Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism are not modern phenomena born in isolation. Rather, they emerged as twin ideologies nearly a thousand years ago, during the era of the Crusades. From the very beginning, the targeting of Muslims and the native population of Palestine—predominantly Arab and overwhelmingly Muslim—was rooted in a violent theological and colonial impulse that still persists in modern forms, including Israel’s settler-colonial project and Western-backed military campaigns.

The First Crusade, launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II, marked one of the earliest moments when Muslims and the indigenous people of Palestine became enemies of European Christendom. Palestine, then home to Arabic-speaking Christians, Muslims, and Jews, became the symbolic epicenter of a “Holy War.” The land was framed not only as sacred but as one unlawfully held by so-called “infidels,” a charge which justified genocidal violence and mass displacement. In the eyes of the Crusaders, the crime of the Palestinians was that they were not Latin Christians.

This pattern of conquest established a precedent: native populations, especially Muslims, were seen as unworthy of political or religious sovereignty. The Crusaders, upon taking Jerusalem, slaughtered tens of thousands—Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jews alike. These actions weren’t merely religiously motivated; they also laid the groundwork for Europe’s first settler-colonial endeavor in the East. The Franks established a Latinate Kingdom in Jerusalem, expelling native........

© The Spine Times