Waging Peace on Islam Months before the movie Kingdom of Heaven
was to be released, critics lined up to lament how this big-
budget film about the Crusades would set back Muslim-Christian
relations, leading to a Muslim or Christian backlash, depending
on whom you read. But it's not as if this movie is raising an
issue long since dead. The question is not if the Crusades are a
live memory for Muslims, but why? And how do Christians who
minister to Muslims deal with this sad historical fact? Warren
Larson is director of the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies at
Columbia International University, Columbia, South Carolina. An
associate professor of Islam with expertise in Muslim
fundamentalism, the Canadian-born Larson was a church-planting
missionary in the Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, from 1969
to 1991. (The small church he and his wife worked in remains
active in the 99.9 percent Muslim city of Dera Ghazi Khan.)
Today Larson travels widely in the Muslim world. Stan Guthrie,
ct's senior associate news edit