For centuries, Islam and Christianity were locked in brutal conflict

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Shadow of a bloody past: The horror, a top historian argues, is for jihadis as real today as it was in the Middle Ages

The grievances of the Islamic terrorists who have brought carnage and bloodshed to the streets of Paris twice this year reach far back into history, writes TOM HOLLAND. In their minds, it is not simply wanton violence, but the continuation of a struggle which has raged for more than a millennium. That is what Osama bin Laden was talking about when he warned the Muslim world back in 1996 'that the people of Islam have always suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusader alliance'. Today, ISIS (inset) nurtures its resentments in a similarly poisonous manner. Main: The conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks saw the most famous of Christian capitals transformed into a bastion of Islam.