The word jihad does not only mean “a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam”, but also mean “a spiritual struggle against one’s sin”. The definition of a crusade is: “to take part in an organization concerning a social, political or religious issue. There have been many points in history when a holy war has been waged. The Holocaust and WWII have not been called a Holy war, but millions of Jews died because the Nazi party thought their religion was wrong. Today, America is suspicious of all Muslims and we call them terrorists. The Iraq war could be called a holy war because America attacked Iraq and even though they had little or nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and thousands more innocents died. Before the Iraq War, President George Busch said that “This Crusade, this war on terror is going to take awhile.” …show more content…
The pope had a lot of power and influence over the kings and lords, who had influence over their subjects. Those lords and kings were fighting a lot between each other, and so, Pope Urban II thought to pull the attention elsewhere. So, he gave his speech at Claremont, France, and urged the people of Europe to go and get the holy lands back. Wars are very expensive, and how did the entire continent pay for it? The soldiers mortgaged everything that they had their houses, belongings, their land and livestock. All the money went to the church, and that meant that the money was then spent at the Pope’s jurisdiction. That also meant that the Pope was very rich. The Pope didn’t want infighting, and a war benefited the church, which benefited him, so he, made the Muslims look like enemies, and that started the entire crusades that lasted for two hundred