Cross and the Crescent

Richard Fletcher has written The Cross and the Crescent an entertaining book that illustrates the early relationship between the Christians and Muslims. It helped me to understand the historical differences between the religions and to understand the reason for continued conflict, misunderstanding, and general uneasiness between the two groups. I will highlight some key historical events presented in the book and draw conclusions to almost modern day relations between the two religions. Additionally I will give an overall analysis of the book.

The Muslims have many critiques of the Christians and many of them are good points, while some are a bit of a stretch and even somewhat hypocritical. The main invalidation that Islam points out is the belief in the trinity while Christians still maintain that they are monotheistic. Additionally the dual nature of Christ is brought into light, because the Muslims believe their most important person to be Muhammad, merely an un-divine message receiver to god, they criticize the idea that Christ was both human and divine. The multiplicity of textual accounts, in the eyes of Islam, refutes the legitimacy of the accounts. However when they attempt to criticize the differing sects of Christianity they have no basis for argument as they themselves have had a similar split of beliefs between the Sunnis and Shi'ites. However I do think it prudent that the Muslims integrated societal law to be religious law because in emphasizes the necessity for there to be a non-secular set up to ingrain religious practice. The fact of the matter is that Muslims and Christians were in undesirable contact because of Muslims migrating into the empire or Christians and jews fleeing persecution, setting up churches, and developing a distinct arab Christian culture.

Christians too had discrepance's with the Muslims because the bible explained that Ishmael would a wild person against the will of everyone, and everyone against him. Simply that passage from Genesis 16 explained their violent bloodthirsty behavior and forever labeled them outsiders as claimed by the word of god. Additionally the ethnicity of the Muslims, who claimed to be both descendent of both Hagar and Sarah, made them apparent unequals and enemies of the human race as a whole. However the Roman empire had use for such a people to be on the outskirts and protect the borders, a practical use that kept them somewhat removed from the majority of the Christian loyal's, as Christianity was then the primary religion of the empire in Constantinople.

One of the major issues that I think could have been more thoroughly addressed in this book was the common Christians' view of the world of Islam. It is easy to see that the church as an institution was upset with the Muslims conquering the Mediterranean and enticing the people of Christianity to convert to Islam. What then was the commoners view on both sides, it couldn't have been too bad if people were going to assertively join the ranks of the people who just conquered them. Or perhaps it was merely extreme fear and a feeling that there was no other choice but to join Islam or perish. However I don' t believe it to be fear because some Administrators of the Empire had a loophole in that Muslims needed them to continue with affairs of taxation and the upkeep of an empire which Muslims weren't ready to handle. This being true the conditions of their Christian comrades couldn't have been terrible or an exodus or some type of administrative sabotage would have probably taken place. Fletcher goes only so far as to say that a mutual co-existence was in place, but I feel like he would have a better chance of correct speculation on the actual opinion of the commoners of the time, rather than to leave it to speculation on my part. Additionally could common Muslims really have such a hatred of these people of the book and then readily accept them into their ranks thinking that they are such a misinformed and unrespectable people? These are omitted questions to which I wish the author had some explanation for.

Anyone who is familiar with the Christian religion know that Charles Martel, or Charlemagne, was a very important figure in their history because he is responsible for stopping the Muslim Invasion of France, and subsequently maintaining an area for undisturbed Christians to safely practice their religion Separate of Muslim influence. Without this person it is conceivable that a safe haven for religious practice might have been forever lost to the Christians. It had previously been thought that the Muslims were responsible for the departure of the Christians from the Mediterranean. Now it is thought to be economic disparity combined with, but to a lesser extent, disease that began to drive them out long before the Muslims arrived on the scene. However all of these factors led to the situation of the middle ages and our ideas of a medieval society. Throughout all of this contact was still had between these two groups evident by the fact that the Papacy continued to issue documents on papyrus imported form Egypt. As long as both could benefit peace could remain and the key to that is trade .

How is it that between 750 to 1000 such tolerance of each other was observed while the interactions between the two