Just Asking

How does an educated person write a review of the latest Crusades special without ever mentioning how the Muslims happened to occupy Greater Metropolitan Jerusalem? Lee Siegel in a free, registration-required article at The New Republic:

If "The Crusades" leads people to read and then reflect about the subject, so much the better. They'll have to read more about it. The film leaves viewers with the impression that the Crusades, for all their many religious hypocrisies, were a wholly religious venture. But it presents no evidence that the Muslims fought the Christians for any reason other than defending their towns and cities.

Perhaps Siegel could peruse the comments thread at Amy Welborn's blog. It's free, like his TNR piece, but with less fiction.

At Amy's, commenter Donald McClarey quotes Thomas McFadden--all of him, ever, judging from the length of the post. But Siegel can start here:

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East...

Like the Iraq War, what the West attempted during the Crusades produced the good, the bad, and the ugly. And just like the Post's reporting on Iraq, Siegel's quick take highlights two out of three.