You Say You Want an Islamic Reformation?
Lynn Robinson Friday, 1 December 2006
Richard W. Bulliet,The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (Columbia University Press, 2004) 192 pp. $18.95.
In The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization Richard W. Bulliet, a professor of history at Columbia University and former executive secretary of the Middle East Studies Association, narrates how a rapprochement of understanding might be reached between the West and Islam. Through four stand-alone chapters, Bulliet asserts that "[t]he past and future of the West cannot be fully comprehended without appreciation of the twinned relationship it has had with Islam over some fourteen centuries. The same is true of the Islamic world." His lengthy apologia for Islam raises important points about the bloody history of Christianity in the West—including violence throughout Europe, around the Mediterranean, and across the Americas perpetrated by Christians directly or by the state at the behest of some communion of Christians.
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