It is impossible to understand the identity of Western Christendom in Europe, apart from its centuries long

antagonistic relationship with Islam. In truth, Islam in the West have been mortal enemies since Islam's

exception in the 7th century. As we'll see in today's episode, the conflict

between Islam and Christendom goes back much further than the first crusade in 1095.

Likewise, many assume that after the last crusade, which occurred in 1291, conflict between the two faiths subsided.

However, even after the last official... Conflict between the two faiths subsided.

However, even after the last official crusade,

the conflict didn't really abate.

In fact, it is a battle that continues even to the modern day.

As Bernard Lewis writes, we tend nowadays to forget that for

approximately a thousand years from the advent of Islam in the seventh century

until the second siege of Vienna in 1683, Christian Europe was under constant threat

from Islam, the double threat of conquest and conversion. Most of the new

Muslim domains were rested from Christendom.

Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa

were all Christian countries, no less,

indeed rather more than Spain and Sicily.

All this left a deep sense of loss and a deep fear."

Another reality comes to four when the true history of Islam is compared to the revisionist

history often told today.

Conflict was not caused by an expansionist Christianity

that advanced into Muslim territory,

...