On his book Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched with Christians across Europe’s Battlegrounds
Cover Interview of April 27, 2009
In a nutshell
In many ways, Two Faiths, One Banner reveals how the history of Islam and the history of Europe are profoundly intertwined. In an age obsessed with Muslim-Christian so-called civilizational conflict, this book shows five periods in the history of Europe where Muslim and Christian soldiers actually fought on the same side, in the same armies, for the same cause.
The timeline of the book is huge – it goes from eleventh century Spain to nineteenth century Russia. There’s a map at the beginning of the book which shows the battlefields I refer to – where Muslims fought alongside Christians. Those battlefields are all over Europe, in Spain, in Italy, in Hungary, even in Germany. This, in a nutshell, is the aim: to demonstrate how the idea of a Christian Europe is simply a case of historical amnesia. Around the Mediterranean, Muslims, Jews and Christians have been sharing languages, food and music for over twelve hundred years.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
In many ways, Two Faiths, One Banner reveals how the history of Islam and the history of Europe are profoundly intertwined. In an age obsessed with Muslim-Christian so-called civilizational conflict, this book shows five periods in the history of Europe where Muslim and Christian soldiers actually fought on the same side, in the same armies, for the same cause.
The timeline of the book is huge – it goes from eleventh century Spain to nineteenth century Russia. There’s a map at the beginning of the book which shows the battlefields I refer to – where Muslims fought alongside Christians. Those battlefields are all over Europe, in Spain, in Italy, in Hungary, even in Germany. This, in a nutshell, is the aim: to demonstrate how the idea of a Christian Europe is simply a case of historical amnesia. Around the Mediterranean, Muslims, Jews and Christians have been sharing languages, food and music for over twelve hundred years.