Earlier quoted context omitted.
5 seconds of Googling reveals: >On July 4, 1187, the Muslim forces of Saladin (Salah al-Din) decisively defeated the crusader army south of the Horns of Hattin in Palestine, capturing Guy, king of Jerusalem; Reginald of Châtillon, Saladin’s enemy whom he personally killed; over two hundred Knights Hospitaller and Templar Knightly Orders whom he ordered to be killed; and many crusaders whom he ransomed. The remaining…
I'm glad you did your 5 seconds of googling - but the distinction I was drawing was the difference in treatment meted out to combatants and non-combatants. Saladin sold soldiers into slavery. He spared civilians. The Crusaders made no such distinction. Yes, slavery sucked but between mass murder and selling into slavery, the latter was the lesser of the two evils in the 12th century. The alternative - allowing enemy…
Crusaders did not have any easily accessible slave markets to sell their captives to, since unlike Muslims they were not practicing mass open slavery at the time, they were far from home, and the captured people were very numerous. So they killed them. This was their most self interested choice possible.
The Muslims had access to liquid, nearby slave markets, and the captives were fewer, so they sold them. This was the most sold interested outcome possible. To do anything else would be to throw away war profits. To break a promise of clemency in exchange for surrender would be to make future battles more difficult.
To try to set this up as some fundamental moral difference is deeply disingenuous and indicates some deeper level of motivated reasoning intended to de-legitimize one group in particular.