Clamor of civilizations: in the battle between the West and Islam, words may be more dangerous than bombs.

• Author: Byford, Grenville
• Position: On Political Books - Book Review

Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam By Andrew Wheatcroft Random House, $29.95

Christians and Muslims have been butting heads for 1,400 years, violence alternating with uneasy coexistence. Swords and spears have morphed into hijacked aircraft and laser-guided bombs, but one weapon has remained the same: Maledicta, words of evil intent, are still hurled back and forth. Their objective is not to communicate with the enemy but to bind "Us" together in self-righteousness by demeaning "Them." Historian Andrew Wheatcroft sees Osama bin Laden and President Bush's paired epithets, "crusader" and "evildoer" for example, as merely the newest generation of an ancient rhetorical family.

Infidels is the history of three Muslim-Christian encounters: The first is the 8th-century Muslim conquest of Christian southern Spain from its Visigothic kings, and its subsequent rise to riches as "Al-Andalus." Cordoba, its greatest city, was known to 11th-century Europeans as "the jewel of the world," an almost unrivaled center of learning and culture. Many southern Spanish Christians converted voluntarily to Islam, but many did not. Mostly, these two communities, together with a third community of Jews, managed a highly productive, if wary cooperation.

It was, however, an arrangement based on keeping the communities operating in parallel rather than in any true partnership. As with any apartheid, it was buttressed by words. This from the Muslim rulers of 12th century Seville: "Frankish women must be forbidden to enter the church except on days of religious services or festivals for it is their habit to eat and drink and fornicate with the priests"; and this from the Christian side: "Muslims are ... fickle, crafty, cunning.... completely befouled ... rejecting chastity as though it were filth, disparaging virginity as though it were the uncleanness of harlotry...." Note the symmetry, especially the sexual innuendo. But some Christian kingdoms survived in northern Iberia, and beginning in the late 11th century, slowly rolled hack Muslim power. Toledo was recaptured in 1085, and Ferdinand and Isabella, rulers of Aragon and Castile as well as patrons of Christopher Columbus, completed the "Reconquista" with the capture of Granada in 1492. The monarchs of newly Christian Spain, however, knew a thing or two about irredentism. The Jews were expelled in the same year, although those who converted were permitted to stay. By 1614, the last of the...