The Crescent and the Cross

The frontline between Christendom and the Islamic world has shifted for over a millennium, and at several key moments has erupted into war.

To the list of combatants from the past - Richard the Lionheart, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Mahdi and Gordon of Khartoum - we now have to add George Bush and Osama bin Laden.

In The Crescent and the Cross, we explore several turning points in the relationship between Christianity and Islam.

Programme Two looks at the crucial Third Crusade.

After the death of the prophet Mohammed in the year 632, Muslims expanded from their base in what is now Saudi Arabia to win control of, amongst other places, the city of Jerusalem.

But Jerusalem had great religious significance not only for Muslims but for Christians too. And in 1095 Pope Urban II had had enough: he issued a call to arms saying Christians should retake the city.

"From Jerusalem a grievous report has repeatedly been brought to our ears; that a race wholly alienated from God, violently invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by pillage and fire. On whom, therefore, is the labour of avenging those wrongs and of recovering this territory incumbent if not upon you? Undertake this journey eagerly for remission of your sins, with the assurance of the reward of imperishable glory in the kingdom of heaven."
Pope Urban II, 1095

Rather like Osama bin Laden today, he promised those who answered his call that if they fought holy war, they would be rewarded with a place in heaven.

It was the start of the crusades, a series of military campaigns, in which Christians travelled thousands of miles East in the hope of winning control of the Holy Land.

The Third Crusade was key: when Richard The Lionheart failed to take Jerusalem from Saladin – despite winning a bloody battle at Acre in Northern Israel, in which he cold-bloodedly killed hundreds if not thousands of opponents. As archaeologist Adrian Boas drily puts it, "In medieval warfare both sides by our standards were barbaric."

It wasn't all conflict though. Dr Boas says the lifestyle of the Muslim population was absorbed by the Christian settlers, "the food they ate and the clothes they wore".

Western Aggression

Today the crusades are seen by many Muslims as evidence of unceasing Western aggression against their faith. But for centuries they saw them in a rather different light.

"You often hear people say there has been an abiding resentment amongst Muslims of the crusades," says Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith of Cambridge University. "Nothing could be further from the truth. They thought they had won."

Muslims believed they had emerged victorious because once the Christian fighters stopped coming from the West, the Muslims were left in control of Jerusalem for several centuries.

The revival of the idea of crusaderism as representing an innate Western desire to gain control of the Muslim lands only re-emerged during the colonial period. But since that time it has had great resonance. Today Osama bin Laden uses the term to motivate young Muslims to attack Western targets.

"It has become crystal clear that the West in general, led by America, harbours a crusader hatred against Islam which is beyond words" he said shortly after 9/11.

But while the crusades have become vivid in the Muslim imagination many in the west have largely forgotten them. It is widely accepted in the West that when President Bush spoke of a crusade after 9/11, he was unaware of the term’s emotive significance.

Today it is the Jews who control most of Jerusalem and many Muslims see that as a continuation of the crusaderism. "I can see a lot of similarities between the crusaders and the Israelis," says Dr. Mohsen Youssef, of Birzeit University. "It took the Muslims 200 years to get rid of the crusaders: many Muslim people believe that they will defeat Israel in mush less time than 200 years."

It's an analysis firmly rejected by many Israelis such as Professor Ronnie Ellenblum of Jerusalem University. "It is nonsense. What is the relevance of what happened 800 years ago to the present? he asks.

The Crescent and the Cross is written and presented by Owen Bennett-Jones.

First broadcast on 16 Novembr 2009.