There’s nothing particularly original about Tarrant’s obsession with a long history of Europeans killing Muslims. Of course, no particular brand of extremism has a monopoly on crude, vainglorious readings of history. “The Battle of Vienna was a multicultural drama; an example of the complex and paradoxical twists of European history,” wrote historian Dag Herbjornsrud. The scheme of a clash of civilizations, he argued, does little to describe the “almost hopelessly complex web of shifting power-relations, feudal alliances, ethnic sympathies and historical grudges” that shaped much of European history. “Today, words such as ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ appear to have all the consistency of oil and water,” Almond wrote.

Source: Washington Post March 22, 2019 04:52 UTC