| Sumario: | Ever since Al Qaeda declared war on the West, the Crusades have been pushed back into people's consciousness as part of a broader historical narrative that is biased heavily in favor of Islam. Condemnation of the Crusades is based on the notion that they were a barbaric, unprovoked war of extermination and conquest, fought against a superior and far more tolerant civilization—basically, an archetype of Western imperialism. When Westerners today criticize the Crusades, they send a coded message both to Israel and to the Muslim world: Just as these Westerners, and particularly the Christians among them, are not ready to defend their own ancestors, so they are unprepared to defend the Jewish nation or the invasion and occupation of Iraq. By contrast, the radical Islamist invocation of the Crusades rallies Muslims to the cause of jihad against Judeo-Christian civilization and undermines the legitimacy of resistance to it. Unless and until the Crusades are reclaimed by scholarship and analyzed objectively for popular consumption, there is a real threat that the Al Qaeda school of historiography will win out.
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