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On 8th July, 1099,
the Muslim defenders of Jerusalem
saw a strange spectacle -

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a bunch of exhausted, starving
Christian knights walking barefoot
around the walls.

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It was an act of religious
self-mortification designed
to win the help of God.

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And it worked.

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The knights turned their ships
into siege engines,

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stormed the town, and what followed
still seems grim, even by the
standards of the 20th century.

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Virtually everyone was slaughtered.
Men and women, children,

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the old, the infirm,
until the knights
were wading ankle-deep in blood.

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Jews were burnt alive in
their synagogues and the dead
were piled outside

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in smoking pyramids, innumerable,
in the words of one eyewitness,

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to all except God himself.

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Welcome to the Crusades.

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In November, 1095,
Pope Urban II made the single most
provocative speech of all time.

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He called for a Crusade,
a campaign to speed up
the Second Coming of Christ

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by recapturing the holy places,
where Jesus had died on the Cross,

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and wresting them
from Muslim control.

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Pope Urban thereby launched two
centuries of intermittent mayhem,

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featuring greed, treachery,
sadism and religious mania.

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And he created a symbol of western
aggression in the Middle East -

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a symbol so potent that
some Muslims believe the Crusades
have never actually ended.

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And that's why we need to
understand that bizarre conflict -
the massacres, the cannibalism,

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the blood that flowed down
these very streets.

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If we are to understand how it is
that the word "crusade"

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still contaminates the Muslim idea
of the West and Western intentions.

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At the heart of the Crusades
was possession of the powerfully
symbolic city of Jerusalem.

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For Jews, it's the ancient
city of David, under the control
of Israel since 1967.

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For Christians,
it's the place of the Crucifixion,

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and it's no wonder that, in 637,
Jerusalem was one
of the first cities

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to be captured by the Arabs
in the name of Islam.

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Jerusalem represents a very
important place in the Muslim world,

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because it was the first place
the Muslim had the qibla,

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or direction of prayer,
before directing to Mecca.

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And at the Dome of the Rock,
according to the Muslim belief,
Prophet Mohammed ascended to Heaven.

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Pope Urban cited several
justifications for his crusade -

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the attacks by Muslims on Christian
pilgrims to the Holy Land

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and the sufferings of the
eastern Christians, who were
native to the area.

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To any Crusader prepared
to right these wrongs,
he made a once-in-a-lifetime offer.

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If you go and recapture
Jerusalem from the Muslims

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and you help all the eastern
Christians, who are suffering,
being killed by the Muslims,

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and western pilgrims prevented
from going to the Holy Sepulchre,

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you will get a spiritual reward
of unprecedented level.

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I am promising you the remission
of all the sins that you confess.

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Armed with these
get out of hell free cards,

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the first Crusade set off,
to rendezvous in Constantinople.

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Constantinople was the capital
of what we in the West
call the Byzantine Empire.

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In reality, it was simply the
eastern half of the Roman Empire,

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the prosperous, Greek-speaking
provinces that had survived after
the sack of Rome in 476.

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And they survived, very often,
thanks to these colossal 5th-century
walls, 60 metres in width.

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But by the 11th century, they were
coming under remorseless pressure

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from the Muslim Turks,
and the desperate Byzantine emperor

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swallowed his pride and appealed
for help to his fellow Christian,
the Pope in Rome.

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He got more than he bargained for.

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Some 60,000 people had taken
the Cross and made their way

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to Constantinople, and they were
not exactly steady on parade.

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You can imagine the reaction of the
Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus,

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when the first Crusade pitched up
outside his walls in Constantinople.

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He'd been expecting
a crack army of knights
to help him deal with the Turks -

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instead he got a rag-tag and
bobtail collection of peasants,
paupers and fanatics,

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led by the evocatively-titled
Walter the Penniless,
and a guy called Peter the Hermit,

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who clutched a personal letter
from Jesus Christ instructing him
to go on the Crusade.

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In other words, they were cranks,
so fizzing with religious fervour

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that they'd been persecuting Jews
on their way south
through the Rhineland,

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so militarily incompetent
they'd already lost
a quarter of their strength.

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"Stay right there,"
said Alexius Comnenus,
"Don't move a muscle."

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Deciding not to wait for the
main body of the crusaders,
this people's Crusade set off

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in the general direction of
Jerusalem and were pretty badly
duffed up for their pains.

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But it was only a few months
later that the knights arrived,
who's who of European barons,

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armed with pikes and halberds
and all the latest
in chain-mail technology.

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They swore a great oath that
the lands they reconquered would be
handed to the Byzantine emperor,

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and for three years they then
hacked and slaughtered and
besieged their way to Jerusalem.

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The Crusaders had the power
and the zeal to besiege Antioch

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for nine continuing months -
one of the longest sieges
in medieval times.

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It shows how they were determined
to stay.

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In all of the cities that they
occupied, they were really vicious,

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they killed almost everybody.
They cleaned the cities totally

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from Muslims and from Jews.

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And in some cases, they killed
50-60,000 in one city.

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It was a while before the Muslims
grasped what was happening to them.

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This wasn't some raid for booty,
it was a holy war in full swing.

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I think it pretty much
took them by surprise.

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I think, at the beginning, they
mostly understood that these were

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mercenaries being hired
by the Byzantines.

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I don't think they realised
what was really going on.

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That in western Syria itself, they'd
a grand plan to conquer Jerusalem

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and to set up some new state
at their expense.

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So were they were aware
of the religious dimension?

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Very quickly, I think they became
aware of the religious dimension.

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CHURCH BELLS RING

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So what did it mean for the
Christians back in Europe, this
miraculous recapture of Jerusalem?

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It was obvious.

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It showed God's blessing
on the Crusades
and his contempt for the enemy,

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who were not only ethnically
different, they believed
in the wrong religion,

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as Christian propagandists
never tired of pointing out,
with more venom than understanding.

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The average cleric writing his
polemical texts from
the edges of civilisation

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in his monastery has really no idea
what Islam is about. They're Pagans,

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for him, is what they are. Often,

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they create these imaginary
pantheons of gods for them.

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Obviously, Mohammed is one of them,
but he has three or four others
helping him to fight Christianity.

