ABSTRACT
For more than 14 centuries citizens ofthe West, until recently mainly selfidentified as Christians, have faced the reality of living and interacting with an entity known as Islam (though they have called it by many other, generally derogative, names). A long and diverse history of fear and conquest, misconceptions and misrepresentations has preceded the current encounter of Islam and the West, but it has also been a history with notable periods of cooperation and even the acknowledgement of cultural and religious commonalities. From the early centuries when Muslim armies, merchants and explorers knocked at the gates of Europe, the Christian West has shuddered at the reality of what it recognized as a serious military, cultural and theological challenge. At the same time, the Muslim memory of Christian armies marching under the cross to kill Muslim infidels, of the Reconquista of the fifteenth century and of the arrival of missionaries and colonial powers during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries has left many Muslims enraged at what they perceive as a new age of imperialism aimed at dis-empowering, dispossessing and even eradicating Islam. Meanwhile, as Christendom and Islamdom have struggled and warred with each other, and religious spokespersons have challenged the nature of the other faith and even its right to exist, cultural, commercial and personal relationships between Muslims and Christians as fellow citizens have always been developed and maintained.
