Crusade Propaganda: The abuse of Christianity's Holy Wars

National Review Online ^ | November 2, 2001 | Thomas F. Madden

[Darth Reagan]

Crusade Propaganda
The abuse of Christianity’s holy wars.

By Thomas F. Madden, the author of A Concise History of the Crusades and coauthor of The Fourth Crusade, is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri.
November 2, 2001 8:00 a.m.

ince September 11 the crusades are news. When President Bush used the term "crusade" as it is commonly used, to denote a grand enterprise with a moral dimension, the media pelted him for insensitivity to Muslims. (Nevermind that the media used the term in precisely the same way before the "gaff.") Attempting to capitalize on this indignation, the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, crowed "President Bush has told the truth that this is a crusade against Islam." Yet clearly the crusades were much on the minds of our enemies long before Bush brought them to their attention. In a 1998 manifesto, cosigned by the leaders of Islamist groups in Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Osama bin Laden declared war against the "Jews and the Crusaders." If you didn't guess, the Americans are the crusaders here. On the day the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan began, in a live-from-a-cave address, bin Laden declared Bush to be "the leader of the infidels" in a worldwide war against Islam. He previously warned that "crusader" Bush would lead the infidel forces into Afghanistan "under the banner of the cross."

So, what do the medieval crusades have to do with all this? After all, doesn't the Muslim world have a right to be upset about the legacy of the crusades? Nothing and no.

The crusades are quite possibly the most misunderstood event in European history. Ask a random American about them and you are likely to see a face wrinkle in disgust, or just the blank stare that is usually evoked by events older than six weeks. After all, weren't the crusaders just a bunch of religious nuts carrying fire and sword to the land of the Prince of Peace? Weren't they cynical imperialists seeking to carve out colonies for themselves in faraway lands with the blessings of the Catholic Church? A couch potato watching the BBC/A&E documentary on the crusades (hosted by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame no less) would learn in roughly four hours of frivolous tsk-tsk-ing that the peaceful Muslim world actually learned to be warlike from the barbaric western crusaders. No wonder, then, that Pope John Paul II was excoriated for his refusal to apologize for the crusades in 1999. No wonder that a year ago Wheaton College in Illinois dropped their Crusader mascot of 70 years. No wonder that hundreds of Americans and Europeans recently marched across Europe and the Middle East begging forgiveness for the crusades from any Muslim or Jew who would listen. No wonder.

Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world. While the Arabs were busy in the seventh through the tenth centuries winning an opulent and sophisticated empire, Europe was defending itself against outside invaders and then digging out from the mess they left behind. Only in the eleventh century were Europeans able to take much notice of the East. The event that led to the crusades was the Turkish conquest of most of Christian Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Christian emperor in Constantinople, faced with the loss of half of his empire, appealed for help to the rude but energetic Europeans. He got it. More than he wanted, in fact.

Pope Urban II called the First Crusade in 1095. Despite modern laments about medieval colonialism, the crusade's real purpose was to turn back Muslim conquests and restore formerly Christian lands to Christian control. The entire history of the crusades is one of Western reaction to Muslim advances. The crusades were no more offensive than was the American invasion of Normandy. As it happened, the First Crusade was amazingly, almost miraculously, successful. The crusaders marched hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory and recaptured not only the lost cities of Nicaea and Antioch, but in 1099 Jerusalem itself.

The Muslim response was a call for jihad, although internal divisions put that off for almost fifty years. With great leaders like Nur ed-Din and Saladin on the Muslim side and Richard the Lionheart and St. Louis IX on the Christian side, holy war was energetically waged in the Middle East for the next century and a half. The warriors on both sides believed, and by the tenets of their respective religions were justified in believing, that they were doing God's work. History, though, was on the side of Islam. Muslim rulers were becoming more, not less powerful. Their jihads grew in strength and effectiveness until, in 1291, the last remnants of the crusaders in Palestine and Syria were wiped out forever.