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And so, there's really
no understanding about the fact that
Islam is a monotheistic religion,

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that there is this shared heritage
between the two.

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Western knowledge of Islam
in the late 11th-century
is quite an interesting topic.

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There's some contradictions
within that.

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I mean, you've actually got a letter
written by Pope Gregory VII in 1076.

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He writes to a sultan,
"Most certainly, you and we ought
to love each other in this way,

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"more than other races of men,
because we believe and confess one
God, albeit in different ways,

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"whom each day we praise in
reverence as the creator of all ages
and the governor of this world."

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Isn't that fascinating?
He's pointing out similarities.

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Yet within 20 years,
you've got Urban II coming out
with the strongest,

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most violent propaganda
against the people of Islam.

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They are torturing westerners,
Christians are being tied to posts
and used as bow and arrow practice.

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Women are being defiled, men
are being forcibly circumcised.

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What you're doing, of course, is
what many, many societies do -
they're demonising their opponent.

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If you're trying to convince people
to go to war,

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you've got to paint them
as worth fighting.

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You're going 3,000 miles,
leaving your home and loved ones,
risking your life.

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You're not gonna do that to nice
people you've things in common with!

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You'll do it to nasty,
unpleasant people.

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'There is a fascinating symmetry
in the propaganda.

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'Muslim polemicists put the boot
into Christians

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'with exactly the same theological
insult used against them.'

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What is jihadi rhetoric?
Is it just pro-Islamic
or is it also anti-Christian?

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How does it express itself?
I think both are expressed here.

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In fact, you'll see the monotheism
of the Christians is impugned.

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They're often called... Their
Christianity is called "shirk",

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which means polytheism,
because of the trinity.

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You mean they worship
more than one god?

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Apparently, you know, the fact is
that Islam has problems with them

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worshipping Jesus, basically, and
they have difficulty accepting that.

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It's impossible for them
to accept that.

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Having recaptured Jerusalem and
won their ticket to eternal life,

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these Franks, as the Crusaders
were known to the Muslims,

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set up their own crusader states
in the Holy Land,

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known collectively as Outremer,
"beyond the sea".

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They lasted for 200 years.

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And you know what? In spite of the
general taboo on intermarriage -

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a taboo still with us today -
the two sides didn't
always get on that badly.

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Christians and Muslims
sometimes learned that beneath

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the demon mask of propaganda,
they were all human beings.

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They end up, actually,
treating the Muslims, who are in
their lands, actually rather well.

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They're taxed, but not too heavily.
They're not really oppressed.

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And it's quite interesting -
there's only one revolt against
the Christian landlords,

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as it were, in the 88 years
of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

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Crusaders are in
Palestine and Greater Syria
almost for two centuries.

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During these two centuries,
they changed.

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The Crusaders, when they come
from Europe, they behave vicious,

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they love to kill
and they like blood.

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But those who lived here and who
were born here, they were influenced

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by the Muslims, by the Arabs, and
they had friendships with the Arabs.

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When the Crusaders arrived
in Jerusalem, they found baths
and sorbet and sugar

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and sometimes they wore turbans
and sometimes they went hunting
with the Arab military elites.

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And yet, there was a curious
lack of curiosity

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about each other's religions
and the beginning of stereotypes.

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One Muslim account says that the
Crusaders lacked all civilised
virtues, except courage.

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And then there is the disdainful
account of Crusader morals given
by Usama ibn Munqidh,

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who describes how a Frankish knight
hires a Muslim barber

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to give his wife what we would
now call a Brazilian wax.

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In the bath,
the pubic hair would be shaved.

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And a guy, a Frank,
sees Usama doing that, and he said,

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"This is great, do it to me,"
then he says, "Do it to my wife!"

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He brings his wife and the barber
does it in front of everybody,

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and he doesn't seem to make a big
deal out of it. The guy is just...

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Usama is...astounded.
You know, he's just astounded.

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It just seems a very casual way
to treat your womenfolk.
Yeah, and he gives other stories,

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about, you know, a guy finding
somebody in bed with his wife
and the way he would react.

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And comparing it to the way
we'd do things, we, the Muslims.

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This is a Frankish knight...
Or a Frankish person.

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Frankish person whose wife is
found in bed with someone else?
He takes it in his stride.

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So it's a kind of French attitude
towards it? Well... You said that!

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It wasn't just that the Muslims
were baffled by the personal
grooming habits of Crusader wives.

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We must accept that Outremer
was a society still deeply divided
on religious and ethnic lines,

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and the long-term ambition
of the Muslims was to
kick those Franks out completely.

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When the Crusaders started
slicing through the Holy Land,
the Muslims were disunited.

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But as the 12th century wore on,
they were beginning to unite
and to win back territory.

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A second crusade was mounted in
1147, only to end in failure.

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And then things really went
wrong for the Christians.

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They met their nemesis.

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With his blazing eyes and
hawk-like nose, he still looms
in our imaginations

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as the most symbolically important
of all Muslim warlords,

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a Kurd called Salah al-Din,
or Saladin.

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Saladin united Egypt,
all Muslim Syria, the two big
cities of Damascus and Aleppo.

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All of this was now united. The
resources he had at his disposal

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were unlike anything that
anybody had for 150 years before.

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And he united it in
the name of jihad? Yes.

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Jihad literally means,
"putting an effort,"

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and you have the spiritual jihad,
taming oneself for goodness
and avoid evil,

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and physical jihad, to defend Islam
and to extend Islam
to other territories.

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In 1187, Saladin massacred
the crusading forces

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in the most decisive battle
of the whole campaign.

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It was at a death trap
called the Horns of Hattin.

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The battle of Hattin was
a brilliant manoeuvre.

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With very little losses to his side,
he completely destroyed the Crusader
army in the Holy Land, wiped out,

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part of it killed, part of it
executed, part of it captured.

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That same year, Saladin recaptured
Jerusalem after less than
a century of Crusader control,

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and for the Christians,
it was a humiliation.

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One man, above all, made it his
mission to regain the Holy City.

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The blond-haired, poetry-spouting,
broadsword-wielding

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Richard I of England,
the Lionheart, Coeur de Lion.

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And though they were willing
to massacre each other's troops,
Richard and Saladin

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have gone down as one of history's
great double acts, which on
the face of it is surprising.

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First of all, they never met.
They go through intermediaries.

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Richard has a lot of dealings
with Saladin's brother, who he got
on with really very, very well.

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He found out, in the midst of this
Holy War, they both like music.

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They also, as leading military men,
share an interest
in chivalry and hunting.

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So you can see some of the ways
in which, even though people are
engaged in this struggle,

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there are opportunities or areas
in which they can...they can find
some common ground.

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00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:18,640
Richard the Lionheart used
to correspond with
Salah al-Din's brother, al-Adil,

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00:17:18,640 --> 00:17:21,400
and he offered
one of the solutions,

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00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:27,760
offered his sister to marry al-Adil
and they rule together
the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

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00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:31,600
So you have one Muslim king,
one Crusader queen.

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00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:34,080
That was really a midway solution.

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00:17:34,080 --> 00:17:39,960
It didn't really happen, but it
shows you the...amicable relation.

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00:17:41,080 --> 00:17:44,760
Even though he was an infidel,
Saladin became almost as feted

213
00:17:44,760 --> 00:17:49,400
in chivalric literature
as Richard the Lionheart himself.

214
00:17:49,400 --> 00:17:52,600
Salah al-Din was
a respectable fighter.

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00:17:52,600 --> 00:17:54,280
He honoured his word.

216
00:17:54,280 --> 00:17:58,800
In the Third Crusade,
he was acting as a cavalier.

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00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:04,240
He doesn't really brutalise.
Look when he took back Jerusalem.

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00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:08,280
He kept the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre intact.

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00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:12,680
He permitted or allowed all
the locals to leave peacefully.

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00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:14,480
So he was a model of chivalry?

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00:18:14,480 --> 00:18:19,520
Yes. As Chaucer would say, "He
was a very perfect gentle knyght."

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00:18:19,520 --> 00:18:25,880
That's... That's really
why his legacy is
still alive and vivid today.

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00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:36,320
Am I right in thinking
he actually gets some kind
of honorary knighthood?

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00:18:36,320 --> 00:18:41,360
Like Bob Geldof or something?
There are some myths,
in some of the 13th century,

225
00:18:41,360 --> 00:18:46,720
sort of 50 years or so after
the Third Crusade, that Saladin
was actually knighted.

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00:18:46,720 --> 00:18:51,640
Whether that's true or not
is highly debatable, but the point
is they believed he should be.

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00:19:01,960 --> 00:19:05,760
In 1291,
Acre fell to the Muslim Turks.

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00:19:08,840 --> 00:19:14,000
And that was the end of
the last Crusader stronghold
in the Holy Land.

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00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:25,960
The last Crusader caught
the last boat home to Europe.

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00:19:34,640 --> 00:19:38,280
The Crusades had failed,
and for centuries they were

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00:19:38,280 --> 00:19:42,800
regarded by Muslims as a transient
and ultimately unimportant struggle.

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00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:46,520
Indeed, it was only in the
19th century that Muslim historians

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00:19:46,520 --> 00:19:49,920
even coined an Arabic term
for the Wars of the Cross.

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00:19:52,200 --> 00:19:55,960
Why then? Because after centuries
of relative Muslim decline,

235
00:19:55,960 --> 00:20:03,000
they looked back and saw in the
Crusades a prelude to the indignity
of colonisation.

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00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:06,320
That's not how they were considered
at the time.

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00:20:06,320 --> 00:20:13,720
I think, in those days, it was seen
as just the urge for conquest,
to expand your kingdom,

238
00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:16,280
and it was basically regarded
as legitimate

239
00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:22,960
as, you know,
the exercise of...of power.

240
00:20:22,960 --> 00:20:29,480
Seeing them as an incursion
of one civilisation on another,

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00:20:29,480 --> 00:20:35,440
of one religion on another, I think,
is a more modern construction,

242
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:41,440
which comes under the
modern idea of sovereignty.

243
00:20:43,120 --> 00:20:46,800
Of course, in the Islamist
view of the world,

244
00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:51,280
after the Conquest of Islam,

245
00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:55,200
the Christian religion,
in alliance with Judaism,

246
00:20:55,200 --> 00:21:01,080
would constantly conspire
and again try to re...

247
00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:03,800
reconquer what it lost.

248
00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:11,040
And this is why now,
especially the Bin Laden types,
Al Qaeda, for example,

249
00:21:11,040 --> 00:21:16,240
don't speak of colonialism
or imperialism, Western imperialism.

250
00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:22,320
They shift the terminology to what
they call the new crusaderism.

251
00:21:23,520 --> 00:21:28,520
It must be said that many westerners
have seemed to encourage
this interpretation.

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00:21:28,520 --> 00:21:31,680
As recently as 1920, for example,

253
00:21:31,680 --> 00:21:35,680
the French general Henri Gouraud
celebrated taking
control of Damascus

254
00:21:35,680 --> 00:21:41,080
by walking up to Saladin's tomb and
saying, "Saladin, we have returned.

255
00:21:41,080 --> 00:21:47,040
"My presence here consecrates
the victory of the Cross
over the Crescent."

256
00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:53,240
Or one might mention the
controversial rallying cry delivered
in the aftershock of 9/11.

257
00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:56,640
This crusade...

258
00:21:56,640 --> 00:22:02,160
This war on terrorism, er...
is going to take a while.

259
00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:05,440
George Bush says let's have
a crusade against terror.

260
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:07,680
How does that sound to you?

261
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:10,720
What it indicates to us
is like a war, bad people.

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00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:14,440
Bad people. Bloodshed. Bloodshed.
First thing I think of.

263
00:22:14,440 --> 00:22:19,960
Yeah. But in Britain, we talk
about we're going to have a crusade
to stamp out drunkenness.

264
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:23,240
Do you? Yeah, we have
a crusade against drugs,

265
00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:25,760
or we're going to have
a crusade to make sure

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00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:29,880
that people...you know,
don't talk on their mobile
phone whilst driving.

267
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:34,480
That's surprising. Yeah?
It really has a very negative
connotation here.

268
00:22:36,160 --> 00:22:40,680
And if Westerners romanticise the
Crusaders, then it's not surprising

269
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,920
that Muslims lionise the man
who defeated them.

270
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:50,400
What Muslims today need, they say,
is a new Saladin to drive
the new Crusaders out.

271
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:58,280
I think he's huge,
because of the analogy
which is also in the popular mind

272
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:03,280
and is being, you know,
used, exploited and so on,

273
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:07,280
regarding the Zionist movement -

274
00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:10,440
its colonisation
of Palestine and so on -

275
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:17,360
as some kind of repeat of the
Crusaders' occupation of Palestine.

276
00:23:17,360 --> 00:23:21,800
And the inference is that,
just as the crusaders at some point

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00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,480
were pushed by some
kind of Salah al-Din,

278
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:28,800
this will probably
happen again at some point.

279
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:35,480
The Crusades may be a bad word
in the Middle East today,

280
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:39,120
but at the time they looked like
no more than a blip, a hiccup,

281
00:23:39,120 --> 00:23:41,240
in the flow of Muslim conquest.

282
00:23:44,360 --> 00:23:47,960
When the last Frankish knight
had been booted out of Acre,

283
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:51,400
the Muslims pushed on into
Asia Minor, modern Turkey.

284
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:58,760
One by one, they sacked the ancient
Christian cities as they made
for Constantinople, an objective

285
00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:05,600
for Muslim generals ever since its
capture had been, so tradition says,
predicted by Mohammed himself.

286
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:21,840
Constantinople was the city founded
in 330 AD by Constantine,
the first Christian Roman Emperor,

287
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:26,880
and it was the great beating heart
of the Christian Roman world.

288
00:24:27,960 --> 00:24:30,160
Or at least, of the eastern half.

289
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:37,160
The eastern, Greek-speaking Roman
Empire, what we call Byzantium,

290
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:42,320
had drifted further
and further apart from the
Latin-speaking western half,

291
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:45,840
and when the first great disaster
engulfed Constantinople,

292
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,600
it was at the hands of Christians
from the West.

293
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:54,920
If I say the word Crusade, you think
of Christians with crosses

294
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:59,240
attacking Muslims, but that's to
forget the most devastating crusade,

295
00:24:59,240 --> 00:25:02,240
the Fourth Crusade, when
French and Flemish knights,

296
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:06,880
conveyed by money-grubbing Venetians,
came here to Constantinople,

297
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:12,160
the queen of cities,
for nine centuries, the centre
of Christian civilisation,

298
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:18,200
and sacked it in an act that has
been called one of the most shameful
in human history.

299
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:23,440
The crusading vessels punched
through the great chain
that lay across the Golden Horn.

300
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:28,360
This wasn't Cross on Crescent
violence, this was Cross on Cross.

301
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:39,960
On the 12th April 1204,
the crusaders entered the city and
began a three-day orgy of violence.

302
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:44,440
They pillaged its treasures and
left much of it burned or in ruins.

303
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:54,080
We may think the Sunnis
and the Shi'ites are
irrational in their feuding,

304
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:57,600
and yet we forget the frenzy
with which the Latin Christians

305
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:01,640
fell on their Greek Orthodox
counterparts, the systematic rapes,

306
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:05,440
the mass slaughter, and amid images
of horror one stands out for me.

307
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:09,720
Abbot Martin of Paris standing over
a cowering Greek Orthodox monk

308
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:12,240
and demanding that
he produce his treasure,

309
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:16,160
then tottering away with
his ecclesiastical vestments
bulging with loot.

310
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:22,120
When they came here
to Hagia Sophia, the jewel
of Greek Orthodox civilisation,

311
00:26:22,120 --> 00:26:25,480
they smashed the altar
into four pieces of booty,

312
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:29,440
and scattered the bread
and the wine on the ground.

313
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:32,800
And up here, where the very
Patriarch himself had his seat,

314
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:38,000
they installed a drunken prostitute
who sang bawdy songs and capered
around for their amusement.

315
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:42,400
And the kicker was that they thought
they were doing God's will

316
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:48,240
and the sufferings of their victims
were proof of the favour
of the Almighty.

317
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:53,960
A new Latin Empire was proclaimed,
and for over 50 years,

318
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:58,280
the Papacy was able to boast
that the eastern empire
had been recaptured for Rome.

319
00:27:09,120 --> 00:27:10,680
It didn't last.

320
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:17,320
The Byzantines took back control,
and yet Constantinople was a shadow
of its former glory,

321
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:21,200
enfeebled by
the vicious sack of 1204.

322
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:39,400
The city's rulers looked out with
fear as the Muslim armies advanced.

323
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,720
Slice by slice, the warlike Turks
were taking over what remained

324
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:50,560
of the Byzantine heartlands -
modern-day Turkey.

325
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:56,160
And everyone knew that
Constantinople was their target.

326
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:04,720
From the first Arab conquests,
the capture of Constantinople was
very important,

327
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:08,480
because of its strategic importance.

328
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:13,000
Constantinople is not merely
a city. It is the gate

329
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:19,120
between West and East.
It is the...the centre...

330
00:28:19,120 --> 00:28:25,040
of...exchanging trades
and goods and thoughts

331
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:32,640
between the Asian eastern world
and the European western world.

332
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:41,880
By 1452, there can't have been
a person in Constantinople unable
to imagine the horror ahead.

333
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:46,720
The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II was
moving with such ease that he built

334
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:50,680
this huge fort only a few miles away
from which to besiege the city.

335
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:58,560
I can imagine the palpitating terror
in the hearts

336
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:02,360
of those Christian monks only
four miles away in Constantinople,

337
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:08,680
when they heard the news in 1452
of the preparations being made here
at Rumeli Hisari by Mehmed.

338
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:12,440
It took him only four months to build
these staggering fortifications,

339
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:17,480
and the news must also have come
to them of this enormous 27ft gun,
the biggest cannon ever made,

340
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,320
being forged by some renegade
gunsmith called Urban,

341
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,320
so huge a man could apparently
crawl down its barrel.

342
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:30,840
Urban's gun was so huge, it made
these things look like pop-guns.

343
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:34,600
It could fire
a 1,200 pound ball a mile.

344
00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:39,200
Unfortunately,
it took three hours to load, and it
exploded after only six weeks,

345
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:44,960
but that didn't matter,
it was known as the great Turkish
bombard, and it was terrifying.

