Crusades

The Crusades where something that I guess I will never fully understand. I know that the Christians were fighting to gain back their holy land, Jerusalem but religion wasn't really the underlying reason for the attack with led to wars. But if it wasn't for religion, then what was it for? The Pope's power? His need to be successful? The location of Jerusalem? Or maybe just to beat Islam. What ever the reason, I am going to try to figure it out using facts and maybe a few educated assumptions. I think that it basically all happened when Islam was growing but Christianity was not doing too well. But, as Christianity started gaining some strength, and after what happened with the battle of Tours, they decided that Islam was becoming a huge threat and they had to do something about it. So maybe the reason they attacked Islam was because they felt threatened. But really, it all had to do with the Pope, Pope Urban. He was not just powerful, he was a powerful religious figure, with added a whole extra bonus for him. And most importantly, he was trusted. So really the question I should be asking myself as I write this blog post is What were the origins of the Crusades and how did the leaders of the religions help push the conflict? That is one of the prompts that we were given so don't think that I thought of that question on my own (unless this is Mr.Moran, who is probably the only one reading this anyway). 
So for the first part of the question, which I kind of previously touched on, the Crusades' origins were basically Christianity feeling tension building up and assuming that Islam was going to attack. Since Christianity wanted to be the first to attack, they Crusades happened in their own anticipation. No one can say that Islam was even going to attack, but then again, no one can say that they weren't. But also, there was already lingering tension from the Battle of Tours and Christianity just did not want to take any risks with Islam.
For the second part of the question about how leaders pushed the conflict, it was basically all Pope Urban. Back then, in Church people had to rely very strongly on the monks and other religious figures because they couldn't read. It required a lot of trust so the religious people already were pretty good at that by the time Pope Urban said it was time to get Jerusalem. On top of Urban being trusted, he used god to attract the people. He said that if you attack Jerusalem then you will go to heaven and god will disregard your sins. This is something that sinful people would want to do and most people were probably sinful back then based on the throng of people ready to fight.