Militant Islam vs. Western civilization

Dec. 31, 2005
Toronto Star
By RICHARD OSTLING, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The No. 1 religious theme of 2005 — and presumably for 2006 and years beyond — is the face-off between militant Islam and Western civilization, with its scriptural Jewish and Christian heritage.
[...]
Stepping back from the daily headlines about terrorism, the question arises: What underlies this lethal global tension? Ohio University historian David Curp has an answer that turns explanations inside out.

"It is commonplace to claim that the Crusades scarred the imagination of the Muslim world for centuries," he wrote recently in Crisis, a Catholic magazine.

Islamists and Arab nationalists regularly cite the medieval warfare between Christians and Muslims as a source for today's anti-Western views across the Middle East.
[...]
Curp's key claim: "Radical Islam's protest against the West is not fuelled primarily by aggrieved victimhood; it is nourished by an even stronger memory of how Islam's final victory over Christendom remained for so long a real possibility."

For about 1,000 years, the Muslim world experienced mostly expansion and military triumph.

That era ended in 1683, when Muslims held vast terrain in eastern Europe and 140,000 Turkish troops nearly conquered Vienna, posing a significant threat for the West. But the Muslim invaders were defeated.

One might develop Curp's scenario this way: After numerous victories, Islamic lands suffered the humiliation of European colonialism, then the cultural weakness of independent Muslim countries extending to the present. That has created a psychological crisis for Islam.

Curp's retelling of the history explains the context that first created widespread Muslim-Christian combat.

Islam originally took the Holy Land in 638 and quickly vanquished large tracts of the former Christendom. This provoked no sweeping outrage, nor did Western Christians manage any concerted military counterattack until 1095, when Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade.

What caused the pope's radical step?
[...]
In 1064 the Turks seized the capital of Christian Armenia, slaughtering the populace and imprisoning 30,000 people. Then, in the climactic Battle of Mantzikert in 1071, the Muslims virtually crushed Byzantine military power.

In Curp's telling, it was that disaster that provoked the Crusades in response.
[...]

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.