Are we witnessing a 21st century homeland crusade?

“Are we witnessing a 21st century homeland crusade? Submitted by Amina Shareef on Wed, 05/27/2026 - 09:26 Emboldened by the language of national security, a far-right vigilante politics is emerging in the West, its rise in parallel with military campaigns against Muslim populations abroad Marchers at the Unite the Kingdom rally dressed in medieval Crusader costumes are pictured in London on 16 May 2026 (Toby Shepheard/AFP) Off A stream of speakers crossed the stage. “Islam is our real enemy .” We must “ remove Islam from every single place of authority”. “This is a religious war . It’s Jesus Christ versus Satan.” British men must “ get fight ready , because a fight is coming to this country”. Each address was met with cheers. Some in the crowd carried large wooden crosses. Others wore shirts bearing the face of Christ or slogans such as “Jesus is Lord” and “Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. Some chanted “Christ is King”. Several attendees even arrived dressed as medieval crusaders: mock chainmail, red-cross tunics, and imitation armour. This was the scene at the Unite the Kingdom rally in London on 16 May, organised by the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson. His real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon . Elsewhere in the city, another gathering was taking place: a commemoration of the Nakba , the violent displacement of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. The relationship between these two events has largely escaped political commentary - not simply because the far-right rally was deliberately organised on a day of mourning and remembrance for Palestinians, but because the juxtaposition exposes something many would rather leave unspoken: the connection between the struggle to remove Muslims from the holy land, and the struggle to remove Muslims from Europe itself. The politics on display at the Unite the Kingdom rally was not merely Christian nationalism or culture-war theatre clothed in religious symbolism. It reflected the persistence of a homeland crusade unfolding alongside the decades-long campaigns waged against Muslim populations abroad. Civilisational logic The "war on terror", launched by the United States and its allies after the attacks of 11 September 2001, is usually understood as a global military and security campaign against terrorism. Yet from its inception, it also carried a civilisational logic: one that framed conflict through the categories of Islam and Christendom. While Islam, Muslims and Muslim societies became the principal targets of the war, far less attention has been paid to the Christian political imagination that shaped its language, assumptions and moral world. In political commentary, the "war on terror" is often described as a “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the West. What frequently remains unstated, however, is that the West continues to imagine itself as the heir to Christendom. From Nakba to fascist parades: How Britain's far right threatens Muslims and Jews Read More » Samuel P Huntington, the architect of the “clash of civilisations” thesis, made this explicit in the 1990s. He portrayed future global conflict as the continuation of a centuries-long struggle between Islam and the Christian West: from the rise of Islam and the Crusades to modern forms of military, political and cultural domination. Nor was this framing confined to academic theory. Political and military officials routinely invoked the language of crusade and jihad in the early years of the "war on terror". Former US President George W Bush described the campaign as a “crusade”. British Conservative MP Sir Teddy Taylor used the same term . Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, referred to bin Laden as a “modern Saladin” , invoking the Muslim commander who fought the Crusaders. Former Pentagon official William G Boykin called for “ warriors of God’s kingdom ”, declaring: “We are a nation of believers.” In such rhetoric, the West is imagined not merely as a geopolitical alliance, but as Christendom in contemporary form. This civilisational logic extended beyond military intervention into an ideological project aimed at reshaping Islam itself. Islam was increasingly presented not only as the source of extremism, but as fundamentally incompatible with “western values”. Alongside invasions and occupations came sustained efforts to depoliticise and secularise Islam: to cultivate a “moderate Islam” compatible with liberal political norms, and to marginalise forms of Islamic politics that resisted western geopolitical dominance. Particular attention focused on Islamism, or political Islam: movements that challenged the Eurocentric order imposed across much of the Muslim world after the collapse of the Ottoman sultanate. The reforms that followed displaced Islam from political authority and established liberalism as the dominant ideological framework of Muslim societies. Political Islam emerged, in part, as a response to that transformation. Domestic front Yet the "war on terror" was never confined to battlefields abroad. By the early 2010s, it had developed a domestic front across western societies through the growing focus on so-called “home-grown extremism” . Counter-extremism policy became central to this shift. Muslims - whether citizens, migrants, refugees, or residents - were increasingly constructed as potential threats from within. In practice, visible expressions of Muslim identity became objects of suspicion: hijab, mosque attendance, political activism, and religious conservatism. At the same time, the wider public was encouraged to internalise the logic of surveillance itself. Citizens were urged to monitor, identify and report signs of “radicalisation” within Muslim communities. Ordinary civic life increasingly became an extension of the security apparatus. Emboldened by years of securitisation, the far right increasingly sees itself not as marginal, but as carrying out a historic duty From this perspective, the far right’s portrayal of Islam as a civilisational threat did not emerge in isolation. It was cultivated through the official discourses of the war on terror, which normalised the idea that Muslims constituted a latent danger within the nation. Furthermore, the far-right vigilante who imagines himself as the defender of the homeland has a clear precursor in the citizen-subject produced by counter-extremism policy: the citizen encouraged to police Muslim life in the name of national security. To borrow from Michel Foucault , state security power did not remain confined to institutions. It circulated outward into society itself, where it could reappear in vigilante form. Far-right mobilisation, then, should not be understood as an aberration external to mainstream politics. It is produced through the very political and security frameworks from which it claims to defend the nation. Even the far right’s “great replacement” theory mirrors the civilisational logic of the "war on terror". The imagined threat of “Eurabia” - a Europe supposedly overwhelmed by Muslim migration, governed by Islamic law, fragmented into “no-go zones” and marked by minarets instead of church steeples - is framed not simply as demographic change, but as the displacement of Christianity and “western civilisation” itself. What far-right discourse deceitfully calls “demographic jihad” - Muslim migration and higher birth rates - is cast as an existential struggle for the survival of Christendom. Historical echoes It is therefore unsurprising that far-right movements increasingly adopt crusader symbolism openly. Before being banned from Facebook, Britain First used the slogan “The New Crusade Begins” alongside medieval crusader imagery and the battle cry “Deus vult” - “God wills it”. The Christchurch attacker, Brenton Tarrant, framed his massacre as part of a centuries-long war between Islam and Europe. Anders Behring Breivik filled his manifesto with crusader imagery and Biblical references. Organisations such as the English Defence League and Pegida have similarly made Christian symbolism central to their political identity. Unite the Kingdom: Hateful theatre of niqab ‘unveiling’ feeds far-right fantasies Read More » The San Diego mosque attack, carried out by shooters who framed their actions as part of a “ New Crusade ”, illustrates how crusading narratives continue to animate contemporary far-right extremism. Far-right politics, then, is not simply nationalism with Christian aesthetics attached to it. It is the domestic front of a broader civilisational struggle: a homeland crusade waged in parallel with military and political campaigns against Muslim populations abroad. History makes this easier to recognise. The medieval Crusades were not fought only in Jerusalem. Crusading violence also unfolded within Europe itself against Muslims, Jews, pagans and Christian heretics. The Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula formed part of the same historical process: the purification of Christian territory through expulsion, conquest and forced conversion. The danger posed by this modern homeland crusade is not theoretical. As violence escalates across the Middle East - from the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank , and the confrontation with Iran - its domestic counterpart also threatens escalation. Its ambitions are already visible: deportations , denationalisation, expanded surveillance , restrictions on Muslim political expressio n, and bans targeting hijab, halal practices and mosques. Emboldened by years of securitisation and legitimised through mainstream political discourse , the far right increasingly sees itself not as marginal, but as carrying out a historic duty. Recent developments in Britain - from the electoral rise of Reform UK to the far-right violence that followed the 2024 Southport stabbings - suggest this trajectory is no longer confined to the fringes. What may emerge is not simply sporadic racist violence, but a vigilante politics authorised by the language of national security itself: a domestic inquisition carried out in the name of defending civilisation, the nation, and Christendom. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. British Muslims How the far right are turning the war on terror into a homeland crusade Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0

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