Publisher's Synopsis
This short booklet, taken from a talk given by Thomas Madden in 2015, offers a fresh perspective on the Crusades. The commonly held belief is that the Crusades are to blame for the current tensions between Islam and the rest of the world - that Islam was a peaceful place before the Crusaders arrived and taught the Muslims to be warlike. Trying to close the gap between historical understanding and popular perception, Madden shows that it's not the Crusades that led to the conflict between the Muslim Middle East and the West, but the "artificial memory" of. the Crusades passed down by Arab nationalists and Islamists.
