Centuries of Muslim-Christian conflict still shape European collective identity.

Evidence

The notion of an Islamic takeover also is deeply rooted in the European psyche. The dawn of modem European history was a time of conflict between the nascent Muslim religion and Christianity. This started in the seventh century, when the Byzantine Empire was battered by the newly-formed armies of Arabia. The much later arrival of a Turkish Muslim power on Europe’s southeastern flank is very much part of the present-day historical consciousness of the Balkans. It cannot be discounted entirely as an element of general cultural awareness in Western Europe. And the history of Turkish-European relations is not the only relevant consideration. The Moorish State in Iberia ended in 1492, but raids by Barbary corsairs generated an insecurity along the Mediterranean shores of Europe that may continue in the undercurrents of collective European identity. — Michael A. Reynolds and Thomas D. Grant, The Future of Europe and Its Muslims, 223

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing material on Crusades-era beard styles and the Lex Oppia: cross-cultural panics as identity signaling. Late medieval and early modern Christian-Muslim contact is also threaded through the reader’s Black Marxism notes on Crusades-era xenophobia fusing violence, profit, and theology.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘The Deep Time of a Moral Panic’ — why anxieties that outlive the conditions that produced them (Vienna, Barbary corsairs) remain politically potent centuries later.