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.