At a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington attended by the Dalai Lama, President Obama decried Isis’ “death cult” and “hijacking” of Islam, and promised “to push back against those” who would distort “religion for their nihilistic end.” By implication, he also warned against singling out Islam for vilification, pointing out that “during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. . . . In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
How bad was Christian behavior especially during the Crusades? Bad indeed.
In 1095 at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II preached what became the First Crusade against Muslim control of the East including the Holy Land. He called Jerusalem “the navel of the world”—not in sympathy with Judaism’s vision—but as part of the longstanding Christian claim that Jews had lost the right to enjoy any connection with the Holy City.
The result was an ugly series of political-religious wars that culminated in the Christian conquest (or reconquest) of Jerusalem in 1101 and almost a century of Crusader control not ending until Saladin retook the Holy City for Islam in 1187. The original Crusader conquest was a bloody affair, in which the Christian Knights were reputed not only to have slaughtered Muslims en masse, but many Jews. The chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi mentions that the leading synagogue was set afire with Jews inside by Christian knights singing “Christ We Adore Thee!” How the slaughter of Jews—some of whom had fought side-by-side with Muslims and whose ancestors had usually lived unmolested in Jerusalem since the Covenant of Omar (638) was liberalized to allow Jewish residence—was probably not general. The new Christian rulers of Jerusalem soon found uses for the survivors.
The worst of the First Crusade for the Jews occurred not in the Holy Land, but the Rhineland where followers of Count Emicho and Peter the Hermit—over the opposition of the local bishops—ravaged the Jewish communities in Speyer, Worms and Mainz and where some Jews chose suicide rather than forced conversion. David Nierenberg considers this the first marker on the long road to Auschwitz.
Saladin—a Sultan of Kurdish origin who conquered Egypt—regained Jerusalem in 1187 partly by playing off Latin Christians against Byzantine Eastern Orthodox. He extended his tolerant policy from Egypt (where Maimonides found refuge and became physician to Saladin’s family, prescribing among other things an equivalent of Viagra). Saladin’s motivation in conquering Jerusalem was mostly religious, and the generally accurate film, Kingdom of Heaven (2005) gets it wrong by imputing it to family honor because of Raymond of Chatillon’s capture of a caravan and alleged dishonored Saladin’s sister.
The partly successful Third Crusade, a direct response to Saladin’s victories, brought the flower of European royalty including Richard III “The Lionhearted” to the Holy Land. Richard certainly qualifies as a war criminal for his slaughter of 3,000 Muslim prisoners at Acre after negotiations with Saladin for their ransom failed and the English King decided not to leave released Muslim captives to his rear. Cecille be De Mille’s airbrushed much of this Christian behavior his movie, The Crusades (1935).
Saladin lectured Richard Coeur de Lion that Jerusalem “is holy to us as well as to you, and more so, seeing it is the scene of our Prophet's journey, and the place where our people must assemble at the Last Day.” Even De Mille portrayed as a noble warrior knight Saladin who was well aware of the Islamic military code: “If you are victorious over them, do not stab them in back! Do not kill the wounded, or uncover their genitals! Do not mutilate the dead. Do not tear a veil.”
Unfortunately, historical accuracy undercuts legendary heroism. For example, Saladin after his victory at the Battle of Hattin personally participated in butchering some captured Knights Templar while watching the execution of others. Some of those not butchered were ransomed, others were given the option of conversion or slavery. Saladin had his reasons for the brutality. His ethical superiority to the Lion Heart was relative—not absolute.
It needs also be said that, with some justification, Western Christianity viewed the Crusades as “a defensive war” to take back the East after over four centuries of Muslim conquests. The Arabs who accomplished it were not barbarian hordes but relatively small armies using the camel equivalent of mechanized cavalry. Usually, they were not particularly brutal conquerors, but sometimes used terror tactics—like assembling all the Christian nobles in Armenia in a Church and burning them to death in 705. They did not force immediate conversion to Islam, but used a combination of threats, persuasion, and inducements (including freedom from taxes for Christians and Jews who became Muslim) to gradually bring about the Islamization of countries like Egypt that has once been predominately Christian.
There might not have been a First Crusade had the Seljuk Turks, coming out of Asia, not threatened Christian Byzantium and occupied Jerusalem during the eleventh century, harassing Christian pilgrims who under previous Muslim rulers had enjoyed relatively free access to the Holy City.
Some apologist might argue—perverting President Obama’s intent—that today’s Islamic terrorism is Muslim “payback” for the Crusades. The problem with this is the cycle of explaining current evils by retracing them back to the historical wrongs done to today’s evil doers results in an infinite regress. If the Crusaders were evil, what about the Muslims whose conquests incensed the Crusaders to assault Islam in what they perceived as righteous revenge?
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