Infidels

May 31, 2004
Historian Wheatcroft (The Ottomans
) adds another volume to the steadily growing literature on the history of Christian-Muslim relations. Part philosophical treatise, part history and part diatribe, Wheatcroft's study adds little that has not been covered already by more thorough and elegant studies such as F.E. Peters's recent The Monotheists
. He offers an overview of the tortured relations between Christianity and Islam in various contexts including the Crusades, Spain, the Middle East and Bosnia. Wheatcroft opens his book with an account of the 1571 battle of Lepanto, where Christians triumphed over the Muslims. Using the theoretical writings of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Stephen Greenblatt, Wheatcroft emphasizes that the conflict between the two religions most often devolved into a war of words in which one side used dehumanizing language to describe the other and to thereby sanction war. He helpfully brings his study into the 21st century by examining briefly the religious rhetoric that President Bush and General William Boykin have used to defend the attack on Iraq and other Muslim nations. Unfortunately, Wheatcroft betrays his own ideological position by referring to Muslim terrorists as a "virus" and by defending the Bush administration's positions on the war, thereby diminishing the value the book might have as an objective description of the conflicts between Christianity and Islam.

June 15, 2004
Wheatcroft (director, Centre for Publishing Studies, Univ. of Stirling., U.K.) here traces the cultural antagonism between the Christian and Muslim worlds, particularly in terms of language and attitudes. He reviews key contacts and flashpoints, focusing on al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), the Crusader period, European struggles against the Ottomans (especially in the Balkans), and today's war on terrorism. Although Wheatcroft points out that each religious world pronounced maledictions against the other, he leans toward a critique of the Christian response to Islam, condemns Christendom's tendency to be at least as brutal as its adversaries, and faults it for ignorance of Islamic civilization and faith. Wheatcroft particularly criticizes George W. Bush for adopting the language and thinking of this historic divide and for lacking the elevated rhetoric of such presidents as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. The book contains helpful information on the origins of Christian-Muslim antagonisms but is not incisive or complete enough to stand on its own. It should be balanced by the work of David Blanks, Norman Daniel, Karen Armstrong, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and W. Montgomery Watt. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-William P. Collins, Library of Congress

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2004
In the roar of skyscrapers collapsing in New York and in the thunder of fusillades in Afghanistan and Iraq, a leading British historian hears echoes of battles fought centuries ago. This timely chronicle amplifies those echoes to show how much ancient animosities pervade the modern conflict between radical Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden and American president George W. Bush. Impelling the Muslim and Christian combatants who crossed swords at Jerusalem and Granada, at Lepanto, Constantinople, and Missolonghi, these ancient hatreds inspired daring innovations in military weaponry and tactics, as well as astonishing enlargements in both faiths' religious demonology. Wheatcroft recounts the clashes of arms--jihad and crusade--in narrative taut and memorable. With rare sophistication, he also traces the perplexing ways religious orthodoxy now reinforced, now checked the political and economic impulses shaping Europe and the Levant. But readers will praise Wheatcroft most for his acute psychological analysis of how Muslim and Christian leaders alike imbued their followers with hostility toward those who adhered to alien creeds. It is this analysis that lends force to the concluding commentary on how President Bush has unwittingly tapped into a very old reservoir of religious enmity with his absolutist rhetoric calling for a "crusade" against the terrorist evil. As a work that interprets today's headlines within a very long chronology, this book will attract a large audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)