References to “the religions of Asia” usually mean Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, and secondarily, Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism, or even the Jainism of India. Frequently we speak simply of the “Wisdom of the East” or of “the” Asian religion, from which Islam is as a rule excluded. This is an important clue: Islam, which twice deeply alarmed Europe on the threshold of the modern age when it advanced militarily to the gates of Vienna, has not been able to fascinate occidental man in the same exotic way as the religions of the East and the Far East. Evidently Islam offered no enticement; Muslims in Europe are either relics of the age of Turkish imperialism (as in Bulgaria, Albania or Yugoslavia) or they immigrated in times of free trade and of open labor and skill markets.