But that was not the end of the crusades, nor of jihad. Islamic states like Mamluk Egypt continued to expand in size and power. It was the Ottoman Turks, though, that built the largest and most awesome state in Muslim history. At its peak in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire encompassed all of North Africa, the Near East, Arabia, and Asia Minor and had plunged deep into Europe, claiming Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia. Under Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks came within a hair's breadth of capturing Vienna, which would have left all of Germany at their mercy. At that point crusades were no longer waged to rescue Jerusalem, but Europe itself. Christendom had been shrinking for centuries. The smart money was all on Islam as the wave of the future.

Of course, that is not how it turned out. But surprisingly the rise of the West was not the result of any military victory against Muslims. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire survived largely intact until the end of World War I. Instead, something completely new and totally unpredictable was happening in Europe. A new civilization, built on the old to be sure, was forming around ideas like individualism and capitalism. Europeans expanded on a global scale, leaving behind the Mediterranean world, seeking to understand and explore the entire planet. Great wealth in a commercial economy led to a fundamental change in almost every aspect of Western life, culminating in industrialization. The Enlightenment turned Western attention away from Heaven and toward the things of this world. Soon religion in the West became simply a matter of personal preference. Crusades became unthinkable — a foolishness of a civilization's childhood.

As for the Islamic world, it was left behind. Even today Muslim countries struggle to catch up. It is a difficult task, for they are seeking to reconcile their own culture with modern concepts that are uniquely western. Invariably this tension has led to charges among Muslims that their religion and their world is being sold out. Those Muslim leaders who have dealt with the West have been labeled apostates and sometimes targeted by jihad warriors. Indeed, the vast majority of Islamist terrorism over the last century has been aimed at other Muslims. The division, starkly put, is between those who wish to adopt the benefits of Western culture while retaining a devotion to Islam and those who consider any concession to the West to be an abjuration of faith. In short, it is a division between the medieval and the modern worlds.

Which brings us back to the crusades. If the Muslims won the crusades (and they did), why the anger now? Shouldn't they celebrate the crusades as a great victory? Until the nineteenth century that is precisely what they did. It was the West that taught the Middle East to hate the crusades. During the peak of European colonialism, historians began extolling the medieval crusades as Europe's first colonial venture. By the 20th century, when imperialism was discredited, so too were the crusades. They haven't been the same since. In other words, Muslims in the Middle East — including bin Laden and his creatures — know as little about the real crusades as Americans do. Both view them in the context of the modern, rather than the medieval world. The truth is that the crusades had nothing to do with colonialism or unprovoked aggression. They were a desperate and largely unsuccessful attempt to defend against a powerful enemy.

That's the thing about bin Laden, he is a troublesome mix of the modern and the medieval. He and his lieutenants regularly fulminate about the "nation," a reference to a Muslim political unity that died in the seventh century. They evoke an image of the crusades colored with the legacy of modern imperialism. And they call for jihad, demanding that every Muslim in the world take part. In short, they live in a dream world, a desert cloister where the last thousand years only partially happened.

[rob777]

"Despite modern laments about medieval colonialism, the crusade's real purpose was to turn back Muslim conquests and restore formerly Christian lands to Christian control. "



The problem is that the western "crusaders" sacked and looted areas controlled by eastern Christians of the Byzantine Empire, as well as engaging Islam. Read Christian Historian Paul Johnson, or Rose Lane Wilder's "Discovery of Freedom". The crusades were NOT something worth defending.

[AppyPappy]

That's war.

[Darth Reagan]

And the Muslim conquest of most of Christendom from the 700s to the 1300s isn't worth defending either.

[Yougottabekidding]

Kill 'em all, and let God sort them out.

[Taliesan]

The problem is that the western "crusaders" sacked and looted areas controlled by eastern Christians of the Byzantine Empire, as well as engaging Islam.

Yes, they did. But the "crusaders" were all kinds of people, religious and irreligious, and many were mercenaries. So, yes, some crusaders took the opportunity to loot Byzantium's riches on the way to liberate Jerusalem. But others were more pure, more sincere.

My point is just that these broad descriptors are not useful. As the article proves, you can no more say "the crusaders" as a whole did this or that than you can say much about "Christianity" or "Islam" that would be accurate for all those the term ostensibly embraces.

