ISLAM AND CHRISTENDOM / HAROLD O. J. BROWN

THE CRUSADES: TIME FOR ANOTHER?TWO OF Christendom's favoritehymns, often used at services ofHoly Communion, are "Jesus,Thou Joy of Loving Hearts" and "Je-sus, King Most Wonderful." Both werewritten by the great medieval monkand theologian, Bernard of Clairvaux(1091-1153). Not many of those whosing Bernard's hymns know the nameof their author, and even fewer knowthat he was the leading agitator be-hind the Second Crusade (1147-49).The thought might make them uncom-fortable.

The Crusades do not enjoy a goodpress in the modern Westalthoughthe very existence of the modern Westowes a great deal to them. Evenamong Christians the Crusades have apoor reputation. Of those bloody warsfought between 1096 and 1270, chief-ly but not solely in the Holy Land,Jerry Falwell, for instance, has saidthat they were "bloody aberrations . . .in no way representative of BiblicalChristianity." He even goes so far asto classify them with some of the far-out cults and the "Jim Jones tragedy"as "aberrations of Christianity." ManyChristians share Reverend Falwell's dis-taste.

Yet even if the Crusades were not"representative of Biblical Christian-ity," they were certainly representativeof Christendom, of what we call Chris-tian civilization. They inspired and en-rolled many of the best men and mindsof their day, including the saintly KingLouis IX of France (who died of ill-ness in 1270 during the Eighth Cru-sade, the last of the true medievalCrusades).

In the long run, the Crusades werea disaster. The Christian Kingdom ofJerusalem, established in 1099, survivedfor barely a century. The Fourth Cru-

Dr. Brown's most recent book is Heresies:The Image of Christ in the Mirror ofHeresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostlesto the Present (Doubleday, 1984).

sade, in 1202-04, captured not Jerusa-lem but Constantinople, until then thefirst city of Christendom and the capi-tal of the millennial Byzantine Empire.The fall of Constantinople to WesternChristians so weakened the ChristianByzantine Empire that it rapidly fellprey to the Turks and finally expiredin 1453, opening the door of Europeto the Moslems, whom Byzantium hadheld off for eight hundred years.

The fact that the Crusades ultimate-ly ended in failure was a setback tothe prestige of the medieval papacyand indeed to the Christian Church asa whole. This is one reason why manyof us who are Protestants would liketo blame them on Catholicism and toact as though they were no concern ofours. And of course crusading was notjustified by Biblical doctrine and is notpart of the program of any serious Bib-lical Christian today. Nevertheless, theCrusades were a primary preoccupationof Christendom for two centuries, andChristians should not dismiss them outof hand or brush them off with blan-ket condemnation. It is just possiblethat the medieval Crusaders knewsomething about the region and cul-ture they were invading that we haveforgotten.

Dar al Islam

ANY MODERN Christians rejectthe Crusades with horror, be-lieving they were an attempt to

make converts by force. In fact, theywere an attempt to conquer the HolyLandan attempt that was, for abouta century, a complete and surprisingsuccess. The Crusades were provokednot by missionary zeal, but by religiousrepression of Christians in the HolyLand^residents and pilgrimsby theirMoslem rulers. Should the MoslemArabs once again take control of Is-rael and begin to persecute the Jewsliving there, would we be surprised tosee world Jewry organize militarily to

rescue them? In that light, the FirstCrusade, if not justified, is at least asdefensible as many other wars wagedby the nations of the world, Christianand non-Christian alike.

A second fundamental misunderstand-ing is the idea that the Crusades areresponsible for current Moslem hostil-ity to Christianity. Missionaries in Mos-lem lands often explain their meagersuccess in these terms, and indeed,after Mehmet Ali Agca tried to killPope John Paul II, some extremistMoslem media defended his action onthe ground that the Pope is the "Kingof the Crusaders" and a menace to Is-lam. There is no doubt that the Cru-sadesnow more than seven hundredyears in the pastfurnish a pretext forMoslem hostility. But to say they arethe reason for Moslem hostility is tobetray a fundamental ignorance of morethan a thousand years of Moslem his-tory.

The Crusades were not the cause ofMoslem aggressiveness, but a reactionto it. From the very first years of itsexistence, Islam has been a militaristic,aggressive religion. According to Mos-lem doctrine, the Moslem belongs tothe dar al Islam, the house of Islam,while all infidels^including Christiansand Jewsbelong to the dar al harb,the house of war. It is the Moslem'sduty to expand the house of Islam andto pare down the house of war. Islamconquered the richest and most pop-ulous parts of the Christian RomanEmpire within a century of its foundingby Mohammed in 622. The conquer-ing Moslems were finally stopped atthe gates of Constantinople in 678,but they penetrated in the West asfar as northern France, where theywere defeated by Charles Martel, thegrandfather of Charlemagne, at Toursin 732.

