UPDATED on 28 August 2026
In late April 2021, US President Joe Biden announced a withdrawal from Afghanistan. In other words, the US has been trounced in Afghanistan by its very own jihadist Frankenstein, the Taliban. The defeat of USA is covered with the ugly debris of history. The dirty war on Afghanistan was part of a disastrous process of occupying and controlling large swathes of the world. On September 16, 2001, President George W. Bush vowed to “rid the world of evil-doers,” then cautioned: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” The word “crusade” comes from the Latin for the cross, crux, and implies the militarist march of Christianity against the infidel. The American campaign presented itself as a universal political mission, while its conduct reflected the strategic interests of an imperial power.
The contemporary Western intervention in Muslim-majority regions can likewise be examined in relation to strategic power. Medieval expeditions toward Jerusalem involved both religious objectives and struggles over territory and communication routes. Modern interventions have operated within a different historical setting, yet energy resources and strategic infrastructure have remained important considerations in Western policy toward the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington and its European allies have also relied on changing partnerships with regional governments and armed organizations. Such policies have imposed severe costs on civilian populations, while the rhetoric surrounding the “war on terror” has helped reproduce representations of Muslims as a collective security problem. This political use of anti-Muslim imagery has important historical precedents in European representations of Islam during the Crusading period.
Emergence of Islam
Islam emerged in the seventh century in the Hijaz, the region of western Arabia that includes Mecca and Medina. The area participated in commercial networks extending toward Syria and the wider Near East, and its inhabitants encountered both Byzantine Christianity and the Persian Sassanian world. Within this setting, Muhammad began preaching a monotheistic message that challenged established religious and social practices in Mecca. Islamic tradition places the beginning of his revelations around 610 CE. During the following two decades, his preaching gradually produced a new religious community despite opposition from important groups in Mecca. His message also emphasized obligations toward the poor and the redistribution of wealth within the community.
In 622, Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina in the event known as the Hijra. Medina became the center of a community in which religious leadership and political organization were closely connected. By Muhammad’s death in 632, the new community had extended its influence across much of Arabia. The first generations of Muslims then expanded beyond the peninsula into territories controlled by the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. Their rapid victories were aided by the exhaustion produced by prolonged Byzantine-Sassanian warfare and by political difficulties within the territories being conquered. Syria and Egypt belonged to the Byzantine sphere, while Iraq was governed by Sassanian Persia, and these territories were progressively incorporated into the expanding Islamic polity.
Early military victories strengthened the position of the new religion and encouraged further incorporation of Arabian tribes into the expanding polity. Under the Umayyads, who ruled from 661 to 750, Islamic political authority extended across North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula. Muslim armies established control over much of Spain and Portugal and reached parts of southern Europe. Their success had several causes. The Byzantine and Sassanian states had been weakened by prolonged conflict, while some populations under their rule had limited attachment to existing political authorities. Local responses varied between resistance and accommodation, and this uneven political environment facilitated further expansion.
While western Europe remained politically fragmented during much of the early medieval period, several Muslim-ruled centers became important sites of intellectual production. In al-Andalus, Córdoba developed into a major urban and scholarly center, while Baghdad played a comparable role under the Abbasids. Scholars working in Arabic engaged with Greek, Persian, and other intellectual traditions and produced influential work in philosophy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and related fields. The development of these institutions later became an important part of historical accounts of Muslim Spain and the wider Islamic intellectual world.
Arabic-language scholarship subsequently circulated beyond the Islamic world. European scholars encountered works associated with Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, as well as writings by Jewish thinkers such as Maimonides, whose intellectual production was largely conducted in Arabic. Translation helped transmit scientific and philosophical materials into medieval European intellectual life. Commercial exchange also expanded during this period, while Christian and Muslim political powers continued to compete for territory and influence. Relations between the two worlds therefore combined intellectual exchange with military and economic rivalry.
Christian Offensives
Islam was increasingly constructed as an external adversary through which Christian rulers could give territorial expansion a broader religious meaning. In Iberia, northern Christian kingdoms pursued the recovery of territories governed by Muslim rulers. In Anatolia, meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire faced the expansion of Seljuk power and sought assistance from western Europe. Pope Urban II responded to this political context at Clermont in 1095 by calling for a military expedition to the East. The appeal framed the campaign as a defense of Christianity, while also expanding papal influence and creating a common religious language through which competing European interests could be organized.
