No God But One

PERSONAL WORKBOOK 

 NO GOD BUT ONE 

A FORMER MUSLIM INVESTIGATES THE EVIDENCE FOR ISLAM & CHRISTIANITY 

 ALLAH OR JESUS ? 

NABEEL QURESHI, Author of THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SEEKING ALLAH, FINDING JESUS 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION ... l

A WORD TO GROUP PARTICIPANTS ... ll

SESSION 1 QUESTIONS ... 1-2 

SESSION 2 QUESTIONS ... 3-4 

SESSION 3 QUESTIONS ... 5-6 

SESSION 4 QUESTIONS ... 7-8 

SESSION 5 QUESTIONS ... 9-10 

SESSION 6 QUESTIONS ...11-12 

SESSION 7 QUESTIONS ...13-14 

SESSION 8 QUESTIONS ...15-16 

SESSION 9 QUESTIONS ... 17

SESSION 10 QUESTIONS ...18-19 

SESSION 11 QUESTIONS ... 20-21 

SESSION 12 QUESTIONS ... 22 

INTRODUCTION 

This workbook is designed to help individuals and groups facilitate thinking and discussions on one the most strategic conversations in the today's world. People hear and read many things about Islam in the popular media. Yet Christians in general know very little about the faith and practices of Islam. Nabeel A. Qureshi, a former Muslim and dedicated advocate for the Christian faith, presents excellentanswers to the questions about the differences between these two world faiths. Nabeel writes, "It is my prayer that this book will reach many who are in the throes of their search [for God], and I pray it will lead them to the altar of the one true God. If that is you, know that I have prayed and shed tears for you, and that this book is written for you." 

This workbook is organized into twelve sessions. Each of these sessions-except sessions 9 and 12-covers the material from three or four chapters. The questions in the guide are designed to focus on the main objective in each chapter. 

A WORD TO GROUP PARTICIPANTS 

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR GROUP DISCUSSIONS 

A Safe Place 

You are engaged in a strategic conversation about Islam and Christianity. In the context of extreme Islamic terrorism, keep your heart and mind focused on what will help Christians reach Muslims for Christ. Nabeel wants us to learn, not debate, tragic world events. Imagine a seeking Muslim in your group. How would you behave? Keep all discussions and reflections confidential. 

Respect is Vital 

Others in the group may not see things like you do. Give each person space to process what they are learning. With only an hour (or so) for your meeting, share your thoughts kindly and briefly, giving space for others to share as well. 

Just Do It 

Your leader will expect you to read the assigned chapters and answer the discussion questions before your meetings. For maximum benefit from the book and this group, do the assignments. The group discussions center on the valuable information that Nabeel presents. The questions are designed to get you into the book and prepared to discuss what you are learning. 

The Power of Reflection 

Take time to ponder what you read and learn. How does it change your perceptions of the Christian faith and the Muslim faith? How does what you learn help you pray for the conversion of Muslims to Jesus Christ? How might God want to use you in that endeavor? Reflect, also, on what others contribute to the group's growth. 

The Power of Community 

While you might be informed by reading No God but One: Allah or Jesus? alone, you will experience stimulating personal transformation in group discussions. Jesus meets us through his Body, our fellow believers. God seeks to use you to help others grow in the faith and God wants to use others to help you as well. Be willing to contribute to your group and be eager to listen and learn from your group.

SESSION 1 

QUESTION 1: WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY? 

Part 1: Sharia or the Gospel? Two Different Solutions

 (read Preface and Chapters 1-4) 

Preface 

In his Preface Nabeel writes,"Both Islam and Christianity are monotheistic, believing there is 'no God but one,' but they differ fundamentally on who that God is: Allah or Jesus." What are the four ways that the words "Allah" and "God" are used by Muslims and Christians that may cause some confusion"? 

PART 1: SHARIA OR THE GOSPEL? TWO DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS 

Chapter 1 "The Way to Life" 

1. What are some surprising similarities between Islam and Christianity? 

2. How would you describe "the way to life" in both Islam and Christianity? What was your initial reaction to these two different ways? 

Chapter 2 "Comparing Sharia and the Gospel" 

3. What is the concept of "prophet" in Islam and how is it different from that in Christianity? 

4. What is the Islamic solution for the problem of the human condition and how does it compare to the Christian worldview and solution? 