Network anchors in post-terror America bandy about the word "Muslims" as if that word embraces a monolithic group; so the argument rages back and forth whether muslims are peaceful or whether they are vicious. The truth is, some are this, some are that.

So it would be most accurate to say something like "The crusades were, in general, a defensive response to Arab military expansion -- but there were groups on both sides who used their causes as cloaks for looting and pillaging among the innocent."

Thus, we can take the writer's point and defend the crusades in general, while taking your point and condemning specific acts.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Kill 'em all, and let God sort them out.

This must be one of the most evil sentiments ever expressed. Advocating killing innocents alone is the hallmark of terrorism. The remark was originally said after the killing of 100,000 people of the city of Beziers. The Christians doing the killing justified the slaughter of other Christians of Beziers with the above pharse.

[Cincinatus]

Warfare in the Dark Ages was brutal and barbaric. It's Whiggish history to retrofit modern sensibilities about limiting collateral damage and civilian casualties onto the template of medieval warfare.

As far as “defending” the Crusades goes, the purpose of history is neither to defend nor justify things in the past (over which we, after all, have no control) but rather to learn from historical examples. To learn the right lesson, one must fully understand the context and the response. Modern liberals have used the Crusades as examples of “bad wars,” largely because of their misunderstanding of their geopolitical context. They also have an agenda to bash Christianity and Crusader atrocities give them a free shot at that. What they don’t mention is the endless catalogue of Muslim atrocities: See Paul Fregosi’s Jihad in the West : Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries for a corrective to liberal “scholarship” on the Crusades.

[HELLRAISER II]

There is no religious war from our side, the religious propoganda comes from the Muslims wanting a religious war & to be honest about it, that's exactly what it looks like it's cooking up to be. From our point of view we were attacked by some Muslim nutcase, we retaliated & want his head on a platter. That's pretty understandable to all except Muslim Religious fanatics who interpret & twist current events to their own agenda.

[ExpandNATO]

The problem is that the western "crusaders" sacked and looted areas controlled by eastern Christians of the Byzantine Empire...

...and were excommunicated for it (BTW, it was not mere sack and loot, but conquest of the Byzantine empire). Same for the crusaders who sacked Jerusalem during the First Crusade. So I do wonder what the pope was apologizing for, his predecessor already did what he could.

Are you also going to pound on Richard Lionheart who having defeated the Muslims in battle and then negotiated a peace treaty in which the Muslims promised not to mug Christian pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem? Will you pound on the Crusade that consisted of the German Emperor landing a huge force on the shortest road to Jerusalem and then engaging Saladin in some quick negotiation about safe passage for pilgrims and then leaving? And notice BTW that safe passage for pilgrims keeps coming up, think the Muslims should have gone unpunished for mugging them?

Are you going to pound on the Crusaders who stopped the Muslims from coming into Europe through Spain or the Church sanctioned war that saved Vienna? Or the battle of Lepanto? Or would you rather see Europe look like the Middle East? I will note the complete absence of atheists, Protestants, Lutherans and non-Catholics in general in stopping Muslim invasions (and I am Lutheran, ie non-Catholic).

Some of the Crusaders are worthy of condemnation, some should be praised, some were simply incompetent, some simply no better than anyone else of their time. A good number did us valuable historical service keeping Muslims out of Europe. Or do you actually believe the Western world would still be as it is now with Moslems ruling much of Europe?

[DrNo]

We need CRUSADER RABBITT and RAGS THE TIGER to fight this war!

[baxter999]

Excellent post and great recap of history. As usual, Free Republic gets to the truth behind the distortions of the leftist media. As an aside to the Crusades the Spanish "reconquista" is worthy of note. The spanish fought a 700 year war against terrorism that did not end until 1492. Wonder if the "world's last remaining superpower" can sustain our current half-assed efforts for even a few months?

[aruanan]

Note to OWK: Read and learn.

[rob777]

"My point is just that these broad descriptors are not useful. As the article proves, you can no more say "the crusaders" as a whole did this or that than you can say much about "Christianity" or "Islam" that would be accurate for all those the term ostensibly embraces.

