Crusades: A good thing

So says Chrisopher Howse, who points out the absurdity of Ridley Scott's making the hero of Kingdom of Heaven an agnostic.

Sir Ridley's problem is that he links agnosticism and tolerance as joint forces of good in his film, and he makes true believers - either Muslim or Christian - baddies. That is an impossible historical pill to swallow. And - groan - the Knights Templar (with their baggage from The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) become the "Right-wing or Christian fundamentalists of their day", in Sir Ridley's words.

"If we could just take God out of the equation," says Sir Ridley, like John Lennon in Imagine, "there'd be no f---ing problem." A more realistic view of history requires less retrospective fantasy and more brain work. It means forcing our heads round to see what motivated men and women centuries ago. Try thinking the unthinkable - that the Crusaders were right, and that we should be grateful to them.

Either way, I'd venture the crusades were no picnic for the Jews.

In northern Europe, the crusades crashed waves of violence upon the Jewish communities. Jewish people felt the brunt of the religious fervour that sent the Crusaders into the Holy Land, says Prof Anna Sapir Abulafia of the University of Cambridge.

Not only were they the most visible non-Christian community, says Prof Abulafia, but they also suffered because they generally weren't riding off on crusade themselves and weren't "part of all this non-Christian propaganda and hype".