In many recent discussions relating to the War on Terrorism various advocates of the Islamist cause (and other, more well-meaning individuals) have invoked the Medieval Crusades by Christian Europe as an example of a justifiable Moslem grievance against the West. This is nonsense, mostly propagated by individuals who are pre-disposed to buy into myths of Western guilt and Islamic victimhood. In fact, the story of the Crusades is one in which the Christian West is more of a victim than a victimizer. Despite their being marred by atrocities (which accompanied any war of that era) the Crusades must (or rather, the first three crusades), in my opinion, be considered on the whole as a largely noble endeavour.

To understand the Crusades one must first understand the context in which they occurred. Unlike Christianity, which was spread over a period of centuries by peaceful conversion, Islam is a religion which was spread largely by the sword. After consolidating control in their Arabian base, Mohammed and his successors set out to conquer the world for Allah. Those who lived in the lands they conquered were given three choices: become a Moslem, become a Dhimmi and agree to pay special taxes while living as a second class citizen, or die. This is how, in less than a century after the founding of the Islamic faith, it controlled an Empire which spanned from the Middle East to Spain.

Islamic expansion in Western Europe was checked in 732 by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours. However, for the time being, the Christians lacked the organization or military capability to throw the Moslems back. Meanwhile, in the East, Islam’s expansion was largely halted by the fracturing of the faith into several denominations. The result was several centuries in which neither side made significant advanced.

However, by the second half of the Eleventh Century, Islam had become more aggressive: encroaching on the territory of the Byzantine Empire, defiling Churches in the Holy Land, and denying Pilgrims access to Jerusalem. In response to both this and to the political disunity of Europe, Pope Urban II called for a Crusade both to rescue the failing Byzantines and to retake Jerusalem from the Moslem hordes.

Frankly, I’m not sure what objection anyone has to this much. After all, Islam continued to encroach upon the territory of the West though its continued invasions of Byzantium and they had no more valid claim to Jerusalem than the Christians did. Was the West expected to lie supinely on its back (or, given the customs of many of their opponents, on their fronts) and simply take whatever came at them? That hardly seems sporting.

Of course, there is also the small matter of the atrocities that the Crusaders committed upon their capture of Jerusalem. However, when one reads such stories, it’s worth considering both the circumstance of the age (it was an era when life was short, nasty, and brutish) and the likelihood that stories of atrocities have been played up by certain groups for political purposes. While I have no doubt that murder, rape, and pillage occurred on a massive scale, neither do I have much doubt that it occurred in any war of that day. This does not excuse the actions of individuals, but it is worth pointing out that the Crusades would never have occurred but for Islamic aggression against the West which, I am quite sure, was accompanied by conduct as beastly as any of that exhibited by the Crusaders.

Why does any of this matter? It matters because the Crusades are, like the conquest of North America, one of those incidents of which we were once collectively proud which have now been twisted to be used as an indictment of both the West and Christianity. Instead of being the noble accounts of the ingenuity and strength of our forbearers, as they were for generations that came before us, the stories of the Crusades and colonization are told with the intention of spurring individuals to collective repentance. “We’re all evil oppressors and murderers of innocent coloured people,” is the lesson which is being imparted. Stories which were once told in the hope of instilling a spirit of adventurism and pride are now told to create feelings of shame and guilt.

Well, I’m not sorry for the Crusades and, even if the present Pope says we do, we have nothing to feel sorry for. By encroaching upon Christian lands the Moslems of that era invited their fate and we therefore have no reason to apologize. Asking Christians to feel guilty for the Crusades is like asking Kuwaitis to feel guilty for the Gulf War on the grounds that more Iraqis were killed during the war to expel them from Kuwait than Kuwaitis were killed during the Iraqi invasion.

We need to shake our historic guilt complexes. It’s quite certain that the enemies of our civilization do not feel bad about the things their ancestors did hundreds of years ago so why, oh why, should we be expected to feel bad over things that we didn’t do which were largely justified in the circumstances under which they occurred?

All of the tearful invocation of the Crusades today is merely an effort by Islam’s advocates to perpetuate the myth of Moslem victimhood in place of the far more truthful story of thwarted (for now) Islamic aggression. Contrary to the perceptions of some, Islam is not a “religion of peace” set upon by crude and violent Westerners. Rather it is a blood-soaked religion of aggression whose violent ambitions were thwarted only by feats of Western arms at Tours in 732 and at the gates of Vienna in 1688. Given a few lucky breaks and the warriors of Allah would have poured into Central Europe, sweeping away all in their path. And, believe me, in the alternate 2004 there wouldn’t be any Islamic scholars worrying about those European Christians killed in those actions.

Islam isn’t the victim; it’s the bully who gets knocked on his ass by its would-be prey who suddenly feels itself horribly aggrieved. The pains of modern Islam have practically nothing to do with the Crusades or Western Colonialism: they have everything to do with the failure of Islamic culture and society to adapt to the modern world.

That’s the greatest truth in all of this. Our armies today would never behave as those of the Crusaders did. We explicitly (and occasionally foolishly) restrain our forces in order to show respect for Islamic sites and civilians. Yet, I feel, the average Jihadist we fight today is, in spirit and bearing, not all that different from the Holy Warrior who some Germanic thug might have met on the outskirts of Jerusalem a millennia ago. We’ve advanced while they’ve fallen behind.

It is, in fact, they very dynamism exhibited by the Crusades which led to the birth of the modern West. The Crusaders were often defeated and Jerusalem recaptured, but they kept coming back. They kept fighting, kept struggling for justice and God. Islam, on the other hand, displayed the characteristic skittishness of the bully: when they were finally dealt a real blow, they were stopped and retreated within to nurse their grudges.

The territory of Islam had contracted since the Crusades because Islam is, despite the fire of Osama Bin Laden, a dying faith which belongs to a long-dead century. There is no dynamism within it to keep it alive, only fires of bitterness stoked by resentments which most of the world left behind centuries ago. Once the initial spirit of the pioneers of Islam died there was nothing left but to hold on to whatever was left and all that’s left to them now are decaying cities filled with bulging and ignorant populations who can be forced to continue to adhere to the ways of their elders through constant indoctrination in ancient hatreds and grudges.