Description

More than nine centuries after Urban II called the first Crusade, the legacy of misunderstanding and animosity is still with us today. In the West, many of the most lasting misperceptions of Islam stem from that time. In the Arab and Muslim world, the Crusades have made an unfortunate rhetorical comeback. "Such analogies are really not very helpful to understand the Crusades or present-day realities–they obscure rather than clarify," says Kedar. "People get so obsessed with . . . the past that they don't react to the reality but to the reflection." With that reflection distorted almost beyond recognition by rhetoric and misunderstanding, a clearer vision of the past has never been more important.