ter strife or crusade undertaken in the spirit of a holy war,” andrnthis does not harmonize well with ecumenical fraternizing. Ifrnthere is to be a jihad involving Muslims, Christians, and Jews, itrnwill not be cooperative but confrontational, and it will not bernvery quiet or very comfortable for us other “peoples of thernBook.”rnWho is violent in today’s “post-Christian” world? We arernwell informed about violence perpetrated by the nominallyrnOrthodox Christian Serbs against the “Turks” of Bosnia-rnHerzegovina and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo. We hearrnvery little, if anything, of the atrocities perpetrated by thern”Turks” and ethnic Albanians against the Serbs, nor of the factrnthat the Muslims of Bosnia were the allies of the Nazis againstrnthe Serbs during World War II. Those “Turks” are ethnic Slavsrnwho converted to Islam during the period of Turkish rule; thernAlbanian Muslims also came from a population, once Christian,rnwhich converted under the Turks and helped the Turksrncontrol their subject Christian majority. The Slavs have bitterrnmemories of past Muslim terrors; when Polish children misbehaved,rnmothers used to warn them, “The Turks will get you,”rnreflecting centuries of Christian experience under the crescentrnmoon. The fierce resentment that the Serbs feel at attempts torndismember what remains of their once substantial realm stemsrnfrom that bitter history as well as from present-day antagonism.rnDo the Muslims of today, in their majority, repudiate violencernthe way Christians are taught to feel shame for the Crusades?rnThe rapid expansion of Islam, unlike that of Christianityrnin its early centuries, came in the wake of Arab conquests,rnwhich wiped out the Persian Empire and destroyed Zoroastrianismrnbefore proceeding to the subjugation of much of WestrnAsia, North Mrica, and Spain. Syria and Egypt fell; the libraryrnof Alexandria, the greatest in the ancient world and one of thernjewels of Christian culture, was wantonly destroyed by the invaders.rnIt is self-evident that Islam, far more than any other religion,rnowed its expansion to militar)’ aggression.rnAlthough the eastern horn of the Islamic crescent was bluntedrnin the waters around Constantinople in 678, Arabs pushedrnup the Iberian peninsula into France, until the western hornrnwas finally broken by Charles Martel at Tours in 732 (a secondrnArab attempt to take Constantinople had failed in 718). ThernChristians of the Iberian peninsula took more than seven centuriesrnto push the Islamic Moors back across the Straits ofrnGibraltar. (The 500th anniversary of this victory, 1492, wasrnpassed over in embarrassment as politically incorrect to celebrate,rnlike Columbus’s discovery that same year.)rnAfter the turn of the millennium, in the East, the MuslimrnTurks took over from the Arabs the attempts to overrun Christendom,rneventually conquering Constantinople in 1453, havingrnpreviously crossed the Bosphorus and established themselvesrnin Greece and the Balkan peninsula. Most of EasternrnChristendom was plunged into a prolonged darkness of thernkind that the Nazis briefly visited on occupied France in 1940-rn1944. During this period, Islam—by conquest, trade, and missionaryrnexpansion—swept over India, down the Malay peninsula,rninto the islands of the East Indies, and up into central Asia,rnbut much of this went relatively unnoticed in the West andrnplays an insignificant role in our courses in “world history.”rnIslamic pressure on the Christian nations of southeasternrnEurope, with which we are more familiar, reached the gates ofrn’ienna before being thrown back in 1526; a second and—uprnuntil now—last attempt was made in 1683: The Turkish armiesrnwere defeated before the walls of Vienna by a coalition led byrnthe Polish king, John Sobieski. That was the high-water markrnof Islamic expansion. After that, the Islamic tide receded inrnNorth Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Arabia, beginningrntwo and a half centuries of retreat. The rise of industrialism,rnWestern science, and the European conquest and colonizationrnof the Americas was followed by a steady pressure on what hadrnbeen Muslim strongholds in Africa and the Near East. The ancientrnseats of Western culture in Greece were recovered earlyrnin the 19th eentiiry, and the Orthodox Balkan peoples graduallyrngained their independence, but even the defeat of Turkey inrnWorld War I could not restore Constantinople to the Creeks.rnThat defeat of the Turkish Empire in World War I was followedrnby the temporan,’ establishment of Britain and France inrnthe Near East. After the reluctant departure of the British andrnFrench after World War II, the Islamic expansion began again,rnthis time under Arab, rather than Turkish, auspices. VTiile Eu-rnGeldingsrnby Alan SullivanrnThey used to celebrate only three things:rnthe birth of a boy, the emergence of a poet,rnand the foaling of a blood mare.rn—Ibn RashiqrnBecause they loved their horsesrnMore than their swaddled wives.rnThey sang the poets’ praisesrnOf brief but impassioned livesrnWhile squatting on their hassocksrni’Vnd plucking polished oudsrnOr loading shot in flintlocksrnTo settle tribal feuds.rnToday their grim descendantsrnTruck-bomb embassiesrnTo prove their independencernFrom foreign dynasties,rnYet no jihad or fatwarnPurges polluted souksrnWhere portraits of MadonnarnOutsell the Prophet’s books.rnTo me it scarcely mattersrnli mullahs preach in skirtsrnOr harems trade their chadorsrnFor skintight pants and shirts.rnSheiks are counting profitsrnAs geldings court a mare.rnBut I mourn for the poetsrnVanishing evenwhere.rnFEBRUARY 1999/19rnrnrn