5. What are the Five Pillars of Islam that are the basic requirements of Sharia? 

6."So important are the hadith that, after the Quran, they form the second rung of sharia." What are the hadith and how do they inform Islam? 

Chapter 3 "Questioning Grace" 

1. Nabeel is often asked an expected question,"If God just forgives all Christians and none of them go to hell, why would any Christian do good when they can sin all they want?" How would you answer this question? 

2. How would you answer a Muslim who asks,"How can God be just if he is willing to forgive serial killers and genocidal dictators? You're telling me Hitler could have gone to heaven if he had become a Christian?"

3. How does Nabeel answer the common Muslim question, "How can Jesus die for the sins of mankind?" 

4.What reasons do Christians have to do good? 

Chapter 4 "Diagnosis and Deliverance" 

1. In spring of 2009, Nabeel volunteered with a humanitarian organization called Physicians for Peace helping with educating young mothers in the barrios of Santo Domingo. What was Nabeel's point in telling that story? 

2. According to Nabeel how do Islam and Christianity "diagnose" the spiritual condition of humanity? 

3. Nabeel makes three observations to support his view that "the gospel resonates with reality." What observation was most compelling for you?  

 SESSION 2 

PART 2: TAWHID OR THE TRINITY? TWO DIFFERENT GODS 

Chapter 5 "The Islamic Inquisition" 

1. "Tawhid teaches that Allah is absolutely one; and the conclusion naturally arose among some thinkers that since Allah is absolutely one, he cannot have attributes. Attributes would curb his absolute unity, being things he has as opposed to things he is." 

2. What theological problem did Tawhid create for early Muslim scholars regarding the Quran? 

3. What was the Mihna? What happened to Muslim thinkers who believed in the eternality of the Quran? 

4. What does bila kayf mean and how does it relate to the eternality of the Quran? 

5. What is the Sufi Muslim view, wahdat al-wujud that creates divisions among Muslims? 

Chapter 6 "Comparing Tawhid and the Trinity" 

1. What is the difference between "the eternal Word of God" in Islam and in Christianity and how does each faith have "a physical expression of God" in the world? 

2. Why is the idea-"person is not the same as being"-crucial to the discussion about Islamic Tawhid and the Christian Trinity? 

3. What are the five elements found repeatedly throughout the Bible that are best interpreted through the lens of the Trinity? 

4. What intrinsic reason separates Allah from Yahweh regarding relationships with people? 

Chapter 7 "Questioning Complexity" 

1. What does quantum physics have to do with the differences between Islam's view of one God and the Christian view of one God? 

2. What is the very significant theological problem with Allah being "relational," that is, how can Allah be called Allah the Merciful or Allah the Gracious? Why is this not a problem for the Trinity? 

3.What is the shema? How can Christians account for the shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 and still believe in the Trinity? 

(Shema Yisrael is a Jewish prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. Its first verse, Deuteronomy 6:4, encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one".

Shema (“hear”) is the Hebrew word that begins the most important prayer in Judaism. It is found in Deuteronomy 6:4, which begins with the command to “Hear.” The whole Shema prayer, which includes verses 4-9, is spoken daily in the Jewish tradition:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

4.What do some notable Jewish scholars teach about Jewish views of God in Jesus' day? 

Chapter 8 "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?" 

1. How are the views of God in Islam and Christianity "diametrically opposed"? What texts in the Quran support your answer? 

2. How does the Islamic model of theism promote service to others, yet the Christian model of theism "goes further still" to intrinsically require service to others? 

3. Nabeel writes, "People ought to be selflessly loving because it is who we are." How does he support that truth? 

4. Why is belief in the Trinity not just a "theological curiosity"? 

 SESSION 3  

PART 3: MUHAMMAD OR JESUS? TWO DIFFERENT FOUNDERS 

Chapter 9 "The Council of Nicaea" 

1. What did Christianity experience before and after the Edict of Milan in AD 313? 

2. At the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 what was the controversial view of Arius? 

3. What is the popular Muslim misconception about the Council of Nicaea and Jesus? 

4. What is the "fundamental fact" that separates Muhammad from Jesus in the understanding of the Islam and Christianity? 

Chapter 10 "Comparing the Messenger and the Messiah" 

1. When Nabeel hears Muslims say, "We respect Jesus, but you Christians do not respect Muhammad," what are those Muslims really saying? 

2. What did you learn about God coming to be among us from Nabeel's teachings from the first chapter of the Gospel of John? 

