For the Byzantines, it must be said at the outset, both ideas and forms of holy war - jihad and crusade - were abhorrent. They absolutely rejected both. First, the jihad. They did not understand it. What motivated the armies of Islam, as the Byzantines saw it, was the hope of booty and a barbaric love of fighting. According to Leo VI, "The Sarcarens do not campaign out of a sense of military service and discipline, but rather out of a love of gain and license or, more exactly, in order to plunder on behalf of their faith." Leo dismisses them as "barbarians and infidels" concerned only with plunder. Immense multitudes of them come from Syria and Palestine, "oblivious to the dangers of war, intent only on looting." Byzantine authors, from the seventh to the fourteenth century, repeat these accusations, as they profess their utter repugnance for the doctrine of jihad. In their polemics against Islam they vehemently criticize the jihad as little more than a license for unjustified murder and a pretext for pillaging. And, while the Byzantines, when the opportunity arose, may have indulged in their share of massacre and looting, they did not excuse it in the name of religion.
As far as the Crusades are concerned, it suffices to listen to Anna Komnene, who abhorred both the movement and many of its participants. Still, some Byzantines welcomed the Westerners at first. They were, after all, fellow Christians, although perhaps somewhat careless in their teachings and practices. Emperor Alexios treated them in a civil, almost cordial manner, although he was always nervous about what they might do, and he provided them with military assistance through Asia Minor. But in general, the Byzantines never seemed to understand why all those Western knights and their followers were marching through their land. Restoring Jerusalem to Christian rule was perhaps a laudable objective, but was it worth such an immense effort, fraught with so many perils and uncertainties and carried out with such burtality? Constantinople, after all, was the New Jerusalem, the true holy city. The Byzantines, always practical, were far more interested in possessing Antioch because of its important strategic position than in holding Jerusalem with all its sentimental value. Pilgrimage they understood and warfare they understood, but the conjoining of the two they did not understand. They would have been utterly appalled at the preaching of St. Bernard and his call for the extermination of the infidel, as well as his assertion that killing an enemy of Christ was not homicide, but malecide. And what would they have thought of the rule he drew up for the Templars, monks who wielded lethal weapons in battle? The Byzantines soon came to believe that the warriors from the West had nothing less in mind than the conquest of the empire, and the events of 1204 proved they were right. Ultimately, they came to hate the Latins as much or even more than the Muslims. If the Latins ever referred to their eastern expeditions as "holy war", that term, it is clear, would not have been appreciated by the Byzantines.
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Originally Posted by bradavies
Or you could forget about allying with him, expand into Italy, and when he sends a large stack to attack one of your settlements, crush his forces, leave him Rome, and make him your... 
