success and eventually led to the mobilization of
a Muslim Jihad to expel the “Franks.” With their
foreign ways and crudities so acutely observed
by Muslim scholar-warriors such as Usama ibn
Munqidh (d. 1188), the crusaders were always
unlikely to survive, as indeed they did not. The
Reconquista, on the other hand, succeeded in
defeating the Arabo-Islamic statelets that took
root in Andalusia and expelling Muslims and Jews
for whom Andalusia was home. Those who stayed
behind were forced to convert to Christianity.
In the modern period, beginning in the 18th
century, Europeans, mainly Christians, came to
rule over vast territories in which Muslims lived
and that had formerly been ruled by Muslims.
These included much of the Middle East, all of
North Africa west of Egypt, the Indian subcon-
tinent, and almost the entire continent of Africa,
the eastern, western, and northern parts of which
had large Muslim populations. For nearly 200
years, Muslims thus lived either in lands directly
controlled by European countries or in ostensibly
independent nations whose freedom was often
held in check by European power (the Ottoman
Empire, for example, or Iran). In every case, these
colonial empires were undone by the end of World
War II, but their impact remains profoundly felt in
such things as their legal and political institu-
tions, economic orientations, as well as the radical
Islamist ideologies that have developed in part
as a response to the European imperial project.
While the Europeans did not always encourage
missionary efforts, they also did not stop such
activities, and thus one of the main encounters
between Christianity and Islam in the modern
period has been largely destructive. For one thing,
this resulted in mutual animosities and divisions
that have, ironically, made it more difficult (but
not impossible) for Muslims to engage in the kind
of critical examination of religious authority and
knowledge that has had such radical effects on
the relations between religion, society, and the
state in the West. The Europeans often justified
their rule on the basis of their superior scientific
knowledge. The implicit or explicit blaming of
Islam for the “backwardness” of Muslims has both
led to increased Islamic radicalism and to fruitless
apologetics. But this Christian missionary effort
from the West has also made the situation of the
native Christian communities of Muslim-majority
countries more tenuous than it previously was.
Part of the modern condition is the rootless-
ness and change brought about by emigration,
both voluntary and forced. A great many African
Muslims were brought to the New World as
slaves, and the wounds of this (at least partially)
Muslim-Christian encounter have not properly
healed. Voluntary emigration for the sake of eco-
nomic opportunity and religious freedom has also
been a part of the encounter, however, and thisSt. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, Egypt. A
mosque minaret stands behind the bell tower. ( Juan E.
Campo)Christianity and Islam 143 J