Muslim response to the Crusades showed jihad in action, and
while the grievances have changed, the rhetoric still echoes.
On September 29, the Chicago Union Tribune
ran a letter, discovered by the FBI, that had been written to
the September 11 hijackers, emboldening them with promises of
paradise in exchange for their suicide attack. Muslims have
argued against associating the attacks with Islam, suggesting
that the attackers represent a radical fringe divorced from
true Islam. Politicians seem to agree. In his speech to a
joint session of Congress (and the nation) on September 20,
President George W. Bush described the teachings of Islam as
"good and peaceful" and said that "those who commit evil in
the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah."
But jihad has a long history in Islam, and
Muslims have fought under its banner for centuries. If
Christians have put forward the concept of just war as
justification for war, jihad, or holy war has underpinned
Muslim determination to fight. What exactly is jihad, and how
has it been waged in the past? In the fall of 1993, Christian
History asked Islamic historian Dr. Hadia Dajani-Shakeel to
describe how Muslims viewed the Crusaders and why they
responded as they did. Excerpts from her response appear
below. Dajani-Shakeel is co-editor of The Jihad and Its Times
(Michigan, 1991).
In
1095, Pope Urban II staged a massive military invasion of the
Muslim East. That invasion and occupation caused the forced
expulsion, conversion, or enslavement of the Muslim majority.
Only a few cities in Syria remained in Muslim hands, and these
became centers for Islamic resistance.
Muslims viewed the Christian settlements as alien and
illegitimate, established at the expense of the native
population, which had been displaced or massacred. The early
Christians were portrayed as ruthless, bloodthirsty, and
barbaric.
Furthermore, Muslims considered the loss of Jerusalem, with its
Islamic sacred shrines—the Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the
Rock—as the greatest loss in their history. To profane Muslim
shrines was to abuse Islam itself. The bitterness of the Muslims
against defilement of their religious places, a bitterness that
had been fed throughout the century, erupted in destruction of
Christian images and objects when these sacred shrines were
recaptured.
Some
Muslim scholars interpreted the success of the First Crusade as
a divine punishment against Muslims for neglecting their
religious duties, and for failing to prosecute a jihad (holy
war) in defense of territories God had entrusted to them. Thus,
the only way to satisfy God was to fight at two fronts:
spiritual (against materialism, oppression, and evil) and
political (to liberate Muslim territory from the enemy). Hence
when the counter crusade, or jihad, was begun, it was seen as a
defensive war.
Sacred shrines, and indeed Jerusalem itself, became the rallying
focus for the jihad throughout the 1100s. When Jerusalem was
finally recovered by Saladin in 1187, Muslim reaction was
vividly described by a witness:
"At the top of the cupola of the Dome of the
Rock was a great golden cross. When the Muslims entered the
city on Friday, some of them climbed to the top of the cupola
to take the cross down. As they reached the top, a great cry
went up from the city, and from outside the walls the Muslims
cried, "God is greatest!' in their joy, and the Franks groaned
in consternation and grief. So loud and piercing was the cry
that the earth almost shook."
Although the Muslims saw the Crusades as a religious war against
Islam, they considered Christians more a political than
religious enemy. Thus, when Saladin recovered the Holy Land from
Christians, he gave them the choice of living in the area and
paying a poll tax, or moving to Christian-held territories. Many
Christians migrated to Tyre, Tripoli, Antioch, and Europe.
The
descendants of Christians who remained in the East eventually
melted into the population of the area. Today signs of the
Christian presence remain in the names of some families, in the
folk dress of some areas such as Bethlehem, and in stories and
proverbs from the area.
Along with archaeological remains, they are the only visible
witnesses to the massive military invasion. |
