Islamic State seeks to justify enslaving Yazidi women and girls in Iraq

[JDPriestly]

132. Yes. My point was that Mohammed was violent and conducted wars to convert people to his

religion several centuries before the Crusades.

The very early Christians were victims, martyrs, not warriors. After Constantine, the Christians also became violent.

There is no agreement on an explanation of how Christianity managed to spread so successfully prior to the Edict of Milan. For some Christians, the success was simply the natural consequence of the truth of the religion and the direct intervention of God. However, similar explanations are claimed for the spread of, for instance, Islam and Buddhism. In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark argues that Christianity triumphed over paganism chiefly because it improved the lives of its adherents in various ways.[63] Another factor, more recently pointed out, was the way in which Christianity combined its promise of a general resurrection of the dead with the traditional Greek belief that true immortality depended on the survival of the body, with Christianity adding practical explanations of how this was going to actually happen at the end of the world.[64] For Mosheim the rapid progression of Christianity was explained by two factors: translations of the New Testament and the Apologies composed in defence of Christianity.[65] Edward Gibbon, in his classic The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, discusses the topic in considerable detail in his famous Chapter Fifteen, summarizing the historical causes of the early success of Christianity as follows: &quot 1) The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. (2) The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth. (3) The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. (4) The pure and austere morals of the Christians. (5) The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire."[66]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity

In contrast, Mohammed spread his religion with the sword and conquest. It continued to spread in great part through conquest.

Phase I: Early Caliphs and Umayyads (610–750 CE)
See also: Muslim conquests, Rashidun Caliphate and Umayyad Caliphate

This was the time of the life of Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his early successors, the four Rashidun Caliphs.

Within the first century of the establishment of Islam upon the Arabian peninsula and the subsequent rapid expansion of the Arab Empire during the Muslim conquests, resulted in the formation of one of the most significant empires in world history.[7] For the subjects of this new empire, formerly subjects of the greatly reduced Byzantine, and obliterated Sassanid Empires, not much changed in practice. The objective of the conquests was more than anything of a practical nature, as fertile land and water were scarce in the Arabian peninsula. A real Islamization therefore only came about in the subsequent centuries.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam

The Pope's approval of war was centuries after Mohammed's conquests and the conquests of early Muslims.

In the late 11th century catastrophe struck with the unexpected and calamitous defeat of the imperial armies at the Battle of Manzikert in Armenia in 1071. The Emperor Romanus Diogenes was captured. The peace terms demanded by Alp Arslan, sultan of the Seljuk Turks, were not excessive, and Romanus accepted them. On his release, however, Romanus found that enemies had placed their own candidate on the throne in his absence; he surrendered to them and suffered death by torture, and the new ruler, Michael VII Ducas, refused to honour the treaty. In response, the Turks began to move into Anatolia in 1073. The collapse of the old defensive system meant that they met no opposition, and the empire's resources were distracted and squandered in a series of civil wars. Thousands of Turkoman tribesmen crossed the unguarded frontier and moved into Anatolia. By 1080, a huge area had been lost to the Empire, and the Turks were within striking distance of Constantinople.

. . . .

Under the Comnenian dynasty (1081–1185), Byzantium staged a remarkable recovery. In 1090–91, the nomadic Pechenegs reached the walls of Constantinople, where Emperor Alexius I with the aid of the Kipchaks annihilated their army.[36] In response to a call for aid from Alexius, the First Crusade assembled at Constantinople in 1096, but declining to put itself under Byzantine command set out for Jerusalem on its own account.[37] John II built the monastery of the Pantocrator (Almighty) with a hospital for the poor of 50 beds.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople