From Crusades to Gaza: The Shared Roots of Islamophobia and Anti-Palestinianism

Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism are not modern phenomena born in isolation. Rather, they emerged as twin ideologies nearly a thousand years ago, during the era of the Crusades. From the very beginning, the targeting of Muslims and the native population of Palestine—predominantly Arab and overwhelmingly Muslim—was rooted in a violent theological and colonial impulse that still persists in modern forms, including Israel’s settler-colonial project and Western-backed military campaigns.

The First Crusade, launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II, marked one of the earliest moments when Muslims and the indigenous people of Palestine became enemies of European Christendom. Palestine, then home to Arabic-speaking Christians, Muslims, and Jews, became the symbolic epicenter of a “Holy War.” The land was framed not only as sacred but as one unlawfully held by so-called “infidels,” a charge which justified genocidal violence and mass displacement. In the eyes of the Crusaders, the crime of the Palestinians was that they were not Latin Christians.

This pattern of conquest established a precedent: native populations, especially Muslims, were seen as unworthy of political or religious sovereignty. The Crusaders, upon taking Jerusalem, slaughtered tens of thousands—Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jews alike. These actions weren’t merely religiously motivated; they also laid the groundwork for Europe’s first settler-colonial endeavor in the East. The Franks established a Latinate Kingdom in Jerusalem, expelling native populations and importing Christian settlers under an apartheid-like system.

Centuries later, with the rise of European Orientalism and white Christian supremacy in the 18th and 19th centuries, anti-Muslim sentiment took on new forms. Islamophobia became embedded in Western political and intellectual culture, fused with broader colonial ideologies. The “Eastern Question” and the “Jewish Question” emerged, framing Muslims as obstacles to European expansion and Jews as subjects in need of European solutions—one of which, eventually, became Zionism.

While much of the Muslim world was subjected to colonialism, Palestinians remained under Ottoman control until World War I. But by the early 20th century, European Zionists had begun to view Palestine as the “Promised Land,” echoing Crusader rhetoric. Again, the native people—Muslim and Christian Arabs—were seen not just as others, but as illegitimate possessors of a land that, in Western theological-political imagination, was meant for someone else.

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the September 11, 2001 attacks, Islamophobia surged across the Western world. Palestinians, once portrayed as Arabs, began to be recast explicitly as Muslims, thus linking Palestinian resistance to global terrorism in the Western narrative. President George W. Bush’s infamous post-9/11 declaration of a new “Crusade” revealed the enduring logic: Muslims as a whole were targets, and Palestinians in particular were again seen as a primary threat.

This entanglement of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism only deepened. Hamas, formed in 1987 as a nationalist-Islamist resistance movement, was quickly portrayed not just as a political group resisting occupation, but as a symbol of radical Islamism. Despite its local focus, Hamas was frequently linked by Western media and politicians to global jihadist networks, even without evidence. Such conflations allowed the West and Israel to delegitimize all Palestinian resistance under the banner of fighting terrorism.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama, in his 2009 Cairo speech, exemplified the subtler forms of this bias. While calling for Muslim-Christian-Jewish tolerance, he justified American military campaigns in Muslim-majority countries and advocated for a “peace” in Palestine that preserved Israeli colonial occupation. His rhetoric placed the burden of tolerance on Muslims while implicitly absolving Israel of its settler-colonial role. In doing so, he masked the structural violence against Palestinians under the language of interfaith harmony.

Even more recently, the events of October 7, 2023, when Palestinian groups attacked Israeli targets, ignited a fresh wave of Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian sentiment across Europe and North America. Mosques were vandalized, Muslims were assaulted, and pro-Palestinian voices were silenced. This is not a new phenomenon—it is the continuation of a historical process where Palestinians are targeted not just because they are resisting occupation, but because they symbolize resistance to a broader Western ideological structure rooted in the Crusades.

Donald Trump’s proposal to forcibly expel the people of Gaza eerily echoes the logic and actions of the First Crusade: mass extermination followed by population transfer to clear land for foreign settlers. Just as the Crusaders sought to make Palestine a Latin Christian enclave, Zionism, supported by Western powers, seeks to make it an exclusively Jewish one.

Throughout all of this, Palestinian resistance has been primarily nationalist and anti-colonial. While Zionism merges religion with nationalism and settler colonialism, Palestinian resistance has, at its core, demanded rights, sovereignty, and liberation. Yet, the dominant narrative—shaped by centuries of Crusader ideology and modern Islamophobia—continues to cast Palestinians as irredeemable, violent, and undeserving of their land.

In sum, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism were born together in the crucible of the Crusades. They continue to function as intertwined tools of conquest and control—once to expand Christendom, now to preserve settler-colonial regimes. And yet, as history has shown with the eventual defeat of the Crusaders, the steadfast resistance of the native people—then and now—remains the most powerful force for justice and decolonization.

Zayan Bin Zakariya

The author is a freelance writer with a keen interest in religio-political issues.

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