A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

particularly-admirable moment in Western history. Conservative Christian
commentators are more inclined toward arguments that justify Western
intervention in the Holy Lands in response to serious challenges to Christendom
from ongoing Muslim expansion. The roots of the present debate in the West
about Islam are thus projected backward.
For Muslims, the historic shift of perspective has been more dramatic. Today,
Muslims look back to perceive in the Crusades the earliest indicators of the
imperialist urge in Western policies; Usama bin Ladin, among others, has
described current Western actions in the Global War on Terror as “Zionist-
crusader” aggression against Muslim lands. The concept was unfortunately
reinforced by George W. Bush when he referred to “this crusade, this war on
terrorism” in the first week after 9/11. Europeans, closer to the full historical
implications of the crusader period, were dismayed by Bush’s use of the term.
Our own views of current wars in the Middle East are, of course, also highly
subjective; they hinge upon our sense of who is reacting to which earlier
provocation, in an endless regression of blame backward into time—the eternal
chicken-and-egg problem of historical politics. Islam today is a convenient
shorthand to characterize the immense geopolitical complexities that made up
the saga of the Crusades. The Crusades are now part of the pantheon of East-
West tensions. Yet we noted some of the early foundations of this struggle well
before the emergence of Islam in the regional rebellions inside the Byzantine
Empire against Constantinople; these movements embraced various religious
banners (heresies) as vehicles and symbols for what was basically a contest for
territory and power. These tensions preexisted Islam, ran parallel to Islam, and
still exist within the Middle East today. Could there have been Crusades without
Islam? Perhaps not in quite the same form, but a restless and ambitious Europe
would probably have found its way quickly enough to the East, in any case. It
had already launched war against other border areas of Europe. If the distracting

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factor of Islam had never existed, the tensions between Rome and
Constantinople would likely have been far more direct and confrontational than
they were even at the time.

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CHAPTER SIX