Islam in Europe

I SLAM PRESENTS TWO DISTINCT FACES to Europe, the one a threat, the other that of an itinerant culture. However viewed, the history of the relationship between Islam and Europe is problematic and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The relationship between Christians and Muslims over the centuries has been long and tortuous. Geographically the origins of the two communities are not so far apart Bethlehem and Jerusalem are only some eight hundred miles from Mecca. But as the two communities have grown and become universal rather than local, the relationship between them has changed sometimes downright enmity, sometimes rivalry and competition, sometimes co-operation and collaboration. Different regions of the world in different centuries have therefore witnessed a whole range of encounters between Christians and Muslims. The historical study of the relationship is still in its beginnings. It cannot be otherwise, since Islamic history, as well as the history of those Christian communities that have been in contact with Islam, is still being written. Obviously Christian-Muslim relations do not exist in a vacuum. The two worlds have known violent confrontation: Muslim conquests of Christian parts of the world; the Crusades still vividly remembered today; the expansion of the Turkish Ottoman Empire; the Armenian massacres and genocide; European colonialism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the rise of Christian missions; the continuing difficult situations in which Christians find themselves in dominant Muslim societies, such as Sudan, Indonesia, Pakistan. 1 It would be petty to try to figure out who is more guilty in these conflicts. 2 The weight of this history may be why few approach Islam without strong feelings one way or the other.