As I write this, I am looking at a photo of a fourteen-year old boy standing with his friends in a playground with some apartment buildings in the background. Working-class Northern England. Mid-1980s. Five of the six boys are South Asian. The sixth, standing in the middle, is the only white boy in the group. This is Badam, a.k.a Ian Almond, who had no white friends until he was about sixteen. The only name he responded to was Badam, the Indian word for Almond. As Ian tells me, watching television with his Gujarati friends while someone was reading namaz in the next room is how he remembers those early teenage years. Being surrounded by all his Muslim (and Hindu) Gujarati friends left him with no sense of Islam as the “other.” There are doubtless many people with Ian’s memories, people for whom the sound of namaz mixed with British television, or the cacophony of Gujarati and working-class English voices mingling, is nothing new. For someone with these childhood memories, Muslims are not scary strangers threatening the Western way of life, but beloved friends and neighbors.

Individual memory is a funny thing. Sometimes we remember things others around us - family members, friends, colleagues - don’t. But collective memory is even funnier. We can remember a collective past that never existed and bring nations, religions, and cultures into existence. We can also suffer from collective amnesia and bring ourselves to the brink of destruction.

Two Faiths, One Banner by Ian Almond is an attempt to reverse one particularly dangerous strain of collective amnesia that has infected the world today. It is this collective amnesia that leads people to see Islam as deeply non-Western and a threat to the Christian West. If we are to continue writing the history of the West at all, Ian tells us, we must stop airbrushing Muslims and Jews out of it. So, he cleverly takes the idea of war and conflict, something we are all obsessed with these days (The War on Terror, The War on Drugs, Clash of Civilizations) and turns it on its head. He shows us how Muslims and Christians, far from having an unrelentingly antagonistic history, have often fought on the same side, against other Muslims and Christians, during defining moments of European history. From Andalusia, to Sicily, to Turkey, to Crimea, this is a history of the West that shakes us out of our collective amnesia. In the process, Ian also offers us an Islamic history of Europe.

It is not easy to stop forgetting. Amnesia is a wall. It partitions the past from the present. Muslim from Christian. Us from Them. You from Me. There is some comfort behind such partitions or we would not have been clinging to them for so long.

I grew up in India, a part of the world where collective amnesia is not unknown. Just sixty years can sometimes cause severe amnesia (and its related disease, false memories) among South Asians. Since the religion-based partition of India in 1947, some of us have forgotten people who were our neighbors and friends only a generation ago. Hindus forget Muslims. Muslims cannot recognize Hindus.

About fourteen years ago, my husband and I, both Indians, were living in Lahore, Pakistan. One weekend afternoon we had gone to Lahore Fort for a stroll. Inside the fort is a complex known as Ranjit Singh’s Samadhi. Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), the Sher-e-Punjab [Lion of Punjab], was the legendary first ruler of the Sikh Empire. The Samadhi is a memorial for Ranjit Singh. According to the Pakistani government’s rules, no Muslim may enter it. I assume this is largely because the government worries about vandalism. The entrance to the complex is through a narrow passageway which is guarded by Pakistani soldiers. Visitors must pass through in single file. That particular afternoon, my husband and I got separated by a little crowd of visitors - mostly Westerners and a handful of Sikh pilgrims - outside the entrance. He was waved through without any problems. As a Sikh, he has a particularly recognizable name. Then came my turn.
“Name?” the soldier asked.

“Sharmila,” I responded.

“Sorry. No Muslims are allowed.”

“But I am not Muslim. I am Hindu.”

“You look Muslim and you have a Muslim name.”

I had never encountered this dilemma before. What is a Hindu supposed to look like? True, my shalwar kameez was made by a Lahori tailor. To avoid standing out in crowds, I partially covered my head with a dupatta while I lived in Lahore. And no, I don’t wear a Hindu symbol like an “Om” or some god or goddess dangling from a gold chain around my neck. My name does have an Arabic root. But since when did that make me Muslim?

After some more arguing, I realized the situation was getting tense. My husband was nowhere to be seen. The young soldier was clearly suffering from the collective amnesia we have all been sharing since 1947 when the modern states of India and Pakistan were born. Aren’t Hindus and Muslims completely different from each other? How could I, a Hindu woman from the enemy country, look so much like other women in Lahore? I had no idea how a woman is supposed to prove her religion when challenged like that.

The hot Punjabi sun was making us both agitated and bad tempered by now. In an act of desperation, I leaned over and said, “Bhaisaab [brother], why would a good Muslim woman claim she is Hindu?” My Muslim brother had no response. He let me walk inside.

From the Arabian Nights to Harry Potter, literature tells us that it is the doorkeeper who has the right to pose a question. If you have the correct answer, the password, then you may enter. Occasionally, in real life, we can open the doors of amnesia by posing a question to the doorkeeper himself.

Sharmila Sen is an Editor for the Humanities at Harvard University Press. Ian Almond’s Two Faiths, One Banner was published earlier this month as is available now at the Seminary Co-op.