Pugh has written a wide-ranging survey of Anglo–Muslim relations dating back to the earliest interactions during the Crusades (though not to the rise of Islam as implied by the book’s subtitle). His primary thesis is that, in contrast to the “Clash of Civilizations” paradigm, this relationship was based on extensive common ground and collaboration that exceeded the spells of discord and confrontation (for example, Britain’s supposed disruption of Muslim world unity after World War I), thus laying the groundwork for the gradual integration of Muslim communities into the sociocultural fabric of today’s Britain.
Muslim–Christian millenarian interaction should by no means be reduced to the simplistic paradigm of a ceaseless civilizational struggle. For one thing, conflicts and wars within each of these two “great civilizations” have been far more common and far deadlier than those between them (suffice it to note the nineteenth- and twentieth-century European wars and the Middle Eastern...