>Many people would consider it righteous, but no-one can seriously claim it was peaceful. The allied side of WW2 was/is considered righteous but no one claims it was peaceful
People often consider a state committing a righteous act peaceful. People say the US was forcibly dragged into both world wars and describe the goal of "spreading peace."
>It seems more like you're making all sorts of mental contortions to take the polar opposite position, that they were "devoted to peace". At this point you're arguing against a strawman without even having the decency to tell us what the strawman is.
I've never stated that the religion is devoted to peace. I called the behavior normal for an empire and then described how I saw the comparison with the Crusades strange and misleading. The "strawman" I'm arguing against is a vague recollection of what seems to be anti-Islamic propaganda that was in the first post I responded to. Speculating that I'm mistaken about the time period used in the comparison doesn't make it less strange or misleading.
>If you don't like the crusades comparison would you prefer the nazi Germany conquests in WW2? Would you say they were "devoted to peace"?
Their wars alone are enough to show they weren't devoted to peace. Comparing it to some other thing is only useful to show how it's better or worse than some other thing. What other reason is there to say "Islam fought maybe ten times more battles to expand than the Crusades fought against Islam. (And much of the Islamic expansion was against civilizations that were already christian - all of north Africa, for example.)"