The successful reconquest of Jeru-salem by the Frankish Crusaders in1099 shook the Moslem world, but ittook less than a century for it to re-

AuGusT 9, 1985 / NATIONAL REVIEW 37

cover. In the East the march of con-quest against Christendom was soonresumed. (In the West, the Spanishgradually expelled the Moslem Moors,but the liberation of Spain was notcomplete until 1492, almost four hun-dred years after the First Crusade.)The Turks captured Constantinople in1453 and turned Christendom's great-est church, Hagia Sophia, into amosque. They overran the Balkans andmuch of south-central Europe untilthey were finally stopped for the lasttime at Vienna in 1683. Not only theGreeks but all the Christian peoplesof southeastern Europe have a vividmemory of the horror of Turkish Mos-lem rule.

Christian Resurgence?

THE RISE of the European powerscoincided with the protracted de-cline of the great Islamic nations.During the nineteenth century and thefirst half of the twentieth century, Is-lam was once again on the defensive.The greatest psychological shock, how-ever, was delivered not by Christiansbut by Jewsthe establishment of theState of Israel in 1948 and, even moreforcibly, the "Jewish" reconquest ofOld Jerusalem in 1967. (For almostall Moslems, it is the Jews, not the Is-raelis, who recaptured Jerusalem, justas the Pope is a Christian, not a Pole.)

It is true that the Moslems^as inthe era of the Crusadeshave nowsuffered almost two centuries of rever-sals at Christian hands. But this means

that over the 1,360 years of Christian-Moslem history, the Moslems have beenclearly on the defensive for only aboutfour centuries. Four centuries of Chris-tian resurgence do not explain nineand a half centuries of active aggressionbefore, during, and after the centuriesof Christian resurgence.

Very few Christians think of interna-tional politics in religious terms. TheChristian West has produced moresympathy for the Moslems who weremassacred during the Israeli invasionof Lebanon in 1982 than for all ofthe Lebanese Christians whose pro-tracted suffering at Moslem hands wasone of the reasons for that Israeli in-vasion. We do not think of Christen-dom as something that we should de-fend, much less expand.

The Moslems, however, do think ofdar al Islam, the house of Islam, assomething they intend to expand. Thehistoric Crusades were in fact a long-delayed reaction to the Islamic jihad,or holy war. The jihad swept Christian-ity from North Africa and most of theMiddle East, and threatened to sweepit from Europe as well. Christians to-day are not proud of the historic Cru-sades, nor should they be. But it iswise to remember that it took the cru-sading fervor, with all its faults, tostop and reverse the religiously moti-vated military expansion of Islam bymeans of the jihad.

Many serious Islamic authorities stillbelieve in jihad. Indeed, the Islamicworld is not only spiritually and moral-ly capable of launching a fresh jihad.

it is already in the process of doingsoon its own timetable, and by de-grees, but a jihad nonetheless. Therenewed Islamic advance against theChristian West may be said to datefrom the great oil embargo of 1973.

The Urbane Shah

ANY Westerners consider theAyatollah Khomeini a crackpotand ignore his project of ex-

porting his Islamic revolution. At thesame time, we look on the oil crisis of1973, which caused the economy ofevery Western, "Christian" nation tostagger, as basically a profit-makingscheme. In reality, however, it was notthe fanatical Ayatollah but the urbaneShah who launched the "oil weapon."And the Shah and the Ayatollah hadtheir Islamic faith in common. Both ofthem were committed to reducing us,the dar al harb. And between themthey have made a good start.

Israelis know that the threat of thejihad is not an idle one, the fancy ofscholars in an ivory tower. Christen-dom, by contrast, does not feel threat-ened. It is, on paper at least, far rich-er and more powerful than the Islamicworld. But Christendom has paid ahigh price in the past for underesti-mating Islam. In the seventh century,Christian Rome was far richer andstronger than Islam. It did not feelthreatened eitherat least not at first.The incredible ferocity of the Islam-ic attack, when it came, stunned andvirtually overwhelmed Christendom. Itbarely escaped complete subjugation.

It would be folly to exaggerate theconcept of a new jihad, or the threatthat it poses. But it would be evengreater folly to ignore it. For theChristian world today, unlike that of1096, is hardly in spiritual shape tobegin a fresh crusade.

While Christians no longer havemuch sympathy for the old Crusadermentality, it could be very importantfor us to understand it. Unless we canat least understand the Crusades^rath-er than simply dismissing them as"aberrations of Christianity"we willnot be able to understand the jihad,to which the Crusades were a reac-tion. And unless we understand thejihad, and begin to take it seriously^as seriously as we take the Communistworld revolutionwe may soon findourselves at a point where nothingless than a crusade can help us. D

38 NATIONAL REVIEW / AUGUST 9, 1985