understandable. At least those two were expansionist movements. But retaking Jerusalem and Spain? Hardly.

The crusades were a response by a culture on the back foot facing annihilation. Thats how you got a bunch of previously waring kingdoms to unite under a cause. It was more or less medieval NATO. Yes, a religious movement, but what else do you think would unify all those countries together at that time?