UK Likens Iraq War Damage to Crusades

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband asserted on Thursday, May 21, that the Iraq war creates prejudice against his country just as the Crusades and the colonial powers' failure to create two states in Palestine.

"Decisions taken many years ago in King Charles Street are still felt on the landscape of the Middle East and South Asia," he said in a key speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OXCIS) on Thursday, May 21.

"Ruined Crusader castles remain as poignant monuments to the religious violence of the Middle Ages."

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns of a religious character waged by much of Christian Europe during 1095–1291.

The campaigns, most of which were sanctioned by the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule.

"Lines drawn on maps by Colonial powers were succeeded, amongst other things, by the failure – it has to be said not just ours - to establish two states in Palestine," added Miliband.

In 1917, then British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Baron Rothschild declaring that the British government views with favor the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 1948, Israel was created on the rubble of Palestine, forcing thousands of people out of their homes.

Miliband placed the Iraq war in the same context as the Crusades and colonialism.

"More recently, the invasion of Iraq, and its aftermath, aroused a sense of bitterness, distrust and resentment. When people hear about Britain, too often they think of these things," he said.

"These events are associated with a history of relations between Europe and the Islamic world that have been characterized by conquest, conflict and colonialism."

In 2003, then Prime Minister Tony Blair parted with several European allies in backing the decision of then US President George Bush in invading Iraq without a UN mandate.

Coalition of Consent

Miliband underlined the need for a new approach to build wider coalitions and consent among ordinary Muslims.

He insisted that Britain should find common ground with Muslim societies and understand their complexity.

"To broaden the coalition and win consent, we need to understand the Muslim world better, or we will risk undermining the force of our own argument, as I have sometimes done when using the labels ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’" he admitted.

"We need to hold fast to our own values and support those who seek to apply them, or we will be guilty of hypocrisy; and we need shared effort to address the grievances, socio-economic and political, that are perceived to keep Muslims down, and in fact do."

Miliband called for the broadest possible coalition of states and political movements, acknowledging this means being prepared to encourage reconciliation with organizations with different values.

"The widest possible coalition will, at times, include groups whose aims we do not share, whose values we find deplorable, whose methods we think dubious. But it will be impossible to win the consent of peoples if we cannot demonstrate consistency and certainty in the application of our values."

He called for drawing a line between those committed to politics and those who rely on violence.

"If we respect those committed to politics, support the application of our own democratic values and help tackle the big grievances, including over Palestine, we can forge a new coalition and win consent."

The top diplomat believes Britain's nearly two million Muslims have a valuable role to play in building the new alliance.

"In the majority of our British Muslim citizens, we have an enormous resource, combining the values that bind Britain together as a liberal democracy, with their particular religious identity," he stressed.

"And in that merging of identities are valuable lessons as we forge coalitions in the Muslim world."