IntroductionIn this anal ysis Clint on curi ousl y echo ed Osam a bin Laden himse lf.
some of whose own communiqués spoke ofhis organization not as "al
Qaed a" but of a"Worl d Islam ic Front for Jiha d Again st Jews and Cru-
saders," and called in a fatwa for "jihad against Jews and Crusaders."'
Such usag e is quit e wide spre ad. Shor tly befo re th ebegi nnin g of the
Iraq i war that topp led Sadda m Husse in, on Novemb er8, 2002,Sheikh
Bakr Abed Al-Razzaq Al-Samaraai preached in Baghdad's Mother of All
Battles mosque about "this difficult hour in which the Islamic nation [is]
experienc ing, an hour in which it faces the challenge of [forces] of disbe-
lief of infidels, Jews, crusaders,Americans and Britons."'
Similarly, when Islamic jihadists bombed the US. consulate in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, in December2004,they explained that theattack was partof
a larger plan to strike back at "Crusa ders:" "This operati on comes aspart
of severaloperatio ns that are organized and planned by al Qaeda aspart of
the battleagainstthe crusaders and the Jews, as well as part of theplan to
force the unbelie vers to leave the Arabian Peninsu la." Theysaidthat jihad
warriors "managed to enter one of the crusaders ' big castles inthe Arabian
Peninsula and managed to enter the American consulate in Jeddah, in which
they control arid run the country.'
"One of the crus ader s' big cas tles in the Ara bia nPeni nsul a?" Why,
woul d Isla mic jiha d terr oris ts have such a fixa tion wit h thou sand-year
old castles? Could Clinton be right that they see the Crusades as the time
that their troubl es with the West began, and present-day confli cts in Iraq
and Afghanistan asarevival of the Crusader ethos?
Ina sense, yes.The more one under stan ds the Crusa des—why they
were fought, and from what forces within Christianity and Islam they
sprang—the more one will understand the present conflict. The Crusades,
in ways that Bill Clinton and those who bombed the consul ate in Jiddah
only dimly fathom, hold the keys to understanding the present world sit-
uation in numerousways.