Participation in the Crusades arose from several overlapping motivations. Some aristocrats and military leaders sought territory and political influence, while commercial interests could benefit from access to eastern markets and routes. European rulers also faced persistent conflicts among competing feudal powers, and a campaign against an external enemy offered one way of redirecting those rivalries. Papal leadership provided an institutional framework for presenting these divergent interests as part of a common Christian enterprise. Crusader forces reached the Levant in 1097, captured Antioch in 1098, and took Jerusalem after a siege in 1099.
The conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 involved extensive violence against the city’s population. Muslim inhabitants were subjected to mass killing, while Jewish residents who had taken part in the defense were also caught in the assault. The destruction of the city’s Jewish community became part of the wider memory of the conquest, demonstrating how a campaign presented as a sacred enterprise could culminate in collective punishment and the destruction of civilian communities. The episode also illustrates the gulf between the religious justification offered for the expedition and the practices through which territorial control was established.
The political situation was further complicated by succession struggles and rivalry among Muslim rulers. The deaths of prominent political and military figures contributed to disputes over authority, while divisions between Sunni and Shi’a political formations intensified competition. The large territories previously brought together under the Umayyads had also developed distinct regional interests. Geographic distance made centralized administration increasingly difficult, and provincial elites acquired interests that could diverge from those of the ruling dynasty. These conditions limited the ability of Muslim powers to respond collectively to the Crusader advance.
The Abbasid revolution emerged from opposition to Umayyad political dominance and brought a new dynasty to power. Abbasid rule initially provided a broader political basis for the Islamic empire, but the later weakening of centralized authority produced several competing centers. The Abbasid caliphate remained based in Baghdad, the Fatimids established their own caliphate in Cairo, and an Umayyad polity developed in Córdoba. Rivalries among these centers reduced the prospect of unified political action. By the eleventh century, the Abbasid caliphate had become increasingly dependent upon military forces whose influence substantially constrained the caliph’s authority.
Islamic Resistance: Resurgence and Decline
The Crusader presence eventually generated stronger forms of political and military coordination among Muslim rulers. Territories in northern Syria and Iraq were consolidated, and Edessa was recovered in 1144. The Second Crusade subsequently failed to reverse this shift in the regional balance of power. Further consolidation brought Damascus and surrounding Syrian territories into a stronger political formation, while the incorporation of Egypt provided a wider base for resistance. Saladin used this combined power to defeat the Crusader army at Hattin in 1187, after which Jerusalem returned to Muslim rule.
The victory at Hattin marked a decisive setback for the Crusader states. Saladin ordered the execution of some prominent military opponents, including leading members of the Templar and Hospitaller orders, while most other prisoners survived. The remaining Crusader territories subsequently contracted as Muslim forces recovered strategic positions. European expeditions continued for generations but failed to restore the earlier territorial configuration. The region then experienced another major rupture with the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, which ended Abbasid political authority in the city and caused extensive destruction to its cultural institutions.
The weakening of Abbasid authority coincided with the continued expansion of Christian kingdoms in Iberia. Muslim and Christian rulers had contested the peninsula for centuries, and the religious mobilization associated with the Crusading period gave this conflict an additional ideological dimension. Toledo fell to Christian forces in 1085, while Muslim political authority was progressively restricted to Granada. Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada in 1492, bringing Muslim rule in Iberia to an end. Subsequent policies subjected Muslim and Jewish communities to conversion, persecution, and expulsion. Earlier Muslim governments had generally permitted protected Christian and Jewish communities to maintain their religious practices under subordinate legal arrangements, although the conditions varied across time and place.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the relationship between Christian Europe and the Muslim world entered a different political phase. European states became more territorially consolidated, while the medieval Church faced challenges from changing political and intellectual conditions. A unified European campaign against Muslim powers consequently became harder to sustain. New geopolitical pressures also widened European attention beyond the traditional Mediterranean frontier. Islam remained an important object of European political thought, yet the earlier binary opposition between Christianity and Islam was increasingly situated within a more complex international environment.
The Crusader mentality continued in the 21st century as US Presidents used interventionist tactics in pursuit of the American empire’s economic interests. While Bush considered himself a noble Crusader, Osama bin Laden compared himself to Saladin. As Karl Marx noted, “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice…the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” The dualistic schema of Crusader-Saladin – and the Islamophobia it promotes – will not end soon. America’s re-hashing of the 11th-century battle of “us” against “them” is a hideous way of legitimizing the bloodthirsty and fattening the pockets of the rich. To put it in other words, the binarizing discourses of the contemporary world are materially engraved in imperial structures; the clash of civilizations is present solely in the jihadist visions of warriors in the East and neo-colonial West. As long as the US believes that it has the absolute right to destroy and imperialistically intervene in the affairs of any country, this cycle of hatred and prejudice will go on in an excruciating and endless manner.