Right, the crusades. They were to retake the Holy Land.
...and happened in the 1000s, the Holy Land having been under Muslim control since about the 700s.

Don't talk stupidities.

Then we appear to sidestep the fact that the Middle East has had despots since at least 500BC!!!
500BC ? Try "since organized societies with division of labor developed" instead. Agriculture was developed in the Fertile Crescent some eight millenia ago, and hierarchical empires followed in short order.

'Course, the same despotic empires also laid the groundwork of all later developement...

And what did we have in Europe under the period ? Barbarian warlords mostly. A handful of oligarchies based on slave economy (Athens, evan at its best, so doesn't count as a genuine democracy by modern standards; all the more so as they elected tyrants to handle crises all the time...) in the more developed regions. And a tendency to be really jealous of the Easterners.

Your point ?

Ugh. Such tendentiously vulgar pseudo-historicizing gives me an indigestion.