| During the middle ages and the early modern
period various individual Christian rulers found it necessary
or convenient to ally with Muslim rulers, but such alliances
met with the firm disapproval of western European Christians
in general. In the nineteenth century the states of western Europe
were very anxious to prop up the declining Ottoman Empire in
the Balkans in order to prevent Russian expansion. They did not
trust the nationalist movements in the Balkans to resist Russian
imperialist plans. So they supported the Muslim Ottomans against
the Orthodox Christian Russians. More recently, NATO supported the Muslims in Kosovo against the Orthodox Christian Serbs. |
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