Protestantism and Islam

During the early modern period, Muslim and European Protestant leaders and states often made diplomatic and commercial contacts, including occasional military alliances and collaboration. At this time the two groups shared an enemy in the Catholic Habsburg empire which sought to eliminate what they considered to be an emerging Protestant heresy and to drive out the greatly expanding Muslim Ottoman Empire from Europe. The Protestants appreciated the Ottoman's tradition of tolerance for other religions -- including their accepting of Protestant refugees fleeing Catholic rule. The Ottomans saw the religious division of European as an opportunity to expand their empire.

Support by the Ottoman Empire for early Protestant churches and princes in Germany under attack by (Catholic) King Charles V contributed to the "consolidation, expansion and legitimization of Lutheranism" more than "any other single factor". But there were other alliances, agreements or attempts at such, included between Morocco and the Low Countries against Catholic Spain, England and the Barbary states, Persian Shah Abbas and the East India Company.

The two religious groups shared some religious differences with Catholicism -- not considering marriage a sacrament, rejecting monastic orders, and the banning images in places of worship -- and would sometimes highlighted these issues in their communications with each other seeking to establish religious common ground.

Cooperation between Christian and Muslim powers was not limited to Protestant entities. The alliance between the Catholic Kingdom of France and the Ottomans lasted to French invasion of Egypt in 1798 and the Habsburgs sought to forge an alliance with Safavid Iran to counteract it. As vassals of the Holy Roman Empire, Protestant Imperial Estates participated in Reichskriege against the Ottoman Empire.

Following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed the Conqueror and the unification of the Middle East under Selim I and his son Suleiman the Magnificent managed to expand Ottoman rule into Central Europe. The Habsburg Empire thus entered into direct conflict with the Ottomans.

At the same time the Protestant Reformation was taking place in numerous areas of northern and central Europe, in harsh opposition to Papal authority and the Holy Roman Empire led by Emperor Charles V. This situation led the Protestants to consider various forms of cooperation and rapprochement (religious, commercial, military) with the Muslim world, in opposition to their common Habsburg enemy.

During the development of the Reformation, similarities between Protestantism and Islam were noted: "Islam was seen as closer to Protestantism in banning images from places of worship, in not treating marriage as a sacrament and in rejecting monastic orders". The dispute between Catholics and Protestants in a divided Europe opened the way for Islam on the field of battle.

During the Reformation, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was known for his tolerance of the Christian and Jewish faiths within his dominions, whereas the King of Spain did not tolerate the Protestant faith. Various religious refugees, such as the Huguenots, some Anglicans, Quakers, Anabaptists or even Jesuits or Capuchins were able to find refuge at Istanbul and in the Ottoman Empire, where they were given right of residence and worship. Further, the Ottomans supported the Calvinists in Transylvania and Hungary but also in France. The contemporary French thinker Jean Bodin wrote: