The Great Confrontation: Europe and Islam Through the Centuries Book

Many Americans, including George W Bush, may trace Islamic jihad against the West only as far back as the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Moscow-based historian and scholar Ilya Gaiduk knows better. He's written a summary of 14 centuries of relations between Europe (representing a Christian-dominated civilisation with a much longer history than the US) and Islam (more a unifying force culturally than geographically). As Gaiduk makes abundantly clear, both Europe and the Islamic world have justified "holy wars" many times in a seesaw battle for moral superiority that both believed was theirs. As a backdrop to this epic struggle, Gaiduk tells a less well-known tale of mutually beneficial trade and cultural exchanges that have punctuated long stretches of this 1,400-year history. It is in these latter examples that Gaiduk sees a model for future relations between Islam and the West, rejecting the more commonly held belief that a "clash of civilisations" is chillingly inevitable. His book-ending prescription of "tolerance and partnership", crossing all man-made boundaries to defeat poverty, terrorism and pollution, is both sensible and depressingly difficult to imagine. --Keith Moerer, Amazon.comRead More