Faith and Sword: A Short History of Christian-Muslim Conflict (Reaktion Books - Globalities) [Hardcover]

Alan G. Jamieson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2006 | Series: Reaktion Books - Globalities

In today’s tense geopolitical climate, terrorist groups avow their allegiance to the Islamic faith in their edicts, while the president of the United States undertakes controversial wars in Islamic nations and openly refers to his Christian faith as a key component of his decision-making. With the recent surge in terrorist acts and military confrontations, as well as ever-strengthening fundamentalist ideologies on both sides, the Christian-Muslim divide is perhaps more visible than ever—but it is not new. Alan G. Jamieson explores here the long and bloody history of the Christian-Muslim conflict, revealing in his concise yet comprehensive study how deeply this ancient divide is interwoven with crucial events in world history. 

Faith and Sword opens with the tumultuous first centuries of the conflict, examining the religious precepts that framed clashes between Christians and Muslims and that ultimately fueled the legendary Crusades. Traversing the full breadth of the Arab lands and Christendom, Jamieson chronicles the turbulent saga from the Arab conquests of the seventh century to the rise of the powerful Ottoman Empire and its fall at the end of World War I. Faith and Sword then explores the complex dynamics that emerged later in the twentieth century, as Christendom was transformed into the secular West and Islamic nations overthrew European colonialism to establish governments straddling modernity and religiosity.

From the 1979 Iranian revolution to the Lebanon hostage crisis to the present-day war in Iraq, Faith and Sword reveals the essence of this enduring struggle and its consequences.

(20060219)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Writer and researcher Jamieson offers a dense but clear abstract of the 1,400-year history of conflict between Christian and Muslim states, from the death of Muhammad to the American occupation of Iraq. For the first millennium, the story follows the expansion of Muslim caliphates at the expense of the Byzantine Empire and the emerging Christian kingdoms of Western Europe. Later, with the Christian conquest of Iberia and the Crusades, the two sides began to establish a balance of power that tipped toward the Christians in the nineteenth century. The book moves quickly to this point, discussing even major developments only long enough to establish basic facts. Jamieson slows down upon reaching the 20th century, when the West's military dominance and secularization alter the relationship between "Christian" and Muslim states. The major division now, Jamieson argues, is not between these countries but between secularists and fundamentalists within Muslim-majority nations. Though the book's brevity leaves little room for analysis, Jamieson sketches characters, incidents, and trends fluidly, producing a fine primer of this long history. 5 halftones.
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Review

"Sedulous, unapologetic presentation of fact. . . a challenge to Islamic resisters that Muhammad never be criticized. . . . Opens our eyes to an inescapable truth: Christians and Muslims fought wars for more than 1,000 years, with each at times conquering the other''s territory by force."—Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

 

 

(Carlin Romano Philadelphia Inquirer 20070501)

"Essential. . . . Raises important questions."--Washington Times

 

 

(James Srodes Washington Times )

"He correctly notes that due to the secular reforms of the West, the confrontation changes from one of religion to one pitting imperialism against nationalism."—Thabit A. J. Abdullah, Literary Review of Canada

 

(Thabit A. J. Abdullah Literary Review of Canada )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Reaktion Books (June 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861892721
• ISBN-13: 978-1861892720
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,923,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Longest War, August 13, 2007

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Donald J. Keck (Powder Springs, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faith and Sword: A Short History of Christian-Muslim Conflict (Reaktion Books - Globalities) (Hardcover)

A brief, but comprehensive account of the thirteen hundred year conflict between Islam and the Christian civilizations of Byzantium and Western Europe. The book is only 222 pages in length. Yet it is amazingly inclusive. Nothing significant has been left out. At the same time the author's non-judgmental approach eschews the usual anti-western/anti-Christian, or anti Muslim, harangue.

The Crusades, for example, are presented as just one episode in the millennia long see-saw struggle for control of the borderlands between the Islamic World and the West - a European push-back that came after four hundred years of Islamic Jihad and conquest of the Christian lands around the Mediterranean from the Levant to Spain and Portugal.

This book serves no ones ideological or political agenda. It is an objective historical account of the perennial struggle for dominance between Dar al Islam and the Christian (later secular) West. It is primarily a study of conflict, rather than of peaceful intercourse, between two civilizations. (For that see: Zachary Karabell's PEACE BE UPON YOU.)

Four centuries of Muslim expansion and Christian defeat were followed by a period of Christian recovery (during the era of the Crusades and the Reconquest of Sicily, Spain and Portugal), which was followed by four more centuries of Muslim advance under the Ottoman Turks. Finally, the tide of Islamic expansion was reversed by a secularized Europe remade and revitalized by the commercial, industrial, technological and military revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

What we are witnessing today is a renewed Jihad (Holy War) against a predominantly secular Western Civilization led by fanatic Islamists from some of the most remote and primitive reaches of the world, whose proclaimed objective is to topple the most economically and militarily powerful nations on earth.

Can they succeed? Only if the west crumbles from within through a loss nerve, a collapse of will and self hatred. Only a loss of faith in its own historical achievements, culture, religious and political beliefs and institutions, and a loss of confidence in the rightness of its cause and the will to defend it, can bring Western Civilization down.

It is well to remember, however, that once before (in the seventh and eighth centuries) a horde of backward desert tribesmen inspired by a fanatical faith in Allah overran and destroyed the vastly more advanced Roman Civilization lying peacefully and contentedly around the littoral of the Mediterranean basin.