The Crusade We Must Fight Today
Read the Qur'an,
In 1141,Peter theVenerable. the abbot of Cluny, had the Qur'an translated
intoLatin.After that,every preacher of theCrusades was requiredto have
read it, If Europeans weregoingto go to the Middle East to fight Muslims,it
was cle ar to vir tua lly eve ryo ne tha t the y nee ded to hav e a wor kin g
knowledge of their opponents' mindset. Yet in the UnitedStates, the idea
that know ing somet hing about Isla m and the Qur' an might help clar ify
some issues regarding the War on Terror meets with ridicule, indifference,
or charges of "racism," Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of
Gove rnme nt in the depa rtment of anth rop olog y and scho ol of inte rna-
tiona l affai rs at Columb ia Univer sity, recen tly heape d conte mpt on the
idea thattheQur'anhad anything to tell us about modern terrorism:
I was in New York City on 9/11. In the weeks that followed,
newspapers reported that the Koran had become one of the
biggest-selling books in American bookshops. Astonishingly,
Americans seemed to think that reading the Koran might give
them aclueto the motivation of those who carried out the suicide
attacks on the World TradeCenter. Recently, I have wondere d
whet her the peopl e of Fall uja have take n to read ing the Bible
to understand the motivation for American bombings. I doubt it.'Itwasastonishing indeed—that Mandani and his publishersEvidently
though t this is a cogentargume nt Was it reall y aston ishin g that Ameri-
cans would read the Qur'an to discover the motivation of men who cited
theQur' anrepea tedly in theircommun iquésto expla in their actio ns? It
was more aston ishi ng that Mahmo od Mand ani woul d thin k that Fall u-
jans readi ng the Biblewasan appro priatereduc tio ad absur dumto dis-
po se of th is id ea. de sp it e th e de mo ns tr ab le fa ct th at fo r th e da rk
suspicionsof the PC crowd about Bush's Christianity, modern American