Were the Crusades an defensive war against muslim aggression or a offensive war again

Were the Crusades an defensive war against muslim aggression or a offensive war against a peaceful Islam?

Thats paradoxical, because whom ever side you are looking from a strong argument could be proposed. Use your knowledge of it to decide what you think, but we'll never know its just history.

It was both. The Eastern Orthodox Empire or Byzantium, asked the Holy Roman Empire for help in quelling Th attacks from the Muslims. They were trying to take Constantinople. As the crusades progressed, the Holy Land was turned over so many times. A lot of historians tend to lean toward the first part of your question because the Ottoman Turks were marching on Constantinople. It became an offensive war when the Christian Crusaders from the west would try to retake the Holy Land back from the Muslims.

There was little that was peaceful about Islam in the late 11Th century in the Holy Land.

The original idea for the Crusades came from a letter written by Byzantine emperor Alexius I,asking Europe for military aid against the Seljuk Turks,who had conquered most of Anatolia (modern Turkey) from the Byzantines and who Alexius regarded as a threat to Constantinople itself.Further,the Seljuks had conquered the Holy Land in the 1070s from the Egyptian Fatamids,and were making life for Christian pilgrims in the region much tougher than the Fatamids had.

As the Seljuks were no military threat to Europe at the time,the Crusades can hardly be described as a defensive war;their major aim - to liberate the Holy Land,in particular the holy Christian places in Jerusalem, from Muslim occupation and control,was in essence a war of aggressive conquest,as a number of Crusader states carved out from territory conquered from the Muslims were established as a direct result of military operations conducted as part of the First Crusade.