The European Reformation and Islam: From Menace to Coexistence

Abstract

The string of terrorist attacks that began in America on September 11, 2001 and spread to Europe and beyond by militants waging ‘holy war’ on the West in the name of Islam has revived crusading rhetoric among some Western politicians and heightened fear of Muslims in America and Europe. Tensions are particularly high in Europe, where globalization has brought waves of Muslim immigrants from Africa, Asia and southeastern Europe since the early 1950s, raising issues of cultural integration and religious tolerance. Current language sometimes echoes the apocalyptic rhetoric generated by Christian writers in the early sixteenth century as the Ottoman Turks appeared to push inexorably northward toward Vienna and Central Europe. Christian fears of the ‘Turkish menace’ began with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and would continue through the early eighteenth century, when the Turks withdrew south of the Danube and their threat to Europe appeared ended. Since the ancient Greeks first defined ‘Europe’ as a continent distinct from Asia, which they denigrated as barbarian and effeminate, Europeans have often defined themselves in contrast and opposition to the Asian ‘Orient’.1 As we have seen in the Introduction, Christian crusades to free the Holy Land from Muslim control played a critical role in forging the collective religious identity of medieval Christendom. Nevertheless, centuries of warfare and trade had done little to familiarize early modern Europeans with Islam, and the Turks as a new and frightening threat would play a critical role in the course of Europe’s long Reformation.