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Al Jazeerah article praises the Crusaders as “Christian men of action”

This is a guest post by Seismic Shock

This week Al Jazeerah (a London magazine not affiliated with the Qatari TV station of the same name) has published Stuart Littlewood’s article on Christianity and the ‘Holy Land’.

Littlewood, methinks, is rather critical of the likes of Seismic Shock and others in bringing attention to antisemitism within Christian circles, and disastrously slips into the Livingstone Formulation:

Criticise Israel in the US and you’ll lose your job. Criticise Israel in the UK and the Jewish establishment and their quasi-Christian friends hurl accusations of anti-semitism.

And oh dear! how quickly the author moves from using the Livingstone Formulation to praising medieval Crusaders:

Back in the days of the Crusades the Archbishops of Canterbury included Christian men of action like Baldwin and Hubert Walter, who donned armour and took up their sword to fight the good fight (as they saw it) for their belief in the Holy City and what it stood for. Times are different now, but unless the Western Church shows firmer leadership and more grit it will lose the Holy Land and more of its followers will renounce their baptism.

Steady on, Stuart Littlewood, there must be another way!