Actually, it was quite common in the Middle Ages for Europeans to consider Islam a Christian heresy. https://books.google.com/books?id=CY-sAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA520
AHC: Islam considered a "Western" Religion
- Thread starter Green Painting
- Start date
elkarlo
Banned
A lot of you are over thinking it. If Islam was more open during the medieval period, allowing Christian Euros more access unhindered through their lands. Then I think Islam would not be seen as so foreign.
As ITTL Islam basically barricaded Europe in until the Age of Exploration.
As ITTL Islam basically barricaded Europe in until the Age of Exploration.
Not just the Middle Ages. More traditional Catholics will still argue that it is. Just a hundred years ago, Belloc in his The Great Heresies characterized Islam as the logical conclusion of Arianism (he said Mohammad started with Catholic/Orthodox teaching and stripped away the Incarnation), and referred to it as the one heresy that originated outside the Church.
Oh, I know that Belloc said that, and that Evangelicals sometimes quote C. S. Lewis to the effect that the only two religions worth considering are Christianity and Hinduism: "I have sometimes told my audience that the only two things really worth considering are Christianity and Hinduism. (Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies, Buddhism only the greatest of the Hindu heresies. Real Paganism is dead. All that was best in Judaism and Platonism survives in Christianity.) " http://www.patheos.com/.../2014/08/22/the-worst-of-c-s-lewis (I won't say this is the silliest thing Lewis ever wrote, but it comes close...)
It's simpler than that. Have a majority of Arab countries side more with the US during the Cold War (Israel keeps its Soviet ties?) or more recently have Huntington's Clash of Civilizations not be written or not gain traction. Maybe have an academic foresee the greater rise of China, so the major contrasting work to End of History focuses on an emerging US-China bipolar world system.