346
00:29:54,640 --> 00:30:01,520
And then, in 1453, there came what
the losers called the darkest
day in the history of the world.

347
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:07,320
The Bashi-bazouks, undisciplined
irregulars, finally penetrated
the walls of Constantinople,

348
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:12,040
and the Muslim hordes broke
down the doors of churches and
enslaved people on the spot.

349
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,840
The blood ran in the gutters
down to the Golden Horn.

350
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,840
And so many hundreds of severed heads
appeared in the water that a Venetian

351
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:26,800
called Barbaro said it reminded him
of rotten melons bobbing in the
canals of his native city.

352
00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:35,120
As the minarets sprouted
in the former capital
of the Christian empire,

353
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:40,760
Mehmed took the title Kayser i Rum,
Roman Caesar, a title that his

354
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:45,360
successors as Ottoman emperor
were to bear until 1922.

355
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:47,720
With Constantinople

356
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:52,600
in their hands, the Muslim forces
could advance up through the Balkans.

357
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:56,120
Within 100 years they were
to be at the gates of Vienna.

358
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,720
The prediction of Mohammed
had been fulfilled.

359
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:23,520
Constantinople had fallen, and as the
ripples of shock spread across Europe

360
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:27,360
there were two consequences
that Mehmed could not have foreseen.

361
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:31,280
The first was that Christian scholars
fled Byzantium, bearing with them the

362
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:35,360
Greek and Latin learning that was
to help accelerate the Renaissance.

363
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:41,720
And in Spain, news of the insult to
Christendom was explicitly invoked
by the Catholic monarchs, as they

364
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:46,840
set about completing the reconquest
and the final expulsion of the Moors.

365
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:51,600
If you imagine a Muslim-Christian
seesaw, then the Muslims had gone

366
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,600
up in the east, but they were
about to go down in the west.

367
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:05,960
SHE SINGS

368
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:11,240
We're in the Albaicin,
the old Muslim district of Granada.

369
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:26,600
This Gypsy song is about the Moors,
the Arab Muslims who conquered Spain

370
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:32,160
in the early 700s and who
ruled almost all of it for
more than three centuries.

371
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:37,120
The reason modern Spain is not a
Muslim country is because a kind

372
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:43,040
of crusade began here, as Christians
in the north increasingly made war
on Muslims in the south.

373
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:48,880
For two centuries, we have
parallel Christian-Muslim

374
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:53,480
conflicts taking place at
opposite ends of the Mediterranean.

375
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:58,520
Wars of religion,
for Spain and for the Holy Land.

376
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:09,760
Unlike the crusaders in
the Holy Land, the Spanish
crusaders were going to win.

377
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:18,600
Even in the modern era,
you can sense Spanish
pride in that Christian reconquest.

378
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:25,200
Go to Tarifa, the first place to be
conquered by the Muslims in 710,
and savour the triumphalism of this

379
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:31,960
plaque, commemorating the
recapture of the city in 1292
by the Christian king of Castile.

380
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:35,600
"The most noble, most loyal
and heroic city of Tarifa,"

381
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:39,960
it says, "was gained from
the Moors by Sancho IV,

382
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:41,560
"El Bravo," the Brave.

383
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:51,160
You may be asking yourself who this
brooding, bearded thug

384
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:54,280
behind me is, and he's called
Guzman the Good.

385
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:56,080
And what was so good about Guzman?

386
00:33:56,080 --> 00:34:02,880
Guzman showed an almost hysterical
defiance of the Moors, because in
1294, two years after Tarifa had been

387
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:06,640
recaptured by the Christians, the
Moors came again and laid siege to

388
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:11,000
it, and they caught Guzman's son and
paraded him beneath the battlements.

389
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:15,960
Guzman stood there and he threw
down his own dagger to the Moors,
whereupon they slit the throat

390
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:21,560
of his own son with Guzman's dagger,
and then, says the Spanish guidebook,

391
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:27,200
"They couldn't overcome the will of
the good Christian gentleman, and
at the sight of his determination

392
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:34,480
to guard for his king the castle,
the Africans lifted the siege
and went back to Morocco."

393
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:39,400
And when you consider the statue
of Guzman the Good was erected
in 1960,

394
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:46,000
it shows the continuing power of
Reconquista figures to serve as
symbols of Spanish nationhood.

395
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:50,400
A Spanish nationhood partly defined
in opposition to a Muslim foe.

396
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,760
That's Guzman good, Moors bad.

397
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:01,440
The Moors had been running
al-Andalus since the early 700s.

398
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:05,400
And they had treated Christians
and Jews as second class citizens.

399
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:09,000
Now the boot was on
the Christian foot.

400
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:16,800
Moors who stayed under Christian
rule were called mudejars,
"those permitted to remain".

401
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:21,080
And yet it's a measure of
the Christian admiration for
Moorish civilization that

402
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:25,000
they commissioned extraordinary new
masterpieces in the mudejar style.

403
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,280
This isn't the palace
of a Moorish sultan.

404
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:35,480
It was built by a Christian king
more than 100 years after
Seville had been captured.

405
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:43,040
The Muslims were culturally
superior,

406
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,600
so it was important for the
Christian population.

407
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:51,000
They were learning from
these Muslims also.

408
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,800
Spain is full of this
wonderful mudejar art everywhere.

409
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:57,200
So when they wanted
to build a house

410
00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:02,880
or to build a school or something
like this, they were looking

411
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:04,840
for Muslim workers.

412
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:19,320
If you're looking for signs of
cultural harmony and mutual respect,
there's this tomb of Ferdinand III,

413
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:22,240
conqueror of Muslim Cordoba
and Seville.

414
00:36:22,240 --> 00:36:29,640
And it has inscriptions not
only in Castilian and Latin,
but also in Hebrew and Arabic.

415
00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,840
And yet we mustn't kid ourselves.

416
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:44,800
The Christians were in the ascendancy
and they asserted their triumph
by stamping the signs of their

417
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:48,320
own religion on the sacred
buildings of their rivals.

418
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:55,880
All over al-Andalus,
mosques were turned into churches.

419
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:04,960
In Seville, this beautiful
minaret wasn't destroyed,
but adapted for Christian use.

