The notion of identity plays a central role in contemporary culture, both as the core of individualism and as the proclaimed principle of nationalist populist movements – and thus also of Brexit ideology. To have a national identity implies being different from other persons, groups, nations and, in Brexitspeak, the EU. This means that Brexitism is not just a British phenomenon, but part of the wave of national populism that has swept across Europe and the Americas. This chapter includes a survey of European identitarian movements and of the far-right writers whose ideas were in tune with them. It was immigrants that were made into a threatening ‘other’ in the pro-Brexit campaigns, and the EU was blamed for increased immigration. While other factors, such as economic deprivations, levels of immigration in particular locations are part of the story, it can be argued, as this book does, that it was demagoguery targeting immigrants – loudly amplified by the popular press – that sufficiently persuaded voters to vote Leave.

The final chapter provides an examination of how the Merovingian world was shaped by opposition to paganism, heresy, Judaism, and, at the end, the new Islamic world of the Arab caliphate. The Franks (or at least some of them) had started as pagans themselves in the fifth century, and stories of conversion created important reminders of the journeys to salvation. Whether ‘real paganism’ is easily identifiable in stories or grave goods we may doubt. Similarly, the presence of heresy or Judaism can seem ambiguous when the sources are interrogated. But the creation of Frankish Christianity relied on its contrasts and those fed to it by the Byzantine Empire. Through Merovingian accounts of religious conflict we can discern how the Frankish kingdoms saw their place in the wider world.

In the Islamic tradition, Jesus is revered as a prophet to the Israelites, not as divine himself. The Qur’an selectively adopts Christian narrative lore about Jesus and Mary, omitting key gospel narratives like the passion. Jesus’s miraculous conception is acknowledged, paralleling Christian tradition without implying divinity, while his death on the cross is recast as a divine deliverance of Jesus from his enemies. The post-Qur’anic tradition portrays Jesus as a world-renouncing ascetic and stresses his humanity and subordination to God.

This chapter explores the history of urbanization in Nigeria, focusing primarily on the colonial era and, to a lesser degree, precolonial Nigeria in areas that hosted large, Indigenous urban centers like Ibadan or Kano. This chapter will argue that the primary factor that pushed Nigeria toward urbanization was colonialism, driven primarily by economic interests. This development was informed by Nigeria’s unique geographic, social, and political conditions, the specifics of which will be showcased through the exploration of Nigeria’s most prominent cities. Finally, the chapter will detail the urban policies of colonial officials and the actual development of these cities, along with the challenges that arose from uneven, exploitative practices. These issues would mire Nigeria’s urban landscape with poor planning, crime, poverty, and numerous other challenges which continue to plague the nation today.

Examines American relations with non-Protestant others within the Mediterranean, primarily Jews, Catholics, and Muslims. Pays particular attention to shipwrecks in Morocco.

Chapter 10 begins by summarising the conclusions from the case studies in terms of the model of ruler conversion, but its main aim is to adopt a global perspective on ruler conversions and on conversion more generally at times. It first underscores how vanishingly rare ruler conversions between Islam and Christianity are in the historical record and yet how open to monotheism immanentist regions, such as the Pacific and, to a lesser extent, Africa have been. Some scholars have already noticed the resilience of Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian societies to the proselytising drives of Christianity and Islam. The chapter summarises why this makes sense in terms of the mechanism of transcendentalist intransigence. It then offers a brief overview of how this affected Eurasian history by reference to the Ottoman, Mughal, Manchu and Mongol empires. The second half of the chapter offers a more detailed appraisal of the fortunes of Christianity and Islam in attempting to secure ruler conversions in South Asia, East Asia and both maritime and mainland Southeast Asia. Even though missionaries developed some of their most sophisticated strategies in these regions, the result was largely a failure. The conclusion to the chapter, and the book, reflects on the role of culture and the question of scale in historical analysis.

I introduce the topic, theme, central argument of the study, and its setting in Gulf petro-monarchies. I discuss the relevant scholarly literature, especially as it concerns ways in which religion (and specifically, Islam) has been used by political actors to advance particular interests. I provide a detailed elaboration of the argument and its various parts, as well as the method of analysis and justification for the choice of cases. I then discuss the context and cases in greater detail, with attention to key features of the historical development of the petro-monarchies from their pre-oil contact with the British imperial power, the arrival of oil companies, the importation of labor, the definition of borders and emergence of “modern” states. I illustrate noteworthy structural peculiarities of each of the four states. Finally, I outline the architecture of the manuscript, with an overview of each chapter.

This chapter explores issues for Islam in relation to religious themes arising from developments in artificial intelligence (AI), conceived both as a philosophical and scientific quest to understand human intelligence and as a technological enterprise to instrumentalise it for commercial or political purposes. The monotheistic teachings of Islam are outlined to identify themes in AI that relate to central questions in the Islamic context and to addresses nuances of Islamic belief that differentiate it from the other Abrahamic traditions in consideration of AI. This chapter draws together the existing sparse literature on the subject, including notable applications of AI in Islamic contexts, and draws attention to the role of the Muslim world as a channel and expositor of knowledge between the ancient and modern world in the pre-history of AI. The chapter provides foundations for future scholarship on Islam and AI and a resource for wider scholarship on the religious, societal and cultural significance of AI.

