ISLAM IS PROJECTED TO supplant Christianity as the world’s largest religion by the year 2070, so an understanding of Islam’s complex role in world history becomes ever more imperative. We must move beyond a simplistic, ahistorical story of the rise of the West or a facile notion of a clash of civilizations. Without understanding the role of the Ottomans in the history of the last five hundred years, we cannot hope to understand either the past or the present.
