It may seem a paradox that there should be this prejudice in Western history in favour of Eastern heroes.
But the cause is clear enough; it is the remains of the revolt among many Europeans against their own old religious organisation, which naturally made them hunt through all ages for its crimes and its victims.
It was natural that Voltaire should sympathise more with a Brahmin he had never seen than with a Jesuit with whom he was engaged in a violent controversy; and should similarly feel more dislike of a Catholic who was his enemy than of a Moslem who was the enemy of his enemy.
In this atmosphere of natural and even pardonable prejudice arose the habit of contrasting the intolerance of the Crusaders with the toleration shown by the Moslems.

Now as there are two sides to everything, it would undoubtedly be quite possible to tell the tale of the Crusades, correctly enough in detail, and in such a way as entirely to justify the Moslems and condemn the Crusaders.
But any such real record of the Moslem case would have very little to do with any questions of tolerance or intolerance, or any modern ideas about religious liberty and equality.
As the modern world does not know what it means itself by religious liberty and equality, as the moderns have not thought out any logical theory of toleration at all (for their vague generalisations can always be upset by twenty tests from Thugs to Christian Science) it would obviously be unreasonable to expect the moderns to understand the much clearer philosophy of the Moslems.
But some rough suggestion of what was really involved may be found convenient in this case.
Islam was not originally a movement directed against Christianity at all.
It did not face westwards, so to speak; it faced eastwards towards the idolatries of Asia.

But Mahomet believed that these idols could be fought more successfully with a simpler kind of creed; one might almost say with a simpler kind of Christianity.
For he included many things which we in the West commonly suppose not only to be peculiar to Christianity but to be peculiar to Catholicism.
Many things have been rejected by Protestantism that are not rejected by Mahometanism.

Thus the Moslems believe in Purgatory, and they give at least a sort of dignity to the Mother of Christ.
About such things as these they have little of the bitterness that rankles in the Jews and is said sometimes to become hideously vitriolic.

While I was in Palestine a distinguished Moslem said to a Christian resident: "We also, as well as you, honour the Mother of Christ.
Never do we speak of her but we call her the Lady Miriam.
I dare not tell you what the Jews call her." The real mistake of the Moslems is something much more modern in its application than any particular or passing persecution of Christians as such.