God brings peace?

[Zenith]

Actually, from what I understand, very few if any people "convicted" of witchcraft during the witch trials actually practiced Wicca or witchcraft of any sort.

I don't believe anybody practiced Wicca. Wicca is neo-paganism. It's a new religion, only themselves claim ancient or middle-age origins.
And it is indeed very possible that most of the middle-ages that were convicted were not practicing any kind of witchcraft.

At any rate, it was particularly heinous since belief in the power of witches is just as silly as belief in the power of prayer. Who cares if someone wants to call themselves a witch and thinks they can summon magic powers? They're just deluding themselves. Today we can see this as just another example of religious persecution.

Well, for a witch that tried to use a ritual to kill somebody, though his ritual is crap, the attempt to kill should matter.

And while you claim that they used torture to get people to confess, if I remember the history books correctly one of the things they'd do was to throw an accused witch into a pond. If she floated, she was a witch. If she sank to the bottom, she was innocent. So it doesn't really matter if it was just a way to get people to confess or not, either way they were screwed. If they confessed, they were hanged. If they managed to float, they were hanged. If they sank, they drowned.

that's where what I said goes: "I didn't study about the persecution of witches and witchcraft. From the little I know, a few points".
I don't know if those were the only methods, in any period of time and in every place, but it does not matter. They were insane, and for some reason, when I read about these, it makes me laugh (it's both tragic and comic).

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First of all zenith, the comic is meant to be satirical not a historical misprepresentation.
Secondly, EVERYONE knows that the Crusades were political

Don't worry, there are. Hopefully none on this site, but there are.
Anyway, another point for my explanation:
- people use to (at least from my observations) associate "crusade" with "great religious evil", when
a) it wasn't more an evil than any war. People seem to depict "crusade" as an outstanding evil and outstanding war.
b) for both the leaders of the crusaders (i.e. lords) and the warriors, the purpose was mostly practical (material, like riches gained after conquering the cities) rather than fanatical people killing in the name of God (i.e. the religion was quite like an added justification, as the people were not as eager to go into a crusade when the bounty did not sound promising).
- many people seem to see the crusades as an aggressive attack towards an innocent. But it was not at all so. And muslims also like to depict the crusaders as the evil aggressive warriors, while themselves were innocent and good-hearted. And the latter crusades were for defending Europe (I mean, against the muslims), and it's saddens me that they did not succeed in kicking off the muslims from Europe, but instead we had to stay with them up until the 20nd century (when it is said that the crusades were such an evil thing), and if it wasn't for the first crusades (except the 4th), it was possible for the muslims to invade much quicker Europe, which would have been a bad thing.

the comic is pointing out the fact that "god" was used as an excuse to conquer and control.

Yeah, but it does sound a bit odd to me. You know, to use "God did X" for " "God" was used to do X" or "religions did X".

I'm assuming that "god" is being used generically as a term for religion. I'm a Deist and even I use "god" in a general sense to convey the corrupt nature of ALL religions.

Then it must be me who sees odd to use "god" for "religions".

I don't think anyone here interpreted it as a historical misrepresentation. Again, the statement was merely showing the irony of putting "god" in front of a brutal genocidal army. I think you may be getting a bit nit-picky.

Yeah, I know that nobody believed that God was with them (because, well, most here are atheists). I just thought it's similar to atheists blaming a God they do not believe He exists, for a natural disaster.
And perhaps I do tend to criticize even more than enough.

[EDITED: forgot to mention something about the crusades]