3. What is the "hypostatic union"and how does it support the Christian view of Jesus the Messiah? 

4. What is the role of the Prophet Muhammad and the hadith in the life of the Muslim believer? 

Chapter 11 "Questioning the God-Man" 

1. How would you answer this question from Sahar, a Muslim woman,"How can you believe Jesus is God if he was born through the birth canal of a woman and that he had to use the bathroom? Aren't these things below God?" 

2. How do you answer a Muslim who asks, "If Jesus is God, and God died, who was ruling the universe?" 

3. Why is God not unjust in punishing Jesus for others' sins? 

4. Why does Nabeel ask, "Sahar, let's imagine that you are on your way to a very important ceremony and are dressed in your finest clothes. You are about to arrive just on time, but then you see your daughter drowning in a pool of mud. What would you do? Let her drown and arrive looking dignified, or rescue her but arrive at the ceremony covered in mud?" 

Chapter 12 "Libya's Best Friend" 

1. What is Ronnie Smith's story and how does it relate to a discussion of Islam and Christianity? 

2. What motivated Ronnie Smith and his family to move to Libya? 

3. How was Jesus' teaching and life an Example for Ronnie Smith? 

4. What do you feel reading Ronnie's wife ending sentence in a letter to her husband's killers,"Ronnie loved you because God loves you. Ronnie loved you because God loved him-not because Ronnie was so great, but because God is so great"? 

(December 12, 2013

An Open Letter from the widow of Ronnie Smith to the Libyan People

My husband and best friend Ronnie Smith loved the Libyan people. For more than a year, Ronnie served as a chemistry teacher in a school in Benghazi, and he would gladly have given more years to Libya if unknown gunmen had not cut his life short on December 5, 2013.

Ronnie and I came to Libya because we saw the suffering of the Libyan people, but we also saw your hope, and we wanted to partner with you to build a better future. Libya was very different from what we had experienced before, but we were excited to learn about Libyan culture. Ronnie grew to love you and your way of life, as did I. Ronnie really was “Libya’s best friend.”

Friends and family from home were concerned about our safety, as were some of you. We talked about this more times than I can count. But we stayed because we believed the Libyan people were worth the risk. Even knowing what I know now, I have no doubt that we would both make the same decision all over again.

Ronnie loved you all so much, especially his students. He loved to joke with you, tell stories about you, help you with your lives and challenge you to be all that you could be. He did his best to live out his faith humbly and respectfully within a community of people with a different faith. 

To his attackers: I love you and I forgive you.

How could I not? For Jesus taught us to “Love our enemies” – not to kill them or seek revenge. Jesus sacrificed His life out of love for the very people who killed him, as well as for us today. His death and resurrection opened the door for us to walk on the straight path to God in peace and forgiveness. Because of what Jesus did, Ronnie is with Jesus in paradise now. Jesus did not come only to take us to paradise when we die, but also to bring peace and healing on this earth. Ronnie loved you because God loves you. Ronnie loved you because God loved him – not because Ronnie was so great, but because God is so great. 

To the Libyan people: I always expected that God would give us a heart to love you, but I never expected you to love us so much. We came to bless you, but you have blessed us much more. Thank you. Thank you for your support and love for Ronnie and our son Hosea and me. Since Ronnie’s death my love for you has increased in ways that I never imagined. I feel closer to you now than ever before.

I hear people speaking with hate, anger and blame over Ronnie’s death, but that's not what Ronnie would want. Ronnie would want his death to be an opportunity for us to show one another love and forgiveness, because that’s what God has shown us. 

I want all of you – all of the people of Libya – to know I am praying for the peace and prosperity of Libya. May Ronnie's blood, shed on Libyan soil, encourage peace and reconciliation between the Libyan people and God.)

 SESSION 4 

PART 4: THE QURAN OR THE BIBLE? TWO DIFFERENT SCRIPTURES 

Chapter 13 "The Burning of Scripture" 

1. In 2011 what senseless violence happened in Mazar-e-Sharif, considered a safe city in Afghanistan, and what caused the deaths of 12 innocent people? 

2. In 2009 what happened at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan when "the US government officially announced that the Bibles were trash, and accordingly they were burned"? 

3. Rather than caricatures of Muslims and Christians regarding their holy books, what compelling reality does Nabeel offer regarding the two faiths and their holy books? 

Chapter 14 "Comparing the Quran and the Bible" 

(Because this is a lengthy, significant chapter, more questions will be asked.) 

