Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 13
Rushdie: Haunted By His Unholy Ghosts 13 human nature. There was so much courage and so little honour, so much devotion and so little understanding. High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self-righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Spirit. ’ (A History of the Crusades; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1965; pp. 480) C RUSADES, COLON I ALISM A N D I M PER I ALISM Even after the Christian nations of the West had driven the Muslims out of Europe, the British and the French began to in- vade their lands, during the 19th century. For example, in 1830 the French colonised Algiers, and in 1839 the British colonised Aden; between them they took over Tunisia (1881), Egypt (1882), the Sudan (1898) and Libya and Morocco (1912). In 1920, even though they had made pledges to the Arab countries that they would have their independence after the defeat of the Turkish Empire, Britain and France carved up the Middle East between them into mandates and protectorates. There has been a lot of debate and controversy over the asso- ciation of the Crusades with European Colonialism and Christian missionary work; the West has been reluctant to accept this view, but some orientalists and Western writers have been honest enough to concede on this point. For example, Montgomery Watt in Muslim-Christian Encounters writes : ‘The historically minded Christian today is not proud of the Crusades, and might allow that there was an element of colonialism in them. ’ (p. 82). Karen Armstrong, an English writer and broadcaster and a former Roman Catholic nun, is more forthright and sides with the popular Muslim view in her book Muhammad, A Western Attempt To Understand Islam: