Islam and the Construction of Europe

This paper explores the historical grounding of Europe-as-Christendom, and suggests on that basis not only that the greater part of contemporary Western European Islamophobia is but a rearticulation of an ideology which was first established in the aftermath of the Crusades, but also that the much more generalized fear of alterity which is such a characteristic feature of Western European cultural traditions can be traced back to the theological and cosmological vision originally propagated by Saint Augustine