DesiGuy
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The grievances of the Islamic terrorists who have brought carnage and bloodshed to the streets of Paris twice this year reach far back into history.
In their minds, it is not simply wanton violence, but the continuation of a struggle which has raged for more than a millennium.
That is what Osama bin Laden was talking about when he warned the Muslim world back in 1996 'that the people of Islam have always suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusader alliance'.
Today, ISIS nurtures its resentments in a similarly poisonous manner.
In the gloating communiqué it released after the terror attacks in Paris last week, France was condemned in decidedly medieval terms: as the capital of 'the Cross'.
This is because jihadis see themselves as being engaged in a war as old as Islam itself: a struggle for global supremacy against Christianity.
Such a reading of history reflects the undoubted fact that both religions have long cast themselves as being destined to prevail across the entire world. The tensions between them, then, are hardly surprising.
In the early 7th century, when Muhammad embarked on his prophetic mission, the vast majority of people in the Middle East were Christian.
Yet by 650, fewer than 20 years after Muhammad's death in 632, Arab armies had conquered most of the Middle East, and brought huge numbers of Christians under their rule.
By the 8th century, 100 years after the death of Muhammad, it was becoming clear that the Islamic Caliphate that had been established was not, after all — as Muslims had originally hoped — destined to conquer the world in one fell swoop.
Though they had swept westwards to Morocco and eastwards deep into central Asia, Arab armies had still experienced the occasional rebuff.
Their most formidable foes, as they had been from the very beginning, were the Byzantines, whose capital, the great city of Constantinople, ranked as the bulwark of Christendom.
The success of the Crusaders reflected a militarisation of Christian doctrine that rendered it more than the equal of Islam's own commitment to martial violence.
Even though Jerusalem remained in their hands for less than a century, other triumphs proved more enduring. In the 11th century, Sicily was seized back from its Muslim rulers by the Normans, while al-Andalus was progressively reconquered by the Christians of Spain. Not that most Muslims despaired. They scorned Europe as barbarous, fragmented and impoverished, full of shamelessly immodest women and men who never washed.
Their horizons were infinitely broader. By the 15th century, a continuous chain of Muslim lands had come to stretch from the Atlantic to the China Sea.
The age of Muhammad and his successors, which had seen Islam emerge from desert obscurity to global empire, was enshrined as the model to follow. Over recent decades, resentment at continued Western interventions in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq have only burnished the appeal of the glorious past.
Today, according to a poll, some two-thirds of Muslims worldwide want to see the restoration of a Caliphate. It is not empires per se they are opposed to — just non-Islamic empires.
Hardly surprising, then, that al-Qaeda and ISIS should be so obsessed by periods of history that to most Westerners are thoroughly obscure.
That Constantinople has been a Muslim city for almost 600 years, that the Crusades are done and dusted, and that Europe no longer defines itself as Christendom, barely intrudes on the consciousness of many jihadis.
They inhabit a mental landscape in which the Middle Ages never went away. The menace of this way of thinking is brutally evident — a world in which young people murdered at a rock concert can be cursed as 'Crusaders' is a world on the verge of going mad.
It is not just non-Muslims who are threatened by this imperialist nostalgia. 'Either you are with the Crusade,' ISIS has warned European Muslims, 'or you are with Islam.'
Historian Tom Holland tackles ISIS and the Middle Ages | Daily Mail Online
In their minds, it is not simply wanton violence, but the continuation of a struggle which has raged for more than a millennium.
That is what Osama bin Laden was talking about when he warned the Muslim world back in 1996 'that the people of Islam have always suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusader alliance'.
Today, ISIS nurtures its resentments in a similarly poisonous manner.
In the gloating communiqué it released after the terror attacks in Paris last week, France was condemned in decidedly medieval terms: as the capital of 'the Cross'.
This is because jihadis see themselves as being engaged in a war as old as Islam itself: a struggle for global supremacy against Christianity.
Such a reading of history reflects the undoubted fact that both religions have long cast themselves as being destined to prevail across the entire world. The tensions between them, then, are hardly surprising.
In the early 7th century, when Muhammad embarked on his prophetic mission, the vast majority of people in the Middle East were Christian.
Yet by 650, fewer than 20 years after Muhammad's death in 632, Arab armies had conquered most of the Middle East, and brought huge numbers of Christians under their rule.
By the 8th century, 100 years after the death of Muhammad, it was becoming clear that the Islamic Caliphate that had been established was not, after all — as Muslims had originally hoped — destined to conquer the world in one fell swoop.
Though they had swept westwards to Morocco and eastwards deep into central Asia, Arab armies had still experienced the occasional rebuff.
Their most formidable foes, as they had been from the very beginning, were the Byzantines, whose capital, the great city of Constantinople, ranked as the bulwark of Christendom.
The success of the Crusaders reflected a militarisation of Christian doctrine that rendered it more than the equal of Islam's own commitment to martial violence.
Even though Jerusalem remained in their hands for less than a century, other triumphs proved more enduring. In the 11th century, Sicily was seized back from its Muslim rulers by the Normans, while al-Andalus was progressively reconquered by the Christians of Spain. Not that most Muslims despaired. They scorned Europe as barbarous, fragmented and impoverished, full of shamelessly immodest women and men who never washed.
Their horizons were infinitely broader. By the 15th century, a continuous chain of Muslim lands had come to stretch from the Atlantic to the China Sea.
The age of Muhammad and his successors, which had seen Islam emerge from desert obscurity to global empire, was enshrined as the model to follow. Over recent decades, resentment at continued Western interventions in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq have only burnished the appeal of the glorious past.
Today, according to a poll, some two-thirds of Muslims worldwide want to see the restoration of a Caliphate. It is not empires per se they are opposed to — just non-Islamic empires.
Hardly surprising, then, that al-Qaeda and ISIS should be so obsessed by periods of history that to most Westerners are thoroughly obscure.
That Constantinople has been a Muslim city for almost 600 years, that the Crusades are done and dusted, and that Europe no longer defines itself as Christendom, barely intrudes on the consciousness of many jihadis.
They inhabit a mental landscape in which the Middle Ages never went away. The menace of this way of thinking is brutally evident — a world in which young people murdered at a rock concert can be cursed as 'Crusaders' is a world on the verge of going mad.
It is not just non-Muslims who are threatened by this imperialist nostalgia. 'Either you are with the Crusade,' ISIS has warned European Muslims, 'or you are with Islam.'
Historian Tom Holland tackles ISIS and the Middle Ages | Daily Mail Online
