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But much can already be said with certainty. So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining. See, for example, Steven Runciman’s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general.
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#AMERICAN HISTORIANS WHO MANUFACTURED THE ENOLA GAY EXHIBIT SERIES#
The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. For them, this is a “teaching moment,” an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually listening. They are not revisionists, like the American historians who manufactured the Enola Gay exhibit, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of very careful, very serious scholarship. Many historians had been trying to set the record straight on the Crusades long before Clinton discovered them. Yet no one disputed the ex-president’s fundamental premise. (Why Islamist terrorists should be upset about the killing of Jews was not explained.) Clinton took a beating on the nation’s editorial pages for wanting so much to blame the United States that he was willing to reach back to the Middle Ages.
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In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Doesn’t the present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame? The Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. By Shoebat Foundation on Augin Featured, GeneralĪs a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop.