The Key Problems

1. The article promotes the flawed version of history that is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants to hear preached alongside a movie about September 11 th .

The inaccurate view that the Crusades were unprovoked Christian European imperialism ignores the previous four centuries of Muslim expansion at the expense of the Christian Middle East, North Africa, Mediterranean islands, and Iberia . These regions included modern-day Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Spain, and Portugal. Jerusalem fell in 638 A.D. and Cyprus in 647, and Islamic forces crossed over from North Africa into Spain in 711. Muslim forces also invaded modern-day France, but were defeated by Charles Martel in 732. Click here for a map of the Islamic caliphate.

The point here is not to paint one side as the hero and one as the villain, but to recognize that the Islamic and Western worlds have historically more often been in conflict than at peace. The relative calm that marked the 19th- and 20th-centuries was the exception, not the rule.

2. The article is replete with factual errors; clearly, neither a history book nor a timeline were consulted.

Constantinople was not retaken by the Ottoman Empire in 1389. It had never been a Muslim city until its fall in 1453.

The Ottomans did not win decisively at the battle of Vienna in 1683. In fact, they were decisively defeated for the second time (they had previously failed in 1529).

After 1683, the Ottoman Empire and Europe were not “two equally powerful sides,” nor was there “a widening gulf” between them. The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, marking their defeat in Austria, was the beginning of their decline. Soon, they would become known as “the sick man of Europe” and an ally of the West against Russia. Click here for a map of the Ottoman Empire.

3. The article misrepresents the nature of jihad.

While it is true that jihad has many different and mostly peaceful meanings in the Islamic world, it is also a fact that jihad as holy war has been an important mainstream concept since the founding of Islam.

4. The article does not explain why al Qaeda attacked us.

As a follower of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam and adherent to Wahhabism (the fundamentalist sect of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia and preached in Islamic schools around the world), Osama bin Laden seeks the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate (or empire) stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Al Qaeda's ideology unites disparate regional terrorist groups, who seek the overthrow of their own governments, under a global umbrella. Bin Laden and those like him believe they are engaged in a defensive jihad. Terrorist attacks in Britain , Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and elsewhere, alongside foiled plots in Australia, Singapore, Italy, Germany, and France, demonstrate that the United States is not their only target. President Bush was exactly right when, in the aftermath of September 11th , he told the American people, “They stand against us, because we stand in their way.”

5. The article is a disservice to those whose memory we should honor and to those serving on the frontlines in a global war we did not instigate. We need clarity at home if we are to win.