Reddit mentions of Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/libyan-peace-rally-slams-terrorism-offers-apology-for-attack_n_1881798.html

That made headlines.

Read this book and it shows that even though the crusades have happened such a long time ago, the echoes are still being felt today.
http://www.amazon.com/Holy-War-Crusades-Impact-Todays/dp/0385721404

I would read Karen Armstrong's Holy War to get a sense of the rich history of Jewish-Arab coexistence and the wide context of Western aggression against the Arab world.

Karen Armstrong's Holy War about the Crusades and their impact on the modern western world, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Would highly recommend.

I don't think so. If you want an idea of how Muslim extremism foments, a really good resource would be Karen Armstrong's "Holy War", which you can get for just over $5 on Amazon.

The way I see, it, whether or not you consider yourself a Marxist, all struggles are forms of class struggle. So when people live in poverty and isolation, they do target perceived enemies--say, local elites or foreign exploiters who do not share their values, and they do rally around a commonality--in this case, religion. While this extremism is often perturbed, the basic message and cause of the actual energy is not "we are right about god and they are wrong"--it's more along the lines of "they are doing something wrong, and our religion happens to oppose it, so it's a good place to unify ourselves". Nowhere is this more clear for Islam than Koran 9:34-35 in a surah entitled "The Repentance":

> There are those who bury gold and silver and spend it not in the Way of Allah: announce unto them a most grievous chastisement. On the Day when heat will be produced out of that (wealth) in the fire of Hell, and with it will be branded their foreheads, their flanks, and their backs–”This is the (treasure) which you buried for yourselves: taste you, then, the (treasures) you buried!”

It should be mentioned here that "not spent in the way of Allah" basically means "hoarding money and not paying alms", in accordance with Muslim faith.

Recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0385721404?pc_redir=1404163101&robot_redir=1
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Dont let the title fool you. It isnt about the crusades alone Karen Armstrong gives the history of the crusades while in parallel giving the history of the holy land's mondern conflict. She weaves them how wars faught hundreds of years ago still have an effect on the tumultuous landb of palestine.