Actual Data and Actual Crusades

Last updated on: September 5, 2026 at 11:50 am by Dan Peterson

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Actual Data and Actual Crusades 2026-09-05T11:50:06-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Fisher Towers and the La Sal Mountains, near Moab (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Several years ago, I read John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007). Sadly, Professor Esposito passed away in July from cancer; it’s a serious loss.

I’ve previously shared here some of the passages that I marked during my reading of Who Speaks for Islam? and, in view of recent, umm, discussions that I’ve seen regarding Islam and Muslims, I think that I’ll share some of them yet again.

Very plainly, Muslims and Islam have a public relations problem. That’s obvious. And it’s also obvious why. There is simply no denying — and I certainly don’t deny — that the Islamic world is profoundly dysfunctional in many ways and that its dysfunctions have done grave damage not only within it but well beyond it. However, it’s important that we accurately understand what’s going on among Muslims. Gross distortions and misperceptions won’t help us to cope with the problem. In this passage, Esposito and Mogahed describe the massive survey that undergirds their important book:

The religion of Islam and the mainstream Muslim majority have been conflated with the beliefs and actions of an extremist minority. For example, a 2006 USA Today/Gallup poll . . . found 44% of Americans saying that Muslims are too extreme in their religious beliefs. Nearly one-quarter of Americans, 22%, say they would not want a Muslim as a neighbor; less than half believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States. . . .

The vital missing piece among the many voices weighing in on this question is the actual views of everyday Muslims. With all that is at stake for the West and Muslim societies — indeed for the world’s future — it is time to democratize the debate.

Who speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think is about this silenced majority. This book is the product of a mammoth, multiyear Gallup research study. Between 2001 and 2007, Gallup conducted tens of thousands of hour-long, face-to-face interviews with residents of more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have substantial Muslim populations. The sample represents residents young and old, educated and illiterate, female and male, and from urban and rural settings. With the random sampling method that Gallup used, results are statistically valid with a plus or minus 3-point margin of error. In totality, we surveyed a sample representing more than 90% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, making this the largest, most comprehensive study of contemporary Muslims ever done. (x-xi)

And here are some further passages that caught my attention in the book:

In a December 2005 Gallup Poll of American households, when Americans were asked what they most admire about Muslim societies, the answer “nothing” was the most frequent response. The second most frequent response? “I don’t know.” Combined, these two responses represented the majority (57%) of Americans surveyed. (1)

When we asked respondents in 10 predominantly Muslim countries how they view a number of nations, the attributes they most associate with the United States are: ruthless (68%), scientifically and technologically advanced (68%), aggressive (66%), conceited (65%), and morally decadent (64%). (84)

When Gallup asked the open-ended question: “In your own words, what do you resent most about the West?” the most frequent response across all [predominantly Muslim] countries among moderates and radicals is “sexual and cultural promiscuity,” followed by “ethical and moral corruption” and “hatred of Muslims.” (88)

Reflecting the importance of Islam, the most frequent response given by both groups [radicals and moderates] to the questions about what the West can do to improve relations is: more respect, consideration, and understanding of Islam as a religion; not underestimating the status of Arab/Muslim countries; being fair and less prejudiced. (91)

The town of Moab lies in the southeastern portion of Utah.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

Here are some striking additional survey results:

A recent study shows that only 46% of Americans think that “bombing and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians” are “never justified,” while 24% believe these attacks are “often or sometimes justified.”

Contrast this with data taken the same year from some of the largest majority Muslim nations, in which 74% of respondents in Indonesia agree that terrorist acts are “never justified”; in Pakistan, that figure is 86%; in Bangladesh, 81%; and in Iran, 80%.

Similarly, 6% of the American public thinks that attacks in which civilians are targets are “completely justified.” As points of comparison, in both Lebanon and Iran, this figure is 2%, and in Saudi Arabia, it’s 4%. In Europe, Muslims in Paris and London are no more likely than their counterparts in the general public to believe attacks on civilians are justified and are as likely to reject violence, even for a “noble cause.” (95)

I found the following an interesting example of how mutual incomprehension hurts us:

Diagnosing terrorism as a symptom and Islam as the problem, though popular in some circles, is flawed and has serious risks with dangerous repercussions. It confirms radical beliefs and fears, alienates the moderate Muslim majority, and reinforces a belief that the war against global terrorism is really war against Islam. Whether one is radical or moderate, this negative attitude is a widespread perception.

