Christianity and Islam continue to be the two fastest growing religions in the world. Men and women, both Christian and Muslim, are now asking the question, must these two religions collide? Is there no common ground between them? Many Muslims are taught that Christianity seeks to eliminate Islam; that Christians have no knowledge or understanding of their faith; that Christians condemn Islam, and hold the teachings of Islamic Fundamentalism responsible for many if not all the terrorist activities throughout the world.
Many Christians are taught that Islam teaches the worship of a false God; that Islam was and still is spread by force and terror; that all Muslims are Arabs, and that both oppose the policies of the United States and the essentials of democracy. Millions of Christians have been taught for decades that Islam is an intolerant religion, forbidding the free choice and practice of any religion except Islam. By far the great majority of citizens of the West continue to teach, repeat and believe the distortions and prejudices created centuries ago by a European civilization which regarded Islam as the "traditional enemy."
False images of Islam were formed by literary accounts and given exotically sinister coloring in lurid tales of harem intrigues , voluptuous heavens, and dangerous casbahs. Textbooks on European civilization , then and now, presented Islam as the religion which put an end to ancient centers of primitive Christianity in the Middle East and North Africa, replaced Christian Constantinople in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, and occupied Spain for almost 900 years.
Somehow omitted and forgotten are the fruitful scientific collaboration and theological discussions which occurred in Baghdad in ...