From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Muslim corsairs from the Barbary Coast ravaged European shipping and enslaved thousands of unlucky captives. During this same period, thousands more Europeans converted to Islam and joined the pirate holy war. Were these men (and women) the scum of the seas, apostates, traitors - Renegadoes? Or did they abandon and betray Christendom as a praxis of social resistance? Peter Lamborn Wilson focuses on the corsairs' most impressive accomplishment, the independent Pirate Republic of Sale, in Morocco, in the 17th century. Corsairs, Sufis, pederasts, "irresistible" Moorish women, slaves, adventures, Irish rebels, heretical Jews, British spies, a Moorish pirate in old New York, and radical working-class heroes all populate a book which intends to entertain and to make a point about insurrectionary communities.