During the last six decades, historians have adopted various approaches to
studying the Crusades. Unfortunately, few contemporary Muslim scholars
have dealt with this topic at all. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, this series
of European military invasions of the Middle East began to reappear in the
media as analysts, historians, and academics posited that they were a precursor
of the region’s present sociopolitical disorder as daunting as the current East-
West discourse and relations between the Christian and Muslim worlds.1 Some
works deconstruct the perception that there is no connection between them,
whereas others view the Crusades from the Islamic perspective in an attempt
to balance the general triumphalist western narrative.
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences