Here’s part of how Anita Gates of the New York Times (I cannot find the link) describes the History Channel’s Crusades: Crescent and The Cross in the The Week Ahead in this Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section:

“Roughly 900 years ago, some Christians, inspired by Urban II, got the idea that their religion was superior to everyone else’s and to set out to conquer the Muslim world.”

Wow. As virtuoso declarations of ignorance go, that sentence takes some beating – even for the New York Times. Wouldn’t it have been better, Anita, to have begun your little analysis with the Muslim conquest centuries of the ‘Holy Land’ before, or is that just too, too difficult to fit into contemporary orthodoxies?

Starting the story with Urban II, even in a brief summary, is like describing World War II without mentioning, say, the invasion of Poland.