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Islam unquestionably won the Crusades, even though Europe was ultimately able to reassert itself and dominate the world. The reasons for this success are much debated, but it's reasonable to conclude that the West won the war of ideas. Notions of individualism and freedom, capitalism and technology, and, most of all, the West's turn from theology to science, carried the day. Religion became in the West an essentially private concern. It is on this "modern" turn that the anti-Crusade attitude developed.
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Interesting statement. I wonder if it hasn't come back to haunt us in the West...