Peter Baldwin commented on 2020-06-01 01:14
I have cited Efraim Karsh, Founding Director and Emeritus Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, London, who to the best of my knowledge has written the only comprehensi (article 657252-12361)
Link back to commentI have cited Efraim Karsh, Founding Director and Emeritus Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, London, who to the best of my knowledge has written the only comprehensive and scholarly attempt to grapple with Islamic Imperialism, as a totality in his 2013 book Islamic Imperialism: A History.
Not only does he support the factual claims I make about this history, he argues that history is relevant up to the present day. Here is how he contrasts Christianity and Islam:
'If Christendom was slower than Islam in marrying religious universalism with political imperialism, it was faster in shedding both notions. By the eighteenth century the West had lost its religious messianism. Apart from in the Third Reich, it had lost its imperial ambitions by the mid-twentieth century. Islam has retained its imperialist ambition to this day.'