1. What must Westerners know about Islam that makes the thought of burning a copy of the Quran a highly inflammatory insult to Muslims? 

2. While Christians do not suggest or like the idea of burning Bibles, what is one reason why Christians do not riot and murder when the Bible is treated as trash by US military officials? 

3. How would your view of the Quran be changed if you believed it to be "the closest thing on earth to the incarnation of Allah"? 

4. How would you describe the differences in the composition of the Quran and the Bible?

5. How would you summarize the Christian view of the Bible? 

6. Is the Islamic practice of "abrogation"? 

7. When Nabeel discusses "the sufficiency of Scripture," how does this apply to the Quran? What guides most Islamic practices? 

8. How would you contrast the Muslim and Christian views regarding "why" they believe and "what" they believe.

 

Chapter 15 "Questioning Texts" 

1. What are the stories of Ahmed Deedat and Zakir Naik and what is their main argument for the superiority of the Quran over the Bible? 

2. Why is this observation important in the Muslim/Christian debate: "The Quran is written in one uniform style, whereas the Bible is written in many genres"? 

List at least four contradictions within the Quran (see page 120). 

3. How does Nabeel, using 1 Peter as an example, answer the Muslim charge about "wholesale omissions or insertions of New Testament teachings, [and] intentional alterations by ruling powers"? 

Chapter 16 "The First Burning of the Quran" 

1. What did Caliph Uthman do and why did he do it? What does this reveal about human control over the Quran in human history? 

2. What is Nabeel's personal story about the impact of the Quran and the impact of the Bible on him at a significant moment in his life? 

 SESSION 5 

PART 5: JIHAD OR THE CRUSADES? TWO DIFFERENT HOLY WARS 

Chapter 17 "The First Crusade" 

1. How did President Bill Clinton advance the growing popular understanding of the (first) Christian Crusades to take back the holy land?** 

2.Why was the 9/11 attack in 2001 a very difficult experience for patriotic American Muslims? 

3. Contrary to the popular view, how could Crusade scholar Thomas Madden write,"The crusades were in every way a defensive war"? 

4. Why does Nabeel confess,"Considering the historical realities,the common Muslim perspective of the Crusades-the perspective l inherited-is a modern invention"? 

Chapter 18 "Comparing the Traditions of the Founders" 

1. What did you think when Nabeel askeda Muslim friend at a conference in Washington, D. C. on July 4,2009,"So if we were in a Muslim country right now, would you kill me?" and the friend responded,"Yes, I would kill you right now. It is the command of the Prophet (SAW)"? 

2.Why does Nabeel write, "But in order to follow a peaceful Islam, one has to ignore or reject vast swaths of traditions from Muhammad's life as well as virtually the entire history of Islamic jurisprudence"? 

3. What was one of Augustine's contributions to the Christian understanding of war? 

NOTES 

** 4 Myths about the Crusades 

In 2001, former president Bill Clinton delivered a speech at Georgetown University in which he discussed the West’s response to the recent terrorist attacks of September 11. The speech contained a short but significant reference to the crusades. Mr. Clinton observed that “when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in 1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every woman and child who was Muslim on the Temple Mount.” He cited the “contemporaneous descriptions of the event” as describing “soldiers walking on the Temple Mount . . . with blood running up to their knees.” This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically, was “still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it.”

This view of the crusades is not unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature. One otherwise generally reliable Western civilization textbook claims that “the Crusades fused three characteristic medieval impulses: piety, pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential.”1 The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the best of whom were torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them. Even the historical supplements for role-playing games—drawing on supposedly more reliable sources—contain statements such as “The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers”;2 “The Crusades were an early sort of imperialism”;3 and “Confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.”4 The most famous semipopular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”5

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.

Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and even a cursory chronological review makes that clear. In A.D. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.

By A.D. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.

What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about A.D. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837. A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.

The surviving central secular authority in the Christian world at this time was the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. Having lost so much territory in the seventh and eighth centuries to sudden amputation by the Muslims, the Byzantines took a long time to gain the strength to fight back. By the mid-ninth century, they mounted a counterattack on Egypt, the first time since 645 that they had dared to come so far south. Between the 940s and the 970s, the Byzantines made great progress in recovering lost territories. Emperor John Tzimiskes retook much of Syria and part of Palestine, getting as far as Nazareth, but his armies became overextended and he had to end his campaigns by 975 without managing to retake Jerusalem itself. Sharp Muslim counterattacks followed, and the Byzantines barely managed to retain Aleppo and Antioch.