In an International Herald Tribune op-ed piece, Fawaz Gerges recounted an interview he had with an Islamic leader in Egypt, Abed al-Rahim Barakat, who echoed the pervasive perception among Muslims that the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are wars against Islam. “President Bush himself used the word ‘crusade’ to describe his war on terror,” Barakat told Gerges. When Gerges responded, “It was a slip of tongue,” Barakat insisted, “No, it was a Freudian slip. He revealed what he feels deep inside.” (96)

In the neighborhood of Moab, Utah (photo by Steven Damron)

I’m personally rather confident that President Bush’s use of the term crusade for his declared war against terrorism wasn’t in any way an invocation of the medieval crusades. Our English word crusade definitely goes back to the word cross. It ultimately derives from the Latin word crux, meaning “cross,” which takes the genitive form crucis. In Medieval Latin, the term cruciata meant “marked with a cross,” and then into the Spanish word cruzada and the French word croisade, both referring to an expedition of people marked with a cross.

But that background is easy to forget when we in English talk about a crusade, say, for racial equality or a crusade against drug abuse or a man’s crusade against injustice or a moral crusade against poverty or a crusading journalist who fought against a person’s wrongful conviction of a crime he didn’t commit. When we’re referring to a long, passionate, and determined effort to achieve a goal or to fight against a social wrong, we’re not thinking at all about religion.

If you look at it from the perspective of that Islamic leader in Egypt, Abed al-Rahim Barakat, it would have been virtually impossible for him, having seen Arabic accounts of President Bush’s summoning to a “crusade against terrorism,” not to think of the medieval Crusades. Whereas anybody who doesn’t think etymologically can easily miss the word cross in the term crusade, it cannot be missed in that term’s Arabic equivalent:

The Arabic translation for crusade is حملة صليبية (hamla salibiyya; something like “cross-bearing campaign”), and the plural crusades is generally rendered as الحروب الصليبية (al-hurub as-salibiyya; “the cross-bearing wars”). A crusader is a صَلِيبِيّ (salibiy) or “cross-bearer.”

The medieval Crusades were explicitly religious. And they were expressly aimed at Muslims. Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in France on 27 November 1095, promising a complete remission of sins for anybody who died while crusading — very much like medieval Muslim notions of jihad. He concluded his speech with the exclamation “Deus vult!” (“God wills it!”), which became the rallying cry throughout the Crusades. (Incidentally, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has Deus vult! tattooed on his arm, and a large square “Jerusalem cross” surrounded by four smaller “Jerusalem crosses” — a medieval Crusader symbol — tattooed on his chest. The message that his tattoos might well be sending to Muslims isn’t hard to guess.)

I believe that this wall of red rock is within the city limits of Moab, but I could be wrong. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

But back to Esposito and Mogahed. One of the charges often leveled against the Islamic world is its oppression of women. This charge is not without merit. But the situation is more nuanced than many in the West recognize, and it must be remembered that The Islamic World isn’t a monolith:

a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea (102)

The valedictorians of Cairo’s elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.

These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self-reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52%), Egypt (34%), Saudi Arabia (32%), and Lebanon (37%) with postsecondary educations. In the United Arab Emirates and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries — as well as in non-Muslim countries — Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8% and 13% in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4% in Brazil, or 11% in the Czech Republic. (103)

According to the UNESCO 2005 Gender and Development report, the ratio of women to men enrolled in secondary education in 2001-2002 was 100% or higher in Jordan, Algeria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh. This compares with only 77% in Turkey, a staunchly secular nation [at the time of writing] often assumed in the West to be ahead of its neighbors in the arena of gender development, or 74% in India. The gender gap in these nations is higher than in Saudi Arabia, which boasts an 89% ratio of women to men enrolled in secondary education, according to the U.N. report.

Despite these hopeful statistics, women’s basic education is still lagging in some countries. For example, in Yemen, women’s literacy is only 28% versus 70% among men; in Pakistan, it is 28% versus 53% for men. These sad findings, however, are not unique to Islamic nations nor do they represent the entire Muslim world; women’s literacy rates in Iran and Saudi Arabia are 70% and as high as 85% in Jordan and Malaysia. (104-105)

Posted from Moab, Utah

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