Andrew Hagen

The argument continues over the Crusades, terrorism, Christendom, and Islam.

In his New York Times review of Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades, Hugh Kennedy writes: (*)

Christopher Tyerman’s book [. . . ] has no time for bogus links between crusaders and modern Muslim jihadists: ‘’The idea that the modern political conflicts in the Near East or elsewhere derive from the legacy of the Crusades or are being conducted as neo-crusades . . . is deceitful'’ and ‘’there is nothing old-fashioned, still less ‘medieval,’ about the techniques, recruitment or ideology of Al Qaeda. The devious polemical association between ‘crusaders’ and ‘Jews’ is historical nonsense.'’

This vigorous argument is an important corrective for anyone who would argue for the long-term inevitability of conflict between Christianity and Islam. Tyerman is especially good on the preaching of the Crusades, and the showmanship and manipulation often used by propagandists. Both he and [another author] discuss at length how a religion so obviously pacifist as early Christianity could be distorted into a justification for aggression and mayhem.

Hugh Kennedy vastly overstates the import of that “corrective.”

My argument on the inevitability of conflict between Christendom and Islam (the civilization) concerns the irreconcilable doctrines of Christianity and Islam (the religion). (†) Of course Tyerman’s vigorous argument as summarized by Kennedy does not correct my argument, and therefore it is not a corrective to “anyone” who would argue the inevitability of the conflict.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 3rd, 2005 at 18:56 and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.