The Role Of Religion In The Crusades

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Throughout many years, religion has been the main part of people’s lives. There have been many wars over which religion is better or which one deserves to live here. This has caused many problems in societies. Sometimes a religion can control who lives in a city, this causes people to convert to that religion not letting people be free and happy. Religion should only be a part of someone’s life and not be controlling it.

A constant battle that never seems to win is which religion is better. In the Crusades, many Christians and Muslims fought over a Holy Land where Jesus had lived. Thousands of people traveled to this land even though it was very dangerous. The Turks controlled Jerusalem and taxed all travelers. The Christians who traveled …show more content…

A prime example of this is when Charlemagne fought the Saxons and forced the king and the others to convert to Christianity. The Saxons had attacked Frankish territory very often and Charlemagne would keep on defending and winning. Charlemagne eventually thought the only way he could win is by making the king convert. “In 785, after a particularly punitive campaign in which Charlemagne crushed the Saxon armies, the emperor forced the Saxon leader to convert to Christianity” (Sherman 211). This was very risky because Charlemagne could have had a huge revolt of Saxons wanting to have their religion back. However, Charlemagne was smart and established Christian priests and made laws against paganism. If anyone was to be caught practicing any other religion than Christianity the punishment was treason. I believe this as the main reason why the Saxons didn’t fight back. A similar case to this is the assassination of Ali. Ali was the Prophet’s son-in-law and cousin and he was the caliph. The reason he was assassinated was he was a descendant of Muhammad. The Shi’ites were the ones who believed their leader should be descended from the Prophet while the others (Sunnis) believed their leader should be political. This

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