A brief history of Islam in Europe: thirteen centuries of creed, conflict and coexistence - Tapa blanda

The relationship between Europe and Islam has been complicated, if not troubled, throughout the thirteen centuries since Muslims first began playing a part in European history. This volume offers a compact, yet comprehensive look at the entire history of the interaction of Islam and Eureopean culture, religion, and politics.

Maurits S. Berger focuses in particular on the transformations that the figure of the Muslim and the image of Islam have undergone in the European mind. Conqueror, Antichrist, scholar, benign ruler, corsair, tradesman, fellow citizenthe Muslim has been all of those and more, and even today, as Muslims make up a substantial portion of Europe’s citizenry, they remain all too often a source of undeserved anxiety for ordinary people and politicians alike. Through Berger’s clear prose and incisive analysis, the story of Islam and Europe is seen as one of interaction and mutual influence rather than perpetual antagonism.

This book gives an overall presentation and discussion of the interaction between Europe and Islam ever since Islam appeared on the European stage thirteen centuries ago. The events and stories presented are to serve the understanding of present debates on, and notions of, Islam and Muslims in Europe. The leading questions in discussing the role of Islam in Europe are: how and in what ways did Europeans and Muslims interact and, for those Europeans who had never met a Muslim, what was their image of Islam, and how did they study the Muslim? Notions of religion, (in)tolerance and Othering are guiding themes. This book shows that in the course of thirteen centuries the Muslim as well as Islam has undergone many metamorphoses. The Muslim in Europe has been a conqueror, antichrist, scholar, benign ruler, corsair, tradesman and fellow citizen. The image of Islam has meandered accordingly, as a religion that was feared as an enemy or embraced as a partner against heretic Christians, despised as an abomination or admired as a civilization, and studied for missionary, academic, colonial or security purposes. Prof Dr Maurits S. Berger, LLM (1964) is professor of Islam and the West at Leiden University. He is also senior research associate at the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague, and member of the Advisory Council for International Affairs at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Prof Berger has a degree in Law and Arabic Studies. He worked as a lawyer in Amsterdam, and for seven years as a researcher and journalist in Cairo and Damascus. He often engages in European public debates and policies regarding the Muslim world and Muslims in the West.