edited the work, only to turn it down under
fear of fundamentalist Muslim pressure. [...]
His [book] is, as he rightly claims, “the first
history of the Muslim wars in Europe ever
published”...^231Just let that observation sink in for a moment. Here we
have a religion of war, proudly proclaimed to be so by its
own texts for over 1000 years, and despite all the
hundreds of universities in the West, the first book to
provide a narrative history of the different attacks on
Europe by Muslims was not published until the end of the
twentieth century! No wonder Fregosiʼs original publisher
saw a gap in the market. Moreover, this history of Islamic
holy war was written not by an academic in a publicly-
funded university, but by a popular biographer of Napoleon.
This was at a time when the few attacks on Western interests
(such as embassies, etc.) were almost all taking place far
away from our own countries, in parts of the world where
we could be easily deceived that the problem was some
local grievance rather than part of a systematic series of
assaults dating back to the time of Mohammed. With the
exception of the wars and terrorism conducted against
Israel, throughout the twentieth-century, Muslims generally
did not have the wherewithal to identify, plan and execute
attacks in the West.^232 But by the 1990s Muslims in the
West had the power to make publishers cower in fear.
Despite the book being commissioned by his publisher,
once Fregosi had completed the book he had trouble getting
it published.