The Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity. The American writer Robert Spencer, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, told the conference that the mistaken view had taken hold in the West as well as the Arab world that the Crusades were “an unprovoked attack by Europe on the Islamic world”. In reality, however, Christians had been persecuted after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.

Times, 20 March 2006