The Cross and the Crescent: Christianity and Islam from Muhammad to the Reformation
Books / Hardcover
Books › Religion › Islam › General
ISBN: 0670032719 / Publisher: Viking Adult, January 2004
A historical overview of the relationship between the Christian and Islamic worlds, from the seventh to the sixteenth centuries, traces the religious misunderstanding between the two great religions, despite long periods of peaceful coexistence.
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Richard Fletcher shows how, despite the long coexistence and overlap of Islam and Christianity, 'the peoples of the book' have held religious misunderstandings since their earliest encounters. He explains that, though there were fruitful trading and cultural interactions between Muslims and Christians during the period when Arabs controlled most of the Mediterranean world, each group viewed the other's religion as fundamentally different: Christians portrayed Muslims as bloodthirsty pagans and Muhammad as a false prophet, while Muslims saw Christianity as a jumble of sects and conflicting stories.
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