Ok - this is perhaps a perspective you have not heard in recent years?  Were the crusades evil?  

Lets reclaim the truth of history back  The crusades were launched, after all diplomacy failed.  How can we do things so the most people are cared for...?  What about religious warfare?  Today we have a lot of war - yet it doesn't seem to accomplish much.  Modern wars go on for years, no objectives, masses of civilians killed. Millions of refugees, unable to ever return  Why the Crusades? Did they go on for years and years? Or did they take the measures they needed to, to achieve what is good and right?  Who is Bernard of Clairvaux? 

A Preacher of the 2nd crusade. He was not a hate preacher, though he preached through the wars. To find out what really happened, read their views. Modern day opinions of them do not reflect reality. Read the eyewitness accounts, not today's post-enlightenment biases. The preachers, like Clairvaux, encouraged the people who tagged along with the crusaders to live godly lives, to not be racists, i.e. protecting Jews, en-route.  Did the Crusaders massacre everyone?  Why did the crusades happen? The First Crusaders responded to calls for help.  The people wanted freedom from oppressive imperialistic regimes. Did the crusaders lead colonial expeditions into the Middle East? Or did they became Middle Easterners, assimilated into the culture?   What about the Fatimid Islamic Caliphate?  How did they treat the Coptic Christians?  Consider the coptic flag, what does the blue represent? Read their tragic history and understand why some of the crusades had to take place.   

Similarly, Turkish Muslims had taken Christian Anatolia before the 1st Crusade.  Is it right to let a people be oppressed and overrun by a brutal regime? Do we oppose this kind of even today?  The early Church Fathers were North African and Asian.  Yet Islam had taken the land away from the people and Arabised them. Islamised lands, which today have never been given back. Did the crusaders steal the land and or did the Crusaders respect the people?  Islam did not spread by persuasion.  Their armies spread fast and brutally through Arabia, Africa, Europe, Persia, Central Asia, India, Pakistan through to China.  North Africans enslaved by Islam, were either given rewards or death/suppression. It was they who were brought into Europe to fight; not by choice. -Slave-warriors, under brutal Caliphs, invaded as far as Tours in France. -choosing not to fight did not end well for you. -slave warriors - fighting for their freedoms.  

 "This spread of these tyrannical armies took over lands that were nothing to do with Arab lands."  They conquered North African Berbers, Turks - Christian lands. The people were forced to submit.  Local Reconquista's (fighting to reclaim land taken) had risen up over the 400 years of Islamic invasions.  European Christians didn't initially go to war, but when unbelievable persecution, killings, pillaging and poverty continued, the Crusader Armies began (after 400 years!).  What about modern day wars?  

When invading armies take over, do you believe world leaders should respond to atrocities? Is it right to stop brutal leaders, who imprison, kill, mutiliate, suppress their own people?  Are Muslims native to Africa and Asia?  Not at all.  Islam colonised Africa and Asia, and never gave back the freedoms of the people of the land.  A new religion which invaded quickly, adopting ideas from the religions they were encountering.  Understanding our history correctly, helps us move forward, and understand where we are at today.  

For more details and to read primary sources see the well documented book by: Darius Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise.