Reading Response: War and Peace

The Crusades have always been a surreal, distant event to me. I learned dates and names in middle school world history; I am familiar with current-day pop culture references; I know of the brutality and bloodshed they entailed. However, it was not until reading the Armstrong chapters that I truly began to understand how much I did not understand.

As we have worked our way through the first half or so of this book, it struck me time and again how often the Jews and the Muslims worked together in Jerusalem to keep the outside enemy away. At no point was this more apparent to me than the years leading up to and during the First Crusade. Persecution, originally from local Christians but later almost entirely from those from Europe, gave Islam and Judaism sufficient common ground to walk on. The religions, at their core, also share many of the same principals: both groups placed the highest value on social justice and considered themselves the be the descendants of the great Abraham.

When the Franks arrived and decimated the city, they not only slaughtered thousands of previously peaceful and contentedly coexisting Jews and Muslims, they exiled many of the local Christians as well, determined to make Jerusalem the holy city of their Western imagination. I practically laughed aloud upon reading of the disgust of the pilgrims a generation later: the "Westerns" who had grown up in the Eastern culture of Jerusalem were "going native"-- they took regular baths, lived in houses, and wore soft clothing-- much to the horror of their "countrymen".

I have grown up in a culture and an age where the Middle East is a war-torn region of the world and Jerusalem is the center of a conflict between the Jews and Muslims who call it both home and holy. To remember that is was once a place of coexistence between Judaism and Islam-- and in a time when the West had yet to discover the virtues of bathing regularly no less-- is important, and especially important to those of us, like myself, who know nothing else. Griping over ancient grievances will get you nowhere, but to know that peace had existed in the past makes it that much more a realistic goal for the future.