ABSTRACT
In springtime, Hosein said, driving from Tabriz to Ardabil was pretty. The rolling hills and lower mountain slopes were covered in green and the skies were sea-blue, not winter-gray. Medieval Muslim historians often divide the world into climatic belts, called in Arabic iqlim. A people's character could not be properly assessed without considering the climate and topography that had nurtured or challenged it. Islamic militancy and holy war were particularly touchy subjects. For these sympathetic experts, the Crusades became a reprehensible endeavor, the Muslim conquests a liberating exercise. Sensitive, sympathetic, and secularized, Islam's Western friends couldn't recognize holy war as a righteous cause. Most Muslims, like most Christians and Jews, have lived peacefully with their understanding of the One True God. Muslims, however, have remained more susceptible than other monotheistic believers to religious militancy.
