NYTIMES - In this age of anxiety, anger and contestations between the West and the Islamic world, many epoch-shaping stories of intellectual exchanges between our cultures are often forgotten.

A powerful example comes from literature. Millions of Christian, Jewish and Muslim readers across the world have read that famed tale of the man stranded alone on an island: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, the 18th-century British pamphleteer, political activist and novelist.