The Daily Telegraph
4th May 2005

Dear Sir,

So, Christopher Howse believes that "the Crusaders were right, and we should be grateful to them." (Daily Telegraph, May 4th 2005)

The Crusades were launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II who - in order to shore up his position in the Church - worked an assembly of knights, nobles and clerics at Clermont, France into a frenzy with what are now acknowledged to have been fictitious tales of Muslim atrocities in the Holy Land. "If you must have blood, bathe in the blood of infidels," the Holy Father instructed them.

Aside from utterly destroying Antioch - one of the greatest cities in the world at the time - these first crusaders who conquered Jerusalem massacred the Muslim garrison and almost every Muslim and Jewish occupant of the town in an orgy of violence until, as one contemporary chronicler reports, the horses of the crusaders were 'knee-deep in blood'. For some reason, Howse neglects to mention this bloody episode or to compare it with the humane manner in which the Muslim general Saladin (Salahuddin al-Ayyubi) treated the Christians when he recaptured al-Quds (Jerusalem). Does the 'free press' that Howse is so lauds only allow Muslims to be portrayed as barbarians?

Later Crusades also included the Children's Crusade which saw 20,000 children set off from Germany led by the ten year-old Nicholas, only for many of the girls to be captured and forced to work in brothels when they reached Italy by their fellow Christians.

Yours faithfully,

Inayat Bunglawala.
Secretary,
Media Committee,
The Muslim Council of Britain

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