The struggle continued unabated into the eleventh century. In 1009, a mentally deranged Muslim ruler destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and mounted major persecutions of Christians and Jews. He was soon deposed, and by 1038 the Byzantines had negotiated the right to try to rebuild the structure, but other events were also making life difficult for Christians in the area, especially the displacement of Arab Muslim rulers by Seljuk Turks, who from 1055 on began to take control in the Middle East. This destabilized the territory and introduced new rulers (the Turks) who were not familiar even with the patchwork modus vivendi that had existed between most Arab Muslim rulers and their Christian subjects. Pilgrimages became increasingly difficult and dangerous, and western pilgrims began banding together and carrying weapons to protect themselves as they tried to make their way to Christianity’s holiest sites in Palestine: notable armed pilgrimages occurred in 1064–65 and 1087–91.

In the western and central Mediterranean, the balance of power was tipping toward the Christians and away from the Muslims. In 1034, the Pisans sacked a Muslim base in North Africa, finally extending their counterattacks across the Mediterranean. They also mounted counterattacks against Sicily in 1062–63. In 1087, a large-scale allied Italian force sacked Mahdia, in present-day Tunisia, in a campaign jointly sponsored by Pope Victor III and the countess of Tuscany. Clearly the Italian Christians were gaining the upper hand.

But while Christian power in the western and central Mediterranean was growing, it was in trouble in the east. The rise of the Muslim Turks had shifted the weight of military power against the Byzantines, who lost considerable ground again in the 1060s. Attempting to head off further incursions in far-eastern Asia Minor in 1071, the Byzantines suffered a devastating defeat at Turkish hands in the battle of Manzikert. As a result of the battle, the Christians lost control of almost all of Asia Minor, with its agricultural resources and military recruiting grounds, and a Muslim sultan set up a capital in Nicaea, site of the creation of the Nicene Creed in A.D. 325 and a scant 125 miles from Constantinople.

Desperate, the Byzantines sent appeals for help westward, directing these appeals primarily at the person they saw as the chief western authority: the pope, who, as we have seen, had already been directing Christian resistance to Muslim attacks. In the early 1070s, the pope was Gregory VII, and he immediately began plans to lead an expedition to the Byzantines’ aid. He became enmeshed in conflict with the German emperors, however (what historians call “the Investiture Controversy”), and was ultimately unable to offer meaningful help. Still, the Byzantines persisted in their appeals, and finally, in 1095, Pope Urban II realized Gregory VII’s desire, in what turned into the First Crusade. Whether a crusade was what either Urban or the Byzantines had in mind is a matter of some controversy. But the seamless progression of events which lead to that crusade is not.

Far from being unprovoked, then, the crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity’s five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades. The latter would be captured in 1453, leaving only one of the five (Rome) in Christian hands by 1500. Rome was again threatened in the sixteenth century. This is not the absence of provocation; rather, it is a deadly and persistent threat, and one which had to be answered by forceful defense if Christendom were to survive. The crusades were simply one tool in the defensive options exercised by Christians.

To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never.7

Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich.

Again, not true. One version of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont in 1095 urging French warriors to embark on what would become known as the First Crusade does note that they might “make spoil of [the enemy’s] treasures,”8 but this was no more than an observation on the usual way of financing war in ancient and medieval society. And Fulcher of Chartres did write in the early twelfth century that those who had been poor in the West had become rich in the East as a result of their efforts on the First Crusade, obviously suggesting that others might do likewise.9 But Fulcher’s statement has to be read in its context, which was a chronic and eventually fatal shortage of manpower for the defense of the crusader states. Fulcher was not being entirely deceitful when he pointed out that one might become rich as a result of crusading. But he was not being entirely straightforward either, because for most participants, crusading was ruinously expensive.

As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.”10 From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive. Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from west to east as a result of the crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.”11

One of the chief reasons for the foundering of the Fourth Crusade, and its diversion to Constantinople, was the fact that it ran out of money before it had gotten properly started, and was so indebted to the Venetians that it found itself unable to keep control of its own destiny. Louis IX’s Seventh Crusade in the mid-thirteenth century cost more than six times the annual revenue of the crown.

