Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam

_Infidels_ by Andrew Wheatcroft is an account of the history of conflict between European Christendom and Mediterranean Islam. Though the book can be read as a history of a number of interactions between Islam and Christianity - the initial Arab invasions, the Islamic conquest and Christian reconquest of Spain, the Crusades, and European conflicts with the Ottomans - it is really more about how and why these two cultures came to feel the way they did about each other both in the past and today and how these feelings were sustained over the centuries, with the emphasis being more on the Christian side of the equation. Wheatcroft argued in this book that the Western view of Mediterranean Islam was and is rooted in the distant past. Negative views of Muslims were often created or exaggerated and spread for political reasons. In areas where Christians were minorities, such as in Islamic-dominated Spain and in parts of the Balkans, historical memory came to be honored as a defiant form of resistance, memory that could serve to bind and unite a community but also serve to sustain (and later reinvigorate) hatred. In the mid 9th century for instance leaders in the Christian community in Spain sought to arrest the erosion of the number of Christians - many were converting to Islam or were otherwise becoming less distinctly Christian - by working hard to accentuate the differences between Christians and Muslims and even to create conflict where there wasn't by a series of martyrdoms. There were theologians who saw Muslims as a necessary evil, that they existed "to fulfill the word and will of God," a view often favored in the apocalyptic views of medieval Christians, seeing for instance the Muslim conquest of the Visigothic kingdom in Spain as an "elaborate metaphor" pointing to the evils of that kingdom, their consequences, and lessons for later Christians. The threat of the Muslims became a "heavy flail" used by God (or the priests) to bring His people back in line. Sometimes fear and hatred of Islam occurred without any conscious planning by Western religious and political leaders. Ideas and views of events could also develop a life of their own, fueling negative stereotypes and hatred. Wheatcroft recounted how the very concept of crusade produced effects that echoed centuries after the death of its author, Pope Urban II, and how prior to that, accounts of Christian pilgrims being attacked and robbed by Muslim brigands on their way to Jerusalem could be exaggerated, often at first to make the heroism of those involved more impressive but later for other reasons as negative views became dominant. Also during the Crusades each conquest "engendered a desire for reconquest," producing a conditioned response that became more and more imprinted on both Christianity and Islam. In the end each culture was left with a "well-honed ideology of war in a just cause." Both civilizations were left with a "malign heritage," each civilization writing and mythologi

Infidels is a book that deals with a very difficult subject that requires a lot of research and great understanding of human nature.I feel that the author has done a very good job in trying to analyze and put into words the complexity of this topic.I especially enjoyed his account of the moorish situation in Spain and how that translated into more complex situations in Europe and the Balkans.The authors narrative is good and clear, and once in a while the author is not afraid in telling things like he sees them which i always like in an author.The only thing i didnt like about the book was parts 5 and 6 in which the authors fells in a situation in which he tries to explain things too "philosophical", going too deep into how the written text and the images of books contribute to preserve stereotypes.I am not saying he is incorrect, is just that he spends too much time and resources in something that should not take a whole two chapters.Overall, this book is a must for people who study the conflict between Islam and Christianity.

The subtitle suggests that this work is a history of Christian-Islamic conflict. In the preface, Wheatcroft claims that he "tries to trace a few of the myriad ways in which the Christian West has responded to the Islamic East." At the beginning of the second chapter, he writes, "[t]his book is about enmity, how it was created and how it is sustained." There seems to be some confusion about the purposes of the work. It is not comprehensive enough to be the first or the second. It comes closest to trying to match the last goal. Wheatcroft focuses on three historical moments -- Moorish Spain and its Reconquest, the Holy Land during the Crusades and the Balkans during and after Ottoman Rule. In this section of the narrative, he discusses the enmity of the particular cases, but rarely its genesis or creation. He does suggest that the cyclical violence and deprivation on both sides along with tendencies to villainize each other sustained it. The discussion of Moorish Spain is the most thorough and focused while the other two, particularly the section on the Balkans, seem too large, too unwieldy for the author in the space he gives them. The last third of the book seems thematically to deal with the means of sustaining enmity, i.e. in imagery, printed matter and evil words or insults. However, this is rarely the approach Wheatcroft takes. He focuses on the ways Muslims and Turks were marked out as the "Other" in imagery, but not the relationship between that imagery and conflict. He discusses Ottoman resistance to printed words and images with only tenuous links to the conflict. The section on evil words, or maledicta, tries to show how cultural/religious insults are magnified and often misunderstood or not fully understood. The book omits several elements that seem important in understanding Christian/Western-Islamic conflict today. It says little of initial Christian reactions to Islam. It includes only a cursory discussion of the links between modernization, a Western-oriented Arab intelligentsia, indirect colonial rule and "fundamentalist" developments like the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam. It does not speak to the conflict between Muslims and other Europeans in Western Europe or to the role of Western securlarization in the conflict. After reading Wheatcroft's work, I know more of the atrocities on both sides. However, it has added little to my knowledge of this conflict over the last century or so that I could not have gotten from television and newspaper accounts. This is a shame since his earlier chapters feature a lively prose within an historically-grounded narrative.

In the age of polemics this is a well written history and sensitive understanding of the conflicts between Christianity and Islam. The images of each other, shared human weaknesses, violent conflicts, failure to empathize and understand are all here. How history has been abused time and again to encourage hate as a tool for politicians and `true believers' is a repeated, sad, but interesting tale. The mirror images of polluting and demonic "other" are drawn with quotations and local `color' as are battle scenes and key characters on both sides. Changing understandings and emotional impact of terms like 'Crusade' and 'Jihad' are noted. At least until very recent history the author provides a well balanced story with focus on `hot spots' like Andalusia; the Levant; the Balkans, while including some of North Africa and other conflicts. This book is 100 times better than the likes of "Jihad" by Fergosi and may be well complemented by books like Fletcher's recent book, "Cross and Crescent". One of the most common and often serious fallacies writing about Islam is to generalize from the less than 20% who are Arabs or the perhaps 40% who are in the greater Middle East. (The author has also written on the Ottomans.) This book holds up well because it provides a "why?" for the relationships that enlightens whether reading about centuries ago in Spain or recently in Serbia. One might disagree with some of the conclusions about current events, but the book remains valuable for readers.