Thursday, June 28, 2007

Holy War: The Crusades by Karen Armstrong

I've been reading Armstrong’s book Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact On Today's World. This book was written before her big success with A History of God.

I'm finding the same double standard as in all her works. Muslims sources are always to be taken as honest, and at face value. Any other source is viewed by her with (proper) skepticism. Early in the book she gives a short history of Islam and Muhammad. Her version is the most benign possible interpretation. Has she never heard that history is written by the winners? Muhammad in her version is a righteous fighter against the oppression of the poor by the wealthy and the instigators of all violence are the pagans of Mecca. Muslims at all times are merely fighting defensively to protect their lives. From beginning to end, the whole story is the Muslim version of events. No doubts of any kind are raised.

When she writes about the Western Christian Crusaders, however, suddenly she is able to see past their own propaganda about themselves, and write effectively about religious hysteria, hypocrisy, stupidity, cruelty, mass murder, etc. I cannot tell if she is consciously dishonest or if she is being simply human--that is, seeing what she wants to see.

The astonishing hypocrisy of her central thesis of the book is this: Crusading is not an old, discredited way of thinking. It is deeply embedded in the Western character, even after Christianity lost its iron grip. Much of the trouble in today's world revolves around modern Western Crusading attitudes. Deep inside every Westerner is a living Crusader, sword in hand, waiting to leap out.

On the OTHER hand, the jihad is irrelevant to Muslim identity. It belongs to the seventh century only. Jihad has been a dead letter for thirteen centuries and would remain dead if only Crusading could be eliminated. The early conquests of the Arabs did not really have anything to do with Islam, or the concept of jihad. The jihad as holy war, as imperial conquest, is nothing more than a Western phobia.

I'll give one example. She writes about the British empire thus:

In Britain the film Gandhi and the excellent television series Jewel in the Crown painted a very painful picture of the way the British behaved in India but the popularity of both films shows that people wanted to look at their old selves and come to terms with this unedifying phase of their history.

Here she is writing about the early Arab Empire:

The people who had been conquered by the Muslim armies...did not regard the conquests of Islam as a catastrophe. Quite the reverse was true; it was the start of a new and exciting phase in their history...Certainly their new masters had a different religion but many found that Islam was quite attractive. When the Muslims conquered a people, they did not attempt to force conversion...

So the British invasion and rule of India was painful and undedifying. But the Muslim invasion was exciting and new--it almost sounds like a barrel of laughs and good fun. I wonder how the Indians or Persians or Coptic Christians who read this react to it? I wonder if there are any Arabs who want to look back on the formation of the Arab empire, and come to terms with an "unedifying phase in their history?" All her other discussions of Muslims as opposed to Western Christians exhibit the same distortion. Muslims never convert anyone by force. Muslims respect other religions. The dhimmis receive full religious liberty at all times, and the jizya is nothing more than a contribution to the military defense of the country, and on and on, one distortion or dishonesty after another.

I want to say again that this book was written before her big successes; it was published first in 1988 in Britain, and a second edition in the U.S. in 1991. The copy I have was rushed out in late 2001 with a new preface Armstrong wrote just after 9/11. Instead of trying to analyze the whole book or give a review, I'll just point out typical Karenisms, examples of her distortions and prejudices.

Whenever Karen has a source that is from a Western Christian, and a competing source from a Muslim, she assumes that the Muslim is being honest and that the Christian is seeing things through his strange delusions. Here is a gross example:

The jihad remained a bogey in the West for centuries. When, for example, Sultan Abd Al-Rahman of al-Andalus made a raid into southern France in 732, he was defeated by Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers and this has been seen as a turning point of world history.

Of course, Karen knows better! She is about to explain to us poor Westerners with our tunnel vision why the victory of Poitiers was a trivial event:

Gibbon contemplated the consequences of an Arab victory with a shudder: the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or the Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of one man.

There in a nutshell is the battle of Poitiers, explained by a great historian. But he's a Dead White European Male so Karen's going to set us straight:


This is a distorted and exaggerated view. The Sultan was not continuing the jihad and had no intention of conquering Europe. He had been invited into Christendom by Eudo, Duke of Aquitaine, who wanted his help against Charles Martel. Muslim historians scarcely mention "the Battle of Poitiers" except in passing, where they refer to it as an unfortunate but unimportant little raid. They had no designs on Europe...


Isn't it good to have Karen? She Explains It All For You. Why, the Sultan was just trying to help out a friend! He had no designs on the lands of the Franks! Why should he want to expand his power? And Muslim historians are much more reliable than some old dead white guy who is revered as a great historian by a biased society. A Muslim historian has no incentive to minimize or ignore one of the few defeats Christians inflicted upon them in the first hundred years after Mahomet's death. Gibbon is just an example of our 'buried phobia' of the jihad.

Personally, I think that we all owe a great deal to Charles Martel. I could be wrong. Hindsight isn't 20/20 and there's no way to know how the Sultan would have followed up a smashing victory over Martel. Would he have absorbed all of what is now France into the Arab Empire? Why the hell not? Isn't it a rich and valuable land? If he did not seek to take Martel's land and maybe Aquitaine as well, why did he go personally? (And get himself killed, much to my pleasure.) Perhaps he would not have wanted or would not have been able to conquer. But to state that because the Muslim historians say so, therefore Europe was in no danger, is astonishing hypocrisy. I am not arguing that Westerners don't distort history for their own gratification. Of course they do, humans do that. My problem with Karen is she doesn't accord Muslims their full measure of humanity, and admit that they tell lies to themselves about themselves

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