Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World (Paperback)

After reading Holy War, you will have a solid understanding of the history of conflict between Islam and the West. The book is primarily focused on the Crusades that occurred during the Middle Ages, but there are also chapters about more recent issues, such as the founding of the modern state of Israel.

Armstrong's account of the Crusades is richly detailed. The author explores the political and philosophical trends that gave rise to the Crusades. The complex interactions between the Catholic Church, European royalty, and commoners are discussed at length. In addition, the book gives the reader a good sense of what the daily lives of the crusaders were like.

Like other readers, I did disagree with some of the conclusions that Ms. Armstrong reaches concerning the political problems in the Middle East of the 20th Century. However, it is possible to enjoy "Holy War" as a historical narrative even if one disagrees with some of the author's ultimate conclusions.

In this book, she recounts the history of the Crusades and how it still shapes the modern-day Middle East. Interestingly, she tries to take a tripartite Christian/Jewish/Muslim view (more accurately, a quadripartite Catholic/Greek Orthodox/Jewish/Muslim view, but she herself writes about a "triple vision"). Most other accounts give short shrift to the Jewish point of view.

Even now, the subject is still fraught with passion and having an entirely unbiased view, but she does a good job of it in my opinion. Certainly, her assessment is quite critical of the Crusaders, but the only actors to which she is wholly sympathetic are the humanistic Byzantines, who were poorly repaid for their forbearance towards the Crusaders by the sack of Constantinople.

Her central thesis is that the Crusades were the crucible where the modern European identity was forged, and that unfortunately in the process it was alloyed with anti-semitism and a visceral hostility towards Islam. Her second thesis, somewhat less convincing, is that in the current Israeli-Arab conflict, both parties are consciously replaying the Crusades.

The convoluted politics of the Middle East, over seven millennia in the making, have a habit of tripping up overly simplistic analyses. The Lebanese master story-teller Amin Maalouf, in his excellent (but clearly not unbiased) The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, notes that shortly after the first crusade, an army of Christian and Muslim allies fought another such army in Syria.

The Crusades were clearly seen at first as a colonial or purely military venture by Arabs of all faiths, it is only later with the sultans Nasr-ud-din and Salah-ud-din (Saladin) that the war took on a religious significance. While Karen Armstrong does a good job of showing how the conflict progressively acquired the traits of a holy war, she is not as good at identifying the purely secular realpolitik that was pursued then as it is today.

All in all, for all its flaws, specially in the political analysis of the current situation, this is an excellent and thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.