One thing grabbed my attention from David Cameron’s speech, long ago in the middle of last week. ‘We need a national crusade to get homes built.’ I’m as interested in housing as the next mother with a practically homeless grown-up daughter, but it was the word crusade that astonished me. I did not think a politician could use it now.
Just after the atrocities of 11 September 2001, George Bush said: ‘This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.’ Some listeners feared this was confirmation of a ‘clash of civilisations’. But, from the Muslim side, some objections were ill-founded historically.
English-speaking warriors who set off in the 11th and 12th centuries to free the Holy Places did not call themselves crusaders. The word is surprisingly recent. When Samuel Johnson published his dictionary (1755) he listed the word as croisade.
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