Author:
O'Grady, Selina, author.
Edition Statement:First Pegasus books hardcover edition.
ImprintNew York : Pegasus Books, 2020.
Imprint2020.
Descriptionxvi, 462 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm
Note:Introduction -- 1. The Birth of Persecution: The Roman Empire Turns Christian -- 2. Muhammad's Edict of Toleration -- 3. The Price of Toleration: The Dhimmi in the Islamic Empire -- 4. Islam's Inquisition -- 5. The Problems of Assimilation: Willing Martyrs -- 6. Austerity in England and the Papal Battle for Supremacy -- 7. The Crusades: The Church Finds Its Enemy -- 8. The Moneylender -- 9. Enemies Within: The Heretic, the Leper, the Sodomite and the Jew -- 10. The Mongols and the 'Closing of the Door' -- 11. The Black Death: An Experiment in Tolerance -- 12. Inquisitions and Expulsions -- 13. The Reformation's War Against the Catholic Church -- 14. The Ghetto -- 15. The Religious Wars of Europe -- 16 Sunnis vs Shiites -- 17. The Puritan Who Fought the Puritans -- 18. America Writes God out of the Constitution -- 19. Robespierre's New Religion -- 20. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab vs the Islamic Enlightenment -- 21. Emancipation and the Failure of Tolerance -- 22. The Genocidal Century -- Conclusion.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 430-443) and index.
Note:In this groundbreaking book, Selina O'Grady examines how and why the post-Christian and the Islamic worlds came to be as tolerant or intolerant as they are. She asks whether tolerance can be expected to heal today's festering wound between these two worlds, or whether something deeper than tolerance is needed. Told through contemporary chronicles, stories and poems, Selina O'Grady takes the reader through the intertwined histories of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish persecutors and persecuted. From Umar, the seventh century Islamic caliph who laid down the rules for the treatment of religious minorities in what was becoming the greatest empire the world has ever known, to Magna Carta John who seriously considered converting to Islam; and from al-Wahaabi, whose own brother thought he was illiterate and fanatical, but who created the religious-military alliance with the house of Saud that still survives today, to Europe's bloody Thirty Years war that wearied Europe of murderous inter-Christian violence but probably killed God in the process. This book is an essential guide to understanding Islam and the West today and the role of religion in the modern world.
