It should not have taken centuries to teach the Crusades fairly

Louis IX of France disembarking at Carthage during the Eighth crusade, 1270. Getty

In the year 1212, a failed religious movement known as the Children’s Crusade began in Europe with the purpose of recovering Jerusalem from the Muslims. More than eight centuries later, the history of the Crusades as a whole has been extensively documented, with certain narratives having become set in popular imagination. But those narratives are not always rooted in actual historical texts, which can cause significant issues related to racism and cultural respect, both in the West and the Arab world.

Recently, I was asked for advice on how to teach about the Crusades. The complaint from several parents had been that the school their children were in was teaching a European-centric view of these campaigns, which posited the Crusaders as somehow heroic, and the Arabs – of different religions – as somehow less human. The complaint may have been justifiable in any school in the West; the offence was compounded by the fact it was a western-run international school in the Arab world. Indeed, it was one of the many countries that the Crusaders attacked.

Naturally, the parents were upset, and they requested recommendations of books they or their children could read that might correct this erroneous reading of history, where the crusaders are framed as anything but racist and religious zealots who slaughtered scored of their own co-religionists and peoples of other faiths.

Great swathes of the Middle East were devastated by the Crusades. Remi Benali/Corbis

But that’s a piecemeal approach that does not really get to the heart of the issue, which is how we conceive of education – especially against the backdrop of multicultural and multi-religious societies – and the need to recognise that how we teach should not only take into account to whom we are teaching. Rather, it should also note our own biases and prejudices.

I remember being a young child in another Arab country, in another international school, where my English teacher set an essay question to my class entitled: “British is best – discuss.” I took the essay question to my father, an Englishman from Sussex, who was infuriated that such a question had been prescribed, particularly to such a group of students, nearly all of whom were not even British. But to my recollection, the teacher was never sanctioned.

Of course, there are many books that teach more of a rooted history of the Crusades, as well as comparative perspectives. These include The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades, by Paul Cobbs, a contemporary American historian; The Book of Contemplation, by Ibn Munqidh, a Syrian Muslim historian in that era; The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese Christian writer; or The Crusades, by Carole Hillenbrand, an English academic. It would have been difficult to gather a positive impression of the Crusaders after reading any of these works.

But it is not simply a matter of parents reading these books and talking things over with their children; nor is it even sufficient that school teachers set such books in their curriculum to give a wider perspective to their students. Rather, there is a broader issue here, which relates to the wider privileging of white European historical narratives over all others.

A painting depicting King Richard I (1157-1199) in Palestine during the King's Crusade, an attempt by European leaders to reconquer what was known as the Holy Land. Getty

Invariably, western-accredited international schools are not actually “international” in terms of curriculums; rather, they are predominantly western in what they teach, and they seldom combine a deep awareness of and engagement with local languages and cultures. Hence the bizarre situation of an English class setting a group of predominantly Arab students the essay question “British is best – discuss”.

Ironically, the situation might be rather different in the West itself, including in my native UK. Many British academics and teachers have recognised the need to “decolonise” the curriculum, which emerged as a concept following the 2015 Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Cape Town – a city with a long history of opposition to racism on multiple levels. The educational movement recognises that how we have taught history in the past has been an integral part of the groundwork for colonial enterprises; and that the way we teach history in the present and the future can either empower populations, or prepare them for being exploited.

It’s not about erasing western history, which should be taught as any other; rather, as Edinburgh University professor history Rowena Arshad notes, it is “to situate the histories and knowledges that do not originate from the West in the context of imperialism, colonialism and power and to consider why these have been marginalised and decentred”. Part of that, indeed, is to broaden the curriculum – but it is also about questioning the biases we have, and ensuring we don’t pass down such biases.

There is no such thing as an educational system that neutrally transmits knowledge and culture – rather, there is always an active component from the teachers themselves, which interprets history and colours the way in which the student will receive it.

The UK-based race equality think tank Runnymede Trust wrote last year: “Perspectives that have developed in a society with a well-established colonial legacy are not easy to displace.” More than ever, we need our teachers to be invested in fostering critical thinking. This is so that they understand the biases of those who came before them; so that they appreciate the biases they themselves might have; and so that our students and children going forward are able to contextualise what they learn.

It’s been a long time coming, but there’s no time to start like the present.