Muslim religious leaders and jihadists have characteristically seen Christianity as both antithetical to the Islamic world and inherently ripe for conquest or conversion. Westerners, in turn, have likewise over the centuries concluded that Islam was inconsistent with Christian values, and have seen tension and conflict rather than conciliation and peace as the more normal state of affairs. If current Islamists reflect age-old antipathies—compare the messaging of the Islamic State, their zealotry intentionally patterned after the dogma of their predecessors—so too Western reactions to them are
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