After the 700-year reconquista (the struggle of Spanish
Christians to regain their homeland after its conquest by
Islam), Muslims were expelled from Spain.
When Christian armies captured Jerusalem in 1099
during the First Crusade, they began a bloody orgy of
killing, rape, and plunder that lasted for days and has
become the paradigmatic image of the Crusader in the
Muslim world. When Osama bin Laden and other terrorist
Muslims call American forces ‘‘Crusaders,’’ it is this image
they are trying to invoke.
Other than these isolated occurrences, it is hard to find
examples of largescale mistreatment of Muslims by
Christians. Because Muslim forces pressed for so long into
Christian Europe, and the state of war continued for so long,
few Muslims settled in those Christian nations until modern
times — when they had become secular states, shorn of their
specifically Christian character. The treatment of Christians
in Muslim lands is another story altogether. It begins with
the Islamic theology ofjihad.
- What is jihad?
The literal meaning of jihad is ‘‘to struggle, to strive hard,
and to fight.’’ The first two meanings are often cited by
Muslims today to prove that jihad refers only to the
individual’s interior struggle against sin. Muslim apologists
like to point out that jihad does not mean ‘‘holy war.’’ Yet
in Islamic history and theology, jihad has most often meant
precisely that: holy war.