Crusades a Good Thing after all

Rather a justified Jihad, as it were:

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”...

...Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.

“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.

He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”. He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”...

The story ends with this historical backgrounder that is economical with the truth:

Until the early 11th century, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted under Muslim rule in the Holy Land. After growing friction, the first Crusade was sparked by ambushes of Christian pilgrims going to Jerusalem. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius appealed to Pope Urban II, who in 1095 called on Christendom to take up arms to free the Holy Land from the “Muslim infidel”

Here are the facts that underly the rationale for the Crusades in the Holy Land: modern Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria were the Christian heartland of the Eastern Roman Empire until conquered by Arab Muslims between 632 and 641 AD. The goal--successfully achieved in 1099--of the First Crusade was to regain Jerusalem for Christendom from Muslim rule. The Crusader states that were established existed from 1098 to 1291, just under 200 years. Meanwhile Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria remain overwhelmingly Muslim and mostly under Muslim rule.

In light of historical reality, playing the role of victim on the part of some Muslims seems most disingenuous, and exploits the ignorance of contemporary Christians about their religion's history--unlike the apparent obsession by some Muslims with their own. The ebb and flow of conquest in history are matters of record. Neither Christians nor Muslims should base relations with each other today on the basis of what they did to each other in the past. Or fictional accounts of those events.

Update: For an account of the increasingly sad state of the remaining Christians in the Muslim Middle East I commend: From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium by William Dalrymple. Muslims in Europe seem on the whole to be faring rather better, with more fruitful prospects for the future.

Posted by markc at March 20, 2006 09:22 AM | TrackBack