The popes resorted to ever more desperate ploys to raise money to finance crusades, from instituting the first income tax in the early thirteenth century to making a series of adjustments in the way that indulgences were handled that eventually led to the abuses condemned by Martin Luther. Even by the thirteenth century, most crusade planners assumed that it would be impossible to attract enough volunteers to make a crusade possible, and crusading became the province of kings and popes, losing its original popular character. When the Hospitaller Master Fulk of Villaret wrote a crusade memo to Pope Clement V in about 1305, he noted that “it would be a good idea if the lord pope took steps enabling him to assemble a great treasure, without which such a passage [crusade] would be impossible.”12 A few years later, Marino Sanudo estimated that it would cost five million florins over two years to effect the conquest of Egypt. Although he did not say so, and may not have realized it, the sums necessary simply made the goal impossible to achieve. By this time, most responsible officials in the West had come to the same conclusion, which explains why fewer and fewer crusades were launched from the fourteenth century on.

In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted. Most medieval people were quite well aware of this, and did not consider crusading a way to improve their financial situations.13

Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives.

This has been a very popular argument, at least from Voltaire on. It seems credible and even compelling to modern people, steeped as they are in materialist worldviews. And certainly there were cynics and hypocrites in the Middle Ages—beneath the obvious differences of technology and material culture, medieval people were just as human as we are, and subject to the same failings.

However, like the first two myths, this statement is generally untrue, and demonstrably so. For one thing, the casualty rates on the crusades were usually very high, and many if not most crusaders left expecting not to return. At least one military historian has estimated the casualty rate for the First Crusade at an appalling 75 percent, for example.14 The statement of the thirteenth-century crusader Robert of Crésèques, that he had “come from across the sea in order to die for God in the Holy Land”15—which was quickly followed by his death in battle against overwhelming odds—may have been unusual in its force and swift fulfillment, but it was not an atypical attitude. It is hard to imagine a more conclusive way of proving one’s dedication to a cause than sacrificing one’s life for it, and very large numbers of crusaders did just that.

But this assertion is also revealed to be false when we consider the way in which the crusades were preached. Crusaders were not drafted. Participation was voluntary, and participants had to be persuaded to go. The primary means of persuasion was the crusade sermon, and one might expect to find these sermons representing crusading as profoundly appealing.

This is, generally speaking, not the case. In fact, the opposite is true: crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. That this was the reality of crusading was well known anyway. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.”16

So why did the preaching work? It worked because crusading was appealing precisely because it was a known and significant hardship, and because undertaking a crusade with the right motives was understood as an acceptable penance for sin. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. There is no space here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in the late antique and medieval worlds, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed as a useful way to purify one’s soul (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today). Crusading was the near-supreme example of such difficult suffering, and so was an ideal and very thorough-going penance.

Related to the concept of penance is the concept of crusading as an act of selfless love, of “laying down one’s life for one’s friends.”17 From the very beginning, Christian charity was advanced as a reason for crusading, and this did not change throughout the period. Jonathan Riley-Smith discussed this aspect of crusading in a seminal article well-known to crusade historians but inadequately recognized in the wider scholarly world, let alone by the general public. “For Christians . . . sacred violence,” noted Riley-Smith,

cannot be proposed on any grounds save that of love, . . . [and] in an age dominated by the theology of merit this explains why participation in crusades was believed to be meritorious, why the expeditions were seen as penitential acts that could gain indulgences, and why death in battle was regarded as martyrdom. . . . As manifestations of Christian love, the crusades were as much the products of the renewed spirituality of the central Middle Ages, with its concern for living the vita apostolica and expressing Christian ideals in active works of charity, as were the new hospitals, the pastoral work of the Augustinians and Premonstratensians and the service of the friars. The charity of St. Francis may now appeal to us more than that of the crusaders, but both sprang from the same roots.18

As difficult as it may be for modern people to believe, the evidence strongly suggests that most crusaders were motivated by a desire to please God, expiate their sins, and put their lives at the service of their “neighbors,” understood in the Christian sense.

Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians.

Part of the answer to this myth may be found above, under Myth #1. Muslims had been attacking Christians for more than 450 years before Pope Urban declared the First Crusade. They needed no incentive to continue doing so. But there is a more complicated answer here, as well.

