Crusades imagery actively shapes European Islamophobia more powerfully than in America

Evidence

Unlike in the United States, the ideas and imagery of the Crusades, those original holy wars that stretched from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, permeate the psyche of Europe. They permeate its legislative discussions and popular debates and inform academic discourse and judicial determinations throughout the continent. The imprint of the Crusades is not only prominent, but dynamic, alive, and ongoing. The Crusades stain the psyche of discourses popular and political in France, Belgium, and the rest of Europe, as prominently as the stained glass of the ancient churches that abound on the continent. Islamophobia is embedded deep into Europe’s psychological fabric, and its architecture more firm and fixed than its American counterpart. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 831

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to Iftikhar’s account for the global synthesis view of Islamophobia the reader is assembling.