420
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:09,160
You've got to ask yourself why the
Christian reconquerors of Seville

421
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,640
didn't just destroy
the entire mosque.

422
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:17,160
And the answer is that if you keep
the minaret, then you can express
your cultural dominance.

423
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:21,840
You add bells and balls and
weathercocks, and so you trump

424
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:27,240
the Islamic masterpiece, and you
say, "This isn't just a minaret,
it's a minaret with bells on."

425
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:37,720
Having taken charge,
the Christians now began to put the
squeeze on the Muslim population.

426
00:37:37,720 --> 00:37:42,680
There was increasing discrimination
against the mudejars, the Muslims
who stayed behind.

427
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:46,000
If you committed a crime against
a Muslim you paid a smaller fine

428
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:48,720
than if you committed
a crime against a Christian.

429
00:37:48,720 --> 00:37:53,640
There was no mixing in the bath
houses, Christian families were
expressly forbidden from employing

430
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:58,200
Jewish or Muslim nannies,
and in 1252 it was ordained

431
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:04,000
that Jews and Muslims should kneel
in the street if a Christian priest
came by carrying the communion wafer.

432
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:08,920
And in Aragon and Castile, anyone
caught trying to convert someone else

433
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:12,120
from Christianity to Islam
was put to death.

434
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:18,520
By 1300, the Christians had
reconquered almost all of Spain.

435
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:20,440
Only Granada remained.

436
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:28,400
For 200 years, the Granadan Moors
held out until a political
development changed the map of Spain.

437
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:32,560
Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella
of Castile and they were to unite

438
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:37,000
their kingdoms into a
new Spanish superpower.

439
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:42,280
The Pope called them Los Reyes
Catolicos, the Catholic Monarchs.

440
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:44,520
They laid siege to Granada.

441
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:47,680
In 1492, they formally took control.

442
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:53,040
It was here that Ferdinand
and Isabella came in 1492

443
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:56,280
and accepted
the final surrender of the Moors.

444
00:38:56,280 --> 00:39:00,760
And they agreed
that the Muslims could remain here
and continue to practice their faith.

445
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:03,080
The Jews, on the other hand,
were kicked out.

446
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:08,000
And as if that wasn't enough
history for one year,
Columbus was in the room,

447
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:12,160
witnessing the deal and preparing
to set off for you know where.

448
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:25,520
As he fled into exile in 1492,
the last Sultan of Granada,
Mohammed the 12th, or Boabdil,

449
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:32,520
looked back at the incomparable
palaces of this beautiful city and
emitted a plangent noise of regret,

450
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:37,160
known as the Moor's Last Sigh,
which his mother interrupted and

451
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:41,360
said, "You cry like a woman for
what you fail to defend as a man."

452
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,040
"Gee, thanks, Mum."

453
00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:01,680
Within a few years, the Catholic
monarchs were ratting on the deal

454
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:04,640
and compelling the Muslims
to change their faith.

455
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:04,720
They would spy on them
and even tear down their walls
to make sure they weren't

456
00:40:04,720 --> 00:40:09,000
secretly engaged in Muslim devotions,
or they would oblige them to hang
hams out outside their houses.

457
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:20,960
And when you consider the way the
Spanish diet is still a kind of
hymn to the many uses of the pig,

458
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:27,160
you have to wonder whether it's just
because they like a bocadillo con
jamon, or is it also because a great

459
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:33,840
big, greasy, hanging ham
is also a powerful symbol of
religious and cultural triumph?

460
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:49,560
Finally, the Moors were expelled,
all of them, ruthlessly.
There must have been countless

461
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:54,200
last sighs as Muslim families had
to pack up their bags and leave.

462
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:05,760
They are building a new state,
and they want to have
an homogenous state.

463
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:11,240
And the only element which can
unify this state is not any

464
00:41:11,240 --> 00:41:15,240
idea that we might have of
citizenship or rights or whatever.

465
00:41:15,240 --> 00:41:19,360
The only idea that can join and
put together this state is religion.

466
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:24,800
So let's get rid of this minority,
who are causing us

467
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:31,800
lots of troubles, "lots of
troubles", obviously
in inverted commas,

468
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:39,760
who are preventing,
you know, preventing the possibility
of setting up a unified state.

469
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,800
So religion is a useful political
tool because it helps you to

470
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:45,800
define yourself in opposition
to someone else?

471
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,200
That's absolutely correct.

472
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:56,840
They were expelled from the Iberian
peninsula in 1609.

473
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:03,080
A lot of them were really
true Christians, or they were
feeling like this.

474
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:10,440
It is true that a lot of them
were living Islam secretly,
but not all of them.

475
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:15,640
So a lot were expelled,
but they were Christians.

476
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:18,200
Christians after one,
or two centuries.

477
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:23,160
No wonder there are many
Moroccans who think of al-Andalus

478
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,480
as a lost Eden, a paradise
from which they were banished.

479
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,760
With the Muslims gone,
the Christians were keen to do

480
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:47,480
that trick of architectural trumping,
to prove that this was emphatically
a Catholic country.

481
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:52,120
Even though they preserved
the Great Mosque at Cordoba,

482
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:57,880
they built a Roman Catholic cathedral
slap bang in the middle of it.

483
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:01,360
An act of cultural
and religious vandalism

484
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:08,320
that was denounced by Charles V,
grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella,
the Holy Roman Emperor himself.

485
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:14,320
The religious identity
of this mosque/cathedral
is still contested today.

486
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:19,120
Muslims from all over the
world, they hear about

487
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:23,520
the mosque of Cordoba,
and they think it's a mosque.

488
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:28,680
Obviously, it has the
outward aspect of a mosque.

489
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:35,960
And they make this prostration
and then immediately security
come, and they get you.

490
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:41,160
One brother that came from Syria,
I told him, "Don't try to pray
because you will have problems."

491
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:43,320
But he did it.

492
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:48,920
And immediately come the security,
and told him,

493
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:50,560
"Look, God is there.

494
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,720
"God is there",
pointing the cathedral.

495
00:44:55,720 --> 00:45:03,160
They may think that if they open
for individual prayers there will
come a lot of Muslims to pray.

496
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:08,480
It will show that the mosque
is full and the church is empty.

497
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:20,840
Today, thanks partly to the
Great Mosque and the Alhambra,

498
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:23,880
Andalusia is one of the most visited
parts of Spain.

499
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:29,520
But in the minds of some extremists,
the glories of Muslim Spain
are a constant reminder

500
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:33,800
of a golden medieval time
when Muslims were in charge.

501
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,840
'One of Osama Bin Laden's sidekicks,

502
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:42,920
'called Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently
demanded the return of Andalusia.'

503
00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:50,040
This proclamation about recovering
al-Andalus, in fact it's against us.

504
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:56,720
Against the Muslims.
Because the Muslims who are here,
we don't have to recover anything.

505
00:45:56,720 --> 00:45:59,080
We are here. We are born
here, we are Muslims here.

506
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:04,920
We are from this land that
allowed us to be Muslims.

507
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:10,240
Why has he to make this
proclamation?

508
00:46:10,240 --> 00:46:12,240
To make the society against us.

509
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:21,760
The 2004 Madrid bombings
were explicitly said to be
reprisals for the Reconquista.

510
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:27,360
People wonder about the mindset
of men who can slaughter
191 innocent commuters,

511
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:32,840
and they conclude that we're
dealing with something primitive,
illogical, irrational, medieval.

512
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:38,200
Which is an irony,
because when medieval Spain was ruled

513
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:43,600
by the Muslims, it was the very home
of reason and logic.

514
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:45,680
Who was the father
of Western thought?

515
00:46:45,680 --> 00:46:50,840
Who first codified the laws of
logic and said if A then B but not C?

516
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:53,800
It was Aristotle.
And yet for centuries, the great

517
00:46:53,800 --> 00:47:01,200
Greek philosopher was lost to western
memory, conserved only by the scribes
of the caliph in Baghdad.

518
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:08,440
And then that learning
was transported by the Arabs around
the Mediterranean, to Cordoba,

519
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:16,200
where it was revived by this great
polymath and scholar behind me, Ibn
Rushd, known as Averroes, a doctor

520
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:23,400
and astronomer, who at the age of 27
discovered a new star, and the author
of voluminous, colossal commentaries

521
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:28,640
on Aristotle, on everything from
the being of the beautiful to
the sex life of the cuttlefish.

522
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:32,920
And, of course, the Aristotelian
message Averroes transmitted

523
00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:37,440
was deeply controversial for
religious conservatives of all kinds.

524
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:41,200
If you make reason co-equal with
faith then you're paving the way for

525
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:48,080
the advance of scientific secularism,
and it's secularism that gets up the
nose of people like Osama Bin Laden.

526
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:56,120
And yet you could make the case that
it's Western secularism that was
originated by that man, Averroes.

527
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:05,400
In the 13th century, Muslim
fundamentalists banned Averroes in
a victory of religion over reason.

528
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:09,760
They were also burned at
the doors of the Sorbonne.

529
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:11,520
Of course, yes, yes.

530
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:15,520
You know, the Catholic
fundamentalism too at
that time rejected him.

531
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:17,480
But there it took roots.

532
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:20,880
In the Islamic world, you know,
it got completely eclipsed.

533
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:31,240
Now, very often, those Arabs who go
back and reflect on this,
they see the

534
00:48:31,240 --> 00:48:39,440
destruction of the works of Averroes
and his eclipse in the Muslim
world and the Arab world

535
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:42,600
as the dividing moment.

536
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:47,920
And the evolution of Averroeism,
in the late Middle Ages in Europe,

537
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:51,280
this is now very much regarded
as the turning point.

538
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:55,920
And hence there is also a movement
among intellectuals and thinkers

539
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:58,600
to try to retrieve the rationalism

540
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:02,760
of someone like Averroes.

541
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,000
And hopefully it will prepare

542
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:10,200
the ground for, you know,
a more hospitable

543
00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:17,800
appreciation and appropriation
of the scientific approach to the
world, the scientific paradigm.

544
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:29,000
The Islamic world failed to compete
with the rise of the West.

545
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:33,200
And the way I would put it is that
in the west the two major events

546
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:36,760
were the rise of capitalism
and the scientific revolution.

547
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:40,480
And the combination of those two,

548
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:47,800
where capital had a stake in
science, and science had a stake
in capital, and the amalgam that

549
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:55,760
emerged is, I think, the prime mover
of Western rise and dominance.

550
00:49:57,400 --> 00:50:00,840
In the last three centuries,
the West has been considerably

551
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:05,880
more successful, economically,
scientifically, politically,
than the Muslim world.

552
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:14,000
And yet we forget that
Western Europeans also benefited
from one colossal slice of luck.

553
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:25,440
It was from here in Seville that in
1492 Christopher Columbus sailed out
down the Guadalquivir.

554
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:29,760
Where did he think he was going? My
friends, he was not going to America.

555
00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:34,240
You have to remember the geopolitics
of the time, the centuries-old arm

556
00:50:34,240 --> 00:50:39,800
wrestle between Christianity
and Islam about the shores of
the Mediterranean. This is 1492.

557
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:45,680
Granada has finally been recaptured,
it's the end of Moorish Spain,
and yet in the Holy Land,

558
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:52,240
the Muslims are still in charge, and
Muslim powers increasingly dominate
the trade routes to the East.

559
00:50:52,240 --> 00:50:55,440
In Columbus's imagination
there's only one thing for it.

560
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:58,560
As he tells his patrons,
Ferdinand and Isabella,

561
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:03,440
he's going to find the semi-mythical
pro-Christian Grand Khan of Cathay.

562
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:07,360
He's going to forge a new alliance in
the east against the sect of Mohammed

563
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:15,840
and all idolatries and heresies,
and he's going to use all the gold
he can find to recapture Jerusalem.

564
00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:17,680
There's no getting round it.

565
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:24,160
If you read the stated
ambitions of the Admiral himself,
Christopher Columbus was a crusader.

566
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:40,880
There is a great deal of received
wisdom as to why the West rose
and the Muslim world stagnated.

567
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,160
On the one side, there was
the rise of the bourgeoisie,

568
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:51,040
banking, democracy,
female emancipation and secularism.

569
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:57,240
On the other there,
was political sclerosis
and a fatal religious conservatism.