Up until quite recently, Muslims remembered the crusades as an instance in which they had beaten back a puny western Christian attack. An illuminating vignette is found in one of Lawrence of Arabia’s letters, describing a confrontation during post–World War I negotiations between the Frenchman Stéphen Pichon and Faisal al-Hashemi (later Faisal I of Iraq). Pichon presented a case for French interest in Syria going back to the crusades, which Faisal dismissed with a cutting remark: “But, pardon me, which of us won the crusades?”19

This was generally representative of the Muslim attitude toward the crusades before about World War I—that is, when Muslims bothered to remember them at all, which was not often. Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the crusades before the mid-nineteenth century was produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of that was positive.20 There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that period, either, and even then the coiners of the term were, again, Arab Christians. It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity and Islam.21

Nor had there been an immediate reaction to the crusades among Muslims. As Carole Hillenbrand has noted, “The Muslim response to the coming of the Crusades was initially one of apathy, compromise and preoccupation with internal problems.”22 By the 1130s, a Muslim counter-crusade did begin, under the leadership of the ferocious Zengi of Mosul. But it had taken some decades for the Muslim world to become concerned about Jerusalem, which is usually held in higher esteem by Muslims when it is not held by them than when it is. Action against the crusaders was often subsequently pursued as a means of uniting the Muslim world behind various aspiring conquerors, until 1291, when the Christians were expelled from the Syrian mainland. And—surprisingly to Westerners—it was not Saladin who was revered by Muslims as the great anti-Christian leader. That place of honor usually went to the more bloodthirsty, and more successful, Zengi and Baibars, or to the more public-spirited Nur al-Din.

The first Muslim crusade history did not appear until 1899. By that time, the Muslim world was rediscovering the crusades—but it was rediscovering them with a twist learned from Westerners. In the modern period, there were two main European schools of thought about the crusades. One school, epitomized by people like Voltaire, Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott, and in the twentieth century Sir Steven Runciman, saw the crusaders as crude, greedy, aggressive barbarians who attacked civilized, peace-loving Muslims to improve their own lot. The other school, more romantic and epitomized by lesser-known figures such as the French writer Joseph-François Michaud, saw the crusades as a glorious episode in a long-standing struggle in which Christian chivalry had driven back Muslim hordes. In addition, Western imperialists began to view the crusaders as predecessors, adapting their activities in a secularized way that the original crusaders would not have recognized or found very congenial.

At the same time, nationalism began to take root in the Muslim world. Arab nationalists borrowed the idea of a long-standing European campaign against them from the former European school of thought—missing the fact that this was a serious mischaracterization of the crusades—and using this distorted understanding as a way to generate support for their own agendas. This remained the case until the mid-twentieth century, when, in Riley-Smith’s words, “a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism” applied the more narrow goals of the Arab nationalists to a worldwide revival of what was then called Islamic fundamentalism and is now sometimes referred to, a bit clumsily, as jihadism.23 This led rather seamlessly to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, offering a view of the crusades so bizarre as to allow bin Laden to consider all Jews to be crusaders and the crusades to be a permanent and continuous feature of the West’s response to Islam.

Bin Laden’s conception of history is a feverish fantasy. He is no more accurate in his view about the crusades than he is about the supposed perfect Islamic unity which he thinks Islam enjoyed before the baleful influence of Christianity intruded. But the irony is that he, and those millions of Muslims who accept his message, received that message originally from their perceived enemies: the West.

So it was not the crusades that taught Islam to attack and hate Christians. Far from it. Those activities had preceded the crusades by a very long time, and stretch back to the inception of Islam. Rather, it was the West which taught Islam to hate the crusades. The irony is rich.

Back to the Present

Let us return to President Clinton’s Georgetown speech. How much of his reference to the First Crusade was accurate?

It is true that many Muslims who had surrendered and taken refuge under the banners of several of the crusader lords—an act which should have granted them quarter—were massacred by out-of-control troops. This was apparently an act of indiscipline, and the crusader lords in question are generally reported as having been extremely angry about it, since they knew it reflected badly on them.24 To imply—or plainly state—that this was an act desired by the entire crusader force, or that it was integral to crusading, is misleading at best. In any case, John France has put it well: “This notorious event should not be exaggerated. . . . However horrible the massacre . . . it was not far beyond what common practice of the day meted out to any place which resisted.”25 And given space, one could append a long and bloody list, stretching back to the seventh century, of similar actions where Muslims were the aggressors and Christians the victims. Such a list would not, however, have served Mr. Clinton’s purposes.

