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What really happened in the centuries of conflict between Europe, Russia, China, America, and the peoples of the Muslim world Crusade and Jihad is the first book to encompass, in one volume, the entire history of the catastrophic encounter between the Global North - China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America - and Muslim societies from Central Asia to West Africa. William R. Polk draws on more than half a century of experience as a historian, policy planner, diplomat, peace negotiator, and businessman to explain the deep hostilities between the Muslim world and the Global North and show how they grew over the centuries. Polk shows how Islam arose and spread across North Africa into Europe, climaxed in the vibrant and sophisticated caliphate of al-Andalus in medieval Spain, and was the bright light in a European Dark Age.