The crusades: time for another?

National Review, August 9, 1985 by Harold O.J. Brown

The Urbane Shah

MANY Westerners consider the Ayatollah Khomeini a crackpot and ignore his project of exporting his Islamic revolution. At the same time, we look on the oil crisis of 1973, which caused the economy of every Western, "Christian" nation to stagger, as basically a profit-making scheme. In reality, however, it was not the fanatical Ayatollah but the urbane Shah who launched the "oil weapon." And the Shah and the Ayatollah had their Islamic faith in common. Both of them were committed to reducing us, the dar al harb. And between them they have made a good start.

Israelis know that the threat of the jihad is not an idle one, the fancy of scholars in an ivory tower. Christendom, by contrast, does not feel threatened. It is, on paper at least, far richer and more powerful than the Islamic world. But Christendom has paid a high price in the past for underestimating Islam. In the seventh century, Christian Rome was far richer and stronger than Islam. It did not feel threatened either--at least not at first. The incredible ferocity of the Islamic attack, when it came, stunned and virtually overwhelmed Christendom. It barely escaped complete subjugation.

It would be folly to exaggerate the concept of a new jihad, or the threat that it poses. But it would be even greater folly to ignore it. For the Christian world today, unlike that of 1096, is hardly in spiritual shape to begin a fresh crusade.

While Christians no longer have much sympathy for the old Crusader mentality, it could be very important for us to understand it. Unless we can at least understand the Crusades--rather than simply dismissing them as "aberrations of Christianity"--we will not be able to understand the jihad, to which the Crusades were a reaction. And unless we understand the jihad, and begin to take it seriously--as seriously as we take the Communist world revolution--we may soon find ourselves at a point where nothing less than a crusade can help us.