For those interested in this subject, I recommend: "Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms" by Dr. Nasir Khan ( Solum Forlag 2006).

This is a very well documented book and which has a wealth of information from hundreds primary sources. I just finished reading a week ago. A friend of mine brought it for me from London where he was on a recent business trip. Dr. Khan (born in Poonch-Kashmir) is a serious Marxist historian who is able to explain the rise of negative stereotypes in the West vis-a-vis Islam as a complex phenomenon that encompasse both ideological-political and powerful economic motives. Among many other texts, he cites, for example, Fulcher of Chartres, who gives the following eye witness account of the Crusades at the end of the 11th century: “This may seem strange to you. Our squires and footmen … split open the bellies of those they had just slain in order to extract from the intestines the gold coins which the Saracens had gulped down their loathsome throats while alive … With drawn swords our men ran through the city not sparing anyone, even those begging for mercy … They entered the houses of the citizens, seizing whatever they found in them … whoever first entered a house, whether he was rich or poor … was to occupy and own the house or palace and whatever he found in it as if it were entirely his own … in this way many poor people became very wealthy.”