Network anchors in post-terror America bandy about the word "Muslims" as if that word embraces a monolithic group; so the argument rages back and forth whether muslims are peaceful or whether they are vicious. The truth is, some are this, some are that.



I am in complete agreement with you here.



"So it would be most accurate to say something like "The crusades were, in general, a defensive response to Arab military expansion"



I am not as convinced that the expansion of the Saracen civilization was largely due to military agression. Again, read Rose Lane Wilder's book "Discovery of Freedom", or Paul Johnson's book "A History of Christianity", or Professor Henry Chadwick's book "A History of the Early Christian Church" In a nutshell, after Christianity became "Romanized" by accepting the authoratarian structire of the Roman Empire, dissenters were marginalized and persucuted. The main military conflict on Chriatianity's eastern border in the heyday of Byzantium was with the Persian empire. The Arabs rose up in the aftermath of the collaspe of the Persian empire and the weakening of Byzantium. A BIG problem for the empire of the Christian east, was the wholesale defection of Arians and Monophysitites, who were condemend by the 1st and 4th Ecumenical Councils. A large portion of these people were in the east, particularly the Monophysites. They were not militarily conqured by the Saracens, but willingly intergrated into that civilization, all the while keeping their Christian identity. (They still considered themselves Christian, regardless of the decision of the Church councils) Greek scientist and other intellectuals also defected because of the lack of intellectual freedom they experienced. In a nutshell, the rise of Mideval Islamic civilization can no more be simply be explained away by pointing to military conquest, than the rise of modern western civilization can be explained away by pointing to alleged "Imperialism".

Be all that as it may, it is ilrelevent to the modern context. Fundalmentalist Islam of TODAY is fully totalitarian and moderate Islam does not speak out against it. We do not need to revisit the crusades in order to point out that a signifigant portion of modern Islam is hostile to the values of an open society.

[Taliesan]

I will note the complete absence of atheists, Protestants, Lutherans and non-Catholics in general in stopping Muslim invasions (and I am Lutheran, ie non-Catholic).

During the Crusades? That's like saying "Where were the Wesleyans when Athanasius needed them?"

[Taliesan]

Thank you for your response. I've read the Johnson (which I liked the least of his books) and the Chadwick. I'll watch for the other.

I suppose the distinction that might help us is between cultural advance and military capture of land, and this distinction is really not that tough to apply to history to extract moral conclusions.

If your religion wins my family's hearts and minds I have nothing to complain about, least of all "imperialism" -- but if your bishop (or Imam) rides and kills my kids and quarters horses in my living room -- you get the point.

I grant you your cultural factors; but the writer's point is that Islam's armies seized land, and European armies took it back. All the while, the eternal culture war of ideas waged, on its own battlefield, and largely irrelevant to this moral analysis.

[ExpandNATO]

ExpandNATO:
I will note the complete absence of atheists, Protestants, Lutherans and non-Catholics in general in stopping Muslim invasions (and I am Lutheran, ie non-Catholic).

Taliesin:
During the Crusades? That's like saying "Where were the Wesleyans when Athanasius needed them?"

I should have been clearer. Protestants were notably absent during the attacks by the Ottoman empire on Vienna and during the naval battle of Lepanto.

[Taliesan]

Protestants were notably absent during the attacks by the Ottoman empire on Vienna and during the naval battle of Lepanto.

Ah. I did not know that.

[Ditto]

The crusades were NOT something worth defending.

That's a very broad brush you paint with. The Crusades (note the plural) took place over the course of two centuries. And they are not something that needs to be 'defended' anymore than Alexander the Great needs defended. They need to be understood.

[valhallasone]

The Christians doing the killing justified the slaughter of other Christians of Beziers with the above pharse.

Do you have an authoritative citation for this? By authoritative, I mean any actual scholarly work (refereed academic article, book authored by a degreed historian, etc.) that sets about estabilishing this phrase originating at that point in time. I sincerely doubt that this is the origin of the phrase: "Kill them all and let God sort them out." I am prepared to be further educated, but it does not ring true.