Mr. Clinton was probably using Raymond of Aguilers when he referred to “blood running up to [the] knees” of crusaders.26 But the physics of such a claim are impossible, as should be apparent. Raymond was plainly both bragging and also invoking the imagery of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation.27 He was not offering a factual account, and probably did not intend the statement to be taken as such.

As for whether or not we are “still paying for it,” see Myth #4, above. This is the most serious misstatement of the whole passage. What we are paying for is not the First Crusade, but western distortions of the crusades in the nineteenth century which were taught to, and taken up by, an insufficiently critical Muslim world.

The problems with Mr. Clinton’s remarks indicate the pitfalls that await those who would attempt to explicate ancient or medieval texts without adequate historical awareness, and they illustrate very well what happens when one sets out to pick through the historical record for bits—distorted or merely selectively presented—which support one’s current political agenda. This sort of abuse of history has been distressingly familiar where the crusades are concerned.

But nothing is served by distorting the past for our own purposes. Or rather: a great many things may be served . . . but not the truth. Distortions and misrepresentations of the crusades will not help us understand the challenge posed to the West by a militant and resurgent Islam, and failure to understand that challenge could prove deadly. Indeed, it already has. It may take a very long time to set the record straight about the crusades. It is long past time to begin the task.

Notes

1. Warren Hollister, J. Sears McGee, and Gale Stokes, The West Transformed: A History of Western Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Cengage/Wadsworth, 2000), 311.

2. R. Scott Peoples, Crusade of Kings (Rockville, MD: Wildside, 2009), 7.

3. Ibid.

4. The Crusades: Campaign Sourcebook, ed. Allen Varney (Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1994), 2.

5. Sir Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Vol. III, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 480.

6. Francesco Gabrieli, The Arabs: A Compact History, trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963), 47.

7. Reynald of Châtillon’s abortive expedition into the Red Sea, in 1182–83, cannot be counted, as it was plainly a geopolitical move designed to threaten Saladin’s claim to be the protector of all Islam, and just as plainly had no hope of reaching either city.

8. “The Version of Baldric of Dol,” in The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other source materials, 2nd ed., ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 32.

9. Ibid., 220–21.

10. Fred Cazel, “Financing the Crusades,” in A History of the Crusades, ed. Kenneth Setton, vol. 6 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 117.

11. John Porteous, “Crusade Coinage with Greek or Latin Inscriptions,” in A History of the Crusades, 354.

12. “A memorandum by Fulk of Villaret, master of the Hospitallers, on the crusade to regain the Holy Land, c. 1305,” in Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274–1580, ed. and trans. Norman Housley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 42.

13. Norman Housley, “Costing the Crusade: Budgeting for Crusading Activity in the Fourteenth Century,” in The Experience of Crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59.

14. John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 142. Not all historians agree; Jonathan Riley-Smith thinks it was probably lower, though he does not indicate just how much lower. See Riley-Smith, “Casualties and Knights on the First Crusade,” Crusades 1 (2002), 17–19, suggesting casualties of perhaps 34 percent, higher than those of the Wehrmacht in World War II, which were themselves very high at about 30 percent. By comparison, American losses in World War II in the three major service branches ranged between about 1.5 percent and 3.66 percent.

15. The ‘Templar of Tyre’: Part III of the ‘Deeds of the Cypriots,’ trans. Paul F. Crawford (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), §351, 54.

16. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 36.

17. John 15:13.

18. Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Crusading as an Act of Love,” History 65 (1980), 191–92.

19. Letter from T. E. Lawrence to Robert Graves, 28 June 1927, in Robert Graves and B. H. Liddell-Hart, T. E. Lawrence to His Biographers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1938), 52, note.

20. Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam, 71.

21. Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Islam and the Crusades in History,” Crusades 2 (2003), 161.

22. Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, (New York: Routledge, 2000), 20.

23. Riley-Smith, Crusading, Christianity, and Islam, 73.

24. There is some disagreement in the primary sources on the question of who was responsible for the deaths of these refugees; the crusaders knew that a large Egyptian army was on its way to attack them, and there does seem to have been a military decision a day or two later that they simply could not risk leaving potential enemies alive. On the question of the massacre, see Benjamin Kedar, “The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades,” Crusades 3 (2004), 15–75.

25. France, Victory in the East, 355–56.

26. Raymond of Aguilers, in August C. Krey, The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eye-witnesses and Participants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921), 262.

27. Revelation 14:20.