What gets lost in this modern exploitation of crusader history is its complex reality. We invoke the crusades because we want to believe that the past determines the present – that these are but different chapters in the same ongoing conflict – and that many people are adamant that old scores must be settled. When French General Henri Gouraud captured Damascus in 1920, following the French army’s crushing defeat of Arab nationalists, he reputedly stood in front of Saladin’s grave and orated: “Awake, Saladin – we have returned!” Meanwhile, the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are often denounced by Muslim politicians as crusader invasions. Indeed, when British General Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem in 1917, following the defeat of the Ottoman army in southern Palestine, the British media compared him to Richard the Lionheart. Irrespective of motives, our tendency is to stereotype the present and the past, and to reject their complexity.
Some do this by habit, others by connivance.
0 kommentar(er)
