The Crusader Rhetoric of Today
From crusades to terror and jihad?
Eternal conflict or common past?
Is God and Allah the same?
Crusades. Templar knights. The Gates of Vienna. Holy war. Martyrdom. Words and phrases we know from an historical era by many people belived to belong precisely to history and not our own times. The events of the last decades has shown that is not the case.
This year’s International Saladin Days are held in the aftermath of the terrorist attack 7/22. Anders Behring Breivik’s political manifesto is pervaded with crusader rhetoric and historical references, seeking to embed his actions within an eternal perspective. But Behring Breivik is not alone in using this rhetoric. The struggle for Jerusalem is a point of reference for the jihadist movement, and has, gradually, seeped into public debate. George W. Bush caused a stir when he, in the aftermath of 9/11, referred to the concept of the crusade, and such references has been reiterated online, in newspapers, by politicians and academics ever since. The crusades has become part of our present time.
For this year’s International Saladin Days, we have invited religion researches, historians and writers from all over the world, to illuminate and discuss our contemporary crusader rhetoric and its central premise – the notion of an essential difference. Are Christianity and Islam really fundamentally different in their cultural and political histories, and if this is the case, in what does this difference consist?
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