The Crusades were political weapons used by the Church to exert control over the infighting in Europe and focus their might to reclaim targets that were deemed important, such as Jerusalem. In return for attacking targets set by the Church, each crusader would be absolved of all the filthy sins they had currently and had no other hope of dealing with.
That was the core of the Crusades.
That explanation paints only one side as assholes, when both sides were.
Here's how the first crusade went down.
Muslims: Well, we got kicked from Europe. Oh well. We still own Anatolia!
Byzantines: No, we want Anatolia back! Now we own Anatolia!
Muslims: Woah! Not cool! We want that back!
Pope: Woah! Not cool! Muslims and Byzantines fighting and Muslims are winning? Hey, Catholic Europe, stop fighting for a second!
Catholic Europe: What's up?
Pope: Muslims are beating up Byzantines!
Catholic Europe: Well, that sucks for them. Can we go back to killing eachother?
Pope: No! You see, you're all full of sin, but if you go and help the Byzantines and kill the Muslims, you'll get a guaranteed place in Heaven!
Catholic Europe: ... ... ... WOO! TIME TO UNIFY AND KILL SOME MUSLIMS!
Pope: ... my God... there's so many of them... we could... we could even... we could even take back Jerusalem...
Crusade: YEEEAAAHHH!! TAKE THAT MUSLIMS! YOU HAD THIS CITY FOR LIKE 400 YEARS BUT ITS OURS NOW!
And then in other crusades other things happen. The Muslims, in this instance, didn't do anything terrible. They didn't commit mass murder of Christians or Jews, not even the ones still living in Jerusalem, unlike the Crusaders who did murder Christians, Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem. The Byzantines got some of their land back, the Seljuq Turks fought for the land that was lost by them and other countries, they started winning a bunch and a crusade was called to help the Byzantines.
Apparently Hillary Clinton is doing some political-work in Virginia. It's for the gubernatorial election there, mind, but naturally everybody's freaking out at this display of politicking from her.
Ugh. I hope she doesn't run. I will register just to vote against her. She's such a nasty person. Please tell me the Dems have someone else so she doesn't even get a shot at the White House.