The epilogue brings the narrative from the early years of the new century to recent events, just before sending the manuscript to print, in mid 2024. It tells of the changing attitudes in Germany both towards Jews living in that country and towards Israel and its policies of occupation in the Palestinian West Bank. The unique German–Israeli relationship during the last two decades is sketched against the background of the past, and finally, it is attempted to draw a balance between the apparent achievement of a decent Jewish life in Germany, on the one hand, and the new dangers of a rising politically organized right, simultaneously with a growing critique of Israel and the apparent emergence of a new antisemitism, on the other hand.

The introduction sets the book’s agenda: to offer a novel account of crusade culture from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) drawing on Middle English romances and their contexts in various literary, historical, and legal documents (in English, French, Occitan, German, and Latin). The political culture to which post-1291 crusade romances belonged, I argue, was ambivalent, self-critical, and riddled with anxieties. These anxieties were about issues as fundamental and diverse as God’s endorsement of the crusading enterprise, the conversion of crusaders to Islam, sinfulness and divisions within the Christian community, and the morality of violence. After situating the book’s key claims within debates on Edward Said’s Orientalism and crusade literature, I present its methodology: engaged historicism, attention to how romance writers adapted their sources, and analysis of emotional rhetoric. The book’s contributions to the history of emotions and Middle English studies are discussed, as are the new insights it provides into the historical dimensions of the genre of romance.

The conclusion revisits the book’s key claims and maps new avenues for research on medieval European representations of, and self-definition in relation to, Muslims and Islam. It closes with a brief discussion of the qualified anti-crusade argument, grounded in imperfect ideas of equality, voiced by the French lawyer Honorat Bovet in his widely disseminated Arbre des batailles (1387).

‘Islamophobic discourse’ refers to the systemic and widespread negative attitudes, beliefs and narratives surrounding the Islamic religion and Muslims. In Australia, Islamophobia has been constructed in media and political spheres, and manifests through everyday experiences of discrimination for the Muslim community. Islamophobia is often characterised by the construction of stereotypes and disinformation that operate to promote fear and mistrust towards Muslims and the Islamic religion, and features Muslims as threatening and disloyal. In addition to Islamophobic discourses and the resulting negative attitudes, Islamophobia has become deeply embedded across societal institutions, and the government has addressed ‘terrorism’ as a priority. This includes education and is evident through the de-radicalisation and countering violent extremism (CVE) policies that have been rolled out in some schools.

Great changes have taken place in the approach of historians to the topic since the publication of East of Byzantium (1980). Instead of centre-periphery or top-down models they now see the relations between Byzantium and the east in terms of connectivity, networks and horizontal ties. This is connected with the spread of late antiquity as a concept and includes a great expansion in Syriac studies. Late antiquity now embraces the emergence of Islam and looks towards Eurasia; another challenge is posed by the rise of global history. But these developments, with the new focus on the fall of the western empire, raise major problems of identity for Byzantium itself, and indeed for western Europe.

During the 1970s, Iran’s relationships across Africa developed, both in terms of the number of ambassadors accredited to African countries, and in terms of the volume of trade and extent of political dialogue. At the beginning of the decade, Iran had diplomatic relations with just five countries in the whole of Africa – Algeria, Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia – but by the middle of the 1970s it had established formal ties with over thirty-five nations. This chapter investigates the nature of Iran’s diplomacy in Africa and why it was so successful during the 1970s. It questions why the shah was appealing to the independent states of Africa, and what strategies the regime employed to project an image of the shah as the leader of a country that had historically been an important global power and a civilising force in the world, and which aspired to continue to influence world affairs in a positive way. At the same time, after the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in 1971, the shah sought to expand Iran’s sphere of influence beyond its immediate neighbourhood towards the Indian Ocean.

Chapter 7 examines Goethe’s unconventional attitudes to religion and religious authority, and their influence on his creative work. It emphasises that, despite his opposition to institutionalised Christianity, Goethe remained interested in Christian beliefs and convinced of the value of scriptural reading. The chapter details his engagement with Spinozist Pantheism (the view of God as embodied in the world), with Judaism and the Hebrew Bible, and with Islam. It argues that we should see in Goethe’s approach not the rejection of religious narratives, but their reframing and rewriting.

Chapter 28 considers Persian influences on Goethe and the reception of his work in modern Iran, the first Persian translations of Goethe having appeared in the 1920s. The chapter emphasises the importance of Middle Eastern sources – especially the Persian poet Hafez – for Goethe’s writing. It then divides the Persian reception of Goethe into three phases. In the first, his status as a world great was the focus; in the second, his writings were portrayed as a reflection of either Persian poetry or Islam, while the recent third phase takes Goethe on his own terms.