570
00:51:57,240 --> 00:52:01,440
But we should not minimize
the huge economic impact

571
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:07,440
of the New World gold and silver
which Columbus brought back here
to the Golden Tower of Seville.

572
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:16,480
When they consider these reversals of
history, with the West now dominant,
it's no wonder that some Muslims are

573
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:20,680
apt to engage in
anguished soul searching.

574
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,520
There is a lot of self pity

575
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:25,680
involved in this.

576
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:31,760
And this is complicated by the fact
that our own self-image is
of conquerors,

577
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:34,480
history-makers,

578
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,200
pace-setters and so on.

579
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:43,160
At the same time, when you
look at the surrounding

580
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:48,160
realities you see that the Muslim
world is very much on

581
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:52,880
the margin of contemporary history
and modern history and so on.

582
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:59,680
And the clash of this image of
yourself with the reality creates
politics of resentment,

583
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:04,760
and dangerous political
action, instead of systematically

584
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:08,560
thought-out responses
to the world and so on.

585
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:10,160
What's the way out of this, Sadik?

586
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:12,800
Do you think that the
Islamicists can win?

587
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:15,040
No, I don't think so. No way.

588
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:21,400
The reason why they are fighting
so hard and so fiercely is because,

589
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:24,520
at least for the last 150 years,

590
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:29,880
they have a strong sense that Islam
has been receding,

591
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:34,400
at least in the control
of the public sphere of

592
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:36,520
practically every Muslim country.

593
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:45,640
Control of the army, of the
education system, of the media,

594
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:50,560
and so on, has completely gone
out of their hands.

595
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:52,480
If they continue losing like that,

596
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:55,240
then what could prevent,

597
00:53:55,240 --> 00:54:00,680
would prevent, Islam from becoming
as ethereal,

598
00:54:00,680 --> 00:54:06,320
as inconsequential, unimportant as
Christianity has become in Europe?

599
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:13,480
Some Muslims are unquestionably
angered and alarmed at the idea

600
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:20,240
that Islam could wither away,
superseded by globalization
and the temptations of secularism.

601
00:54:20,240 --> 00:54:24,600
On the other hand, some Muslims are
perfectly ready to welcome democracy.

602
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:27,400
They just don't want any
lessons from the West.

603
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:29,320
What do you think we mean
by democracy?

604
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:31,920
Do you guys know what
you mean by democracy?

605
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:33,480
They just use the word.

606
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:36,800
Well, we mean universal suffrage,
people being able to vote

607
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:39,400
for governments they want
and then being able to kick out.

608
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:42,080
I don't know if that's what
you mean by democracy.

609
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:44,800
I don't mean you.
Well, that's what I mean.

610
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:47,280
I don't know what the
West means by democracy.

611
00:54:47,280 --> 00:54:48,760
Hypocrisy.

612
00:54:48,760 --> 00:54:51,960
Hypocrisy? Take the elections
that happened in Palestine.

613
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:53,640
You know? Yes.

614
00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:58,120
They wanted us to vote, we voted.
They didn't respect our vote.

615
00:54:58,120 --> 00:55:00,320
Exactly. So let's not discuss
democracy.

616
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:03,440
No, no, no, no, no.
That's a very good point.

617
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:07,520
I would love to see the Arab world
becoming a very democratic world,

618
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:10,800
but it's very problematic when
the West tries to impose it.

619
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:14,800
And maybe it's because of our
previous experiences with the West,

620
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:19,560
because of the crusades,
the trust is just not there.
And this is a problem, actually.

621
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:23,240
When the US says,
"We want to impose democracy",

622
00:55:23,240 --> 00:55:24,880
everyone just refuses it.

623
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:30,880
Even if people believe in democracy
here, and it's an idea coming from
the West, they go against it.

624
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:38,000
This is not Europe.

625
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:41,720
We are not so advanced as you, now.

626
00:55:41,720 --> 00:55:45,160
And you know that in
the Middle Ages you suffered much

627
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:52,040
more severe things until
you reached your present status.

628
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:58,160
We need many reformations
on many levels.

629
00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:01,040
First of all, the political one.

630
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:03,760
We are suffering too much
politically, you know.

631
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:17,920
How did we get to the point
where two great civilisations,

632
00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:21,280
Christian and Muslim, are so divided
and so unequal?

633
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:29,160
Now we have this thing
called the Clash of Civilisations,

634
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:33,920
in which Western polemicists
say the Muslims have to snap
out of their medieval mindset,

635
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:38,720
and Muslims take great offence at
anything that could be construed
as an insult to their religion.

636
00:56:38,720 --> 00:56:44,880
And yet, when you look around
this city we're in today,
Cairo, a place of 20 million people,

637
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:52,040
some of them living in unimaginable
poverty, you realise it's not just
religion, it's the economy, stupid.

638
00:56:52,040 --> 00:56:58,040
These people can see with their
satellite dishes all the prosperity
from which they feel excluded,

639
00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:05,280
and that sense of exclusion
and resentment can be channelled
into religious resentment as well.

640
00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:11,280
It's not the religious differences
that are themselves the causes
of violence.

641
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:16,120
It's the manipulation of those
differences by clerics and
politicians who should know better.

642
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:24,000
I don't think we're going to sort out
the competing claims of Islam

643
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:27,000
or Christianity to be
the superior monotheism.

644
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:30,400
But I do confidently predict
that there will come a time when

645
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:36,480
the doctrinal differences
between Islam and Christianity
will again seem irrelevant.

646
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:43,240
And if that happens,
then we can begin the process
of abandoning stereotypes,

647
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:47,520
dropping mutual incomprehension,
learning each other's languages,

648
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:51,640
and rediscovering a mutual respect
and interest in each other's
religions.

649
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:58,440
And what feels now like the clash of
civilizations will turn out to have

650
00:57:58,440 --> 00:58:04,800
been the birth pangs of a single,
tolerant, global civilization,
of which we saw the first inklings,

651
00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:10,720
however imperfect, in the unity
of the ancient Mediterranean world
or medieval Cordoba.

652
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:18,520
If we really don't have the wit to
escape from history, then let's at
least try and relive the good bits.

653
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:28,960
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654
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:31,600
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