ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which the problematic legacy of the crusades has been employed by jihadists to further their political aims, foment social divisions and ultimately legitimise violence and terrorism. Grand narratives are overarching, totalising accounts or meta-discourses, which provide ideologies with a legitimating philosophy of history. The distillation of a common enemy from this diverse array of geopolitical conflicts and actors, as an anachronistic ‘Zionist-Crusader Alliance’, has been central to the jihadist aim of presenting a Manichean, us-and-them, dichotomy. To reinforce the point, the front-cover image also featured a photoshopped Islamic State flag fluttering atop the Holy See in the Vatican. The French would claim everything to the North of the line and the British to the South. The twenty-first century has witnessed the sharpest escalation of crusading discourses since the crusades themselves ended, becoming a leitmotif within not just the jihadist grand narrative but also the contemporary far-right’s worldview.
