Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam

Historian Wheatcroft (The Ottomans) adds another volume to the steadily growing literature on the history of Christian-Muslim relations. Part philosophical treatise, part history and part diatribe, Wheatcroft's study adds little that has not been covered already by more thorough and elegant studies such as F.E. Peters's recent The Monotheists. He offers an overview of the tortured relations between Christianity and Islam in various contexts including the Crusades, Spain, the Middle East and Bosnia. Wheatcroft opens his book with an account of the 1571 battle of Lepanto, where Christians triumphed over the Muslims. Using the theoretical writings of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Stephen Greenblatt, Wheatcroft emphasizes that the conflict between the two religions most often devolved into a war of words in which one side used dehumanizing language to describe the other and to thereby sanction war. He helpfully brings his study into the 21st century by examining briefly the religious rhetoric that President Bush and General William Boykin have used to defend the attack on Iraq and other Muslim nations. Unfortunately, Wheatcroft betrays his own ideological position by referring to Muslim terrorists as a "virus" and by defending the Bush administration's positions on the war, thereby diminishing the value the book might have as an objective description of the conflicts between Christianity and Islam.