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Islam is an expansionist ideology of power and violence. How can or why would anyone dispute that? Tours in 732; Lepanto 1572; Vienna 1683; these battles and many more stopped the 'Saracen' advance from conquering Europe. And now we have the modern world war for civilisation – termed a 'terrorist' action. It is both inane and interesting.
Do we know what we are engaged in – men and women of an easy, prosperous self-absorbed civilisation? Do we care? Are we sure that we are so much smarter or more intelligent than the men and women who lived in the epoch of Charles Martel; Dante; Elizabeth I; or Jan Sobieski? Are we certain that modern cultural Marxist relativity and post-modern gibberish is clearer than Urban II's call for the first crusade or the unmistakeably accurate description by Dante of a psychotic Mohammed babbling to himself before his entrails were ripped out of his stomach in the hotter depths of hell?
The Muslims between 632 and 732 – in the year of the Western calendar AD – swept across the Near East, North Africa, Spain and into southern France. A large raiding party headed towards Paris in 632. Some 200 miles south of Paris they were met by Charles Martel – the Hammer. A mere Muslim raid into the Christian heartland? Hardly. The force was led by the ruling emir of Spain – Al Rahman. Rulers don't lead cattle raids, and parties of pillage and rape.
No one knows how many Arabs were heading towards Paris before they met Martel and the Frankish knights at Tours. One rather exagerrated account puts the Arab forces at about 400.000. There was no possibility that such a host could be gathered or supported, so perhaps 20.000 to 40.000 Arabs might be a more accurate guess of Rahman's force. Again this is hardly a small raiding detachment, but a full Arab army on the move towards the riches of Paris – the first steps to conquering Francia and Germania.
In heavy fighting over a few days Martel's heavy Frankish infantry and Knights, finally broke the Arab calvary. Even the Arab sources at the time admitted to huge Arab losses. If the Arabs had won this battle they certainly would have seized Paris and used it as a base for further operations. Vast amounts of land, gold, money and slaves would have been acquired. Tours was an exceptionally vital battle which guranteed Europes future.
After this battle, Charles and the Franks launched an attack against Arab garrisons in the south and centre of France. He supplied money and arms to the northern Italians or Lombard tribes, and to the Basques and Gascons in the Franco-Spanish border areas to rise up against the Arabs. Dozens of cities and vast areas were liberated. The war against Islam had taken a positive turn for European freedom. Forty years after Martel died, his grandson – Charlemagne – ruled and extended the largest empire known to Western Europe since the fall of Rome named the Holy Roman Empire, and the security of Western Europe, outside of Spain, from Muslim domination was assured.
Over the next 700 years incessant war between the Christians and the Arabs occured in Spain and the Western mediterranean. By 1492 the Muslims were ejected from Spain, but the Mediterranean, so essential for European trade, prosperity and defence, was increasingly under predations from the Turkish Muslim empire in the East. The Ottomans had greatly expanded their Islamic empire to include directly and indirectly the lands of the old Arab conquests and many newer additions in the Balkans eastern and southern Europe. They had almost taken Vienna in 1529. Ottoman naval and pirate strength, which protected its land empire, was greatly reducing European prosperity and power.
Hence the importance of the Battle of Lepanto of 1571, in which a coalition of European fleets, led by Venice, destroyed the main Ottoman fleet. The Muslim Ottoman threat to Europe, ominously heralded by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was thwarted – at least on the seas. Lepanto confined the Turks and Muslims to the eastern Mediterranean and opened up the sea lanes to Western trade, traffic and arms. Lepanto also signalled the beginning of the end for the Muslim empire around the Mediterranean basin.
The last gasp of Muslim power and intention to crush Europe was launched in 1683. Suffering from economic, military and cultural inferiority, the Muslim caliph directed a desperate attack against Christian Europe hoping to take Vienna, the vital trade routes and raw material supplies in Austria, Hungary and Lower Germany. Such a success would certainly have added immense wealth to the tottering Muslim caliphate and forever changed the nature of the struggle between Christianity and Islam. Thankfully it failed.
Vienna under-manned and loosely defended was nonetheless able to hold off the Turks until the arrival of King Jan Sobieski of Poland who led a crack army of 30,000 men, most of them heavily mounted Knights from Poland and Germany, to the city. Sobieski said that his purpose for going to Vienna was "to proceed to the Holy War, and with God's help to give back the old freedom to besieged Vienna, and thereby help wavering Christendom."
He succeeded famously well. Upon reaching Vienna, Sobieski noticed the disarray of the Turkish forces and not hesitating ordered a full attack which completely surprised the Muslims. The Polish and German heavy calvary destroyed the Turkish lines and the sultan himself – Mustafa – barely escaped alive. The field with littered with dead Muslims, a crushing victory which confirmed Muslim and Ottoman decline and the superiority of Christian Europe.
These battles might appear to be anicent history and have nothing in common with today's world of instant communications; self-esteem pandering; cultural relativity and obsession with the dumbing down of society. But they are not. They are part of a general 1400 year trend. This trend is clear, it is the spasmodic violence of Islam against 'others' and the Islamic doctrine and belief of universal control.
There is a direct line between Tours, Lepanto, Vienna with 9-11, the Gulf Wars and Islamic violence today.
Islam is not a faith but an Arab paganism dressed up as an expression of spirituality. Any sensible analysis of the origins, the details, the rituals, and the history of Islam including its founder, its Koran, and its violent expansionism makes this apparent. But there is a key difference between Tours, Lepanto, Vienna with today.
In those bygone eras the Europeans were sure of themselves. They were sure that their civilisation, culture and ideas were better than those offered by the Arabs and Muslims. They were sure they knew what Islam – or as they properly called it the cult of Mohammed or Mohammedanism – was all about. They saw the Arab ideology for what it was – a swaggering conceited violent expression of paganism. Such a construct is to be annihilated, not embraced.
This is the issue today. Are you really sure that you are so much smarter than the Europeans of old ? Are you truly convinced that marxist cultural relativity and the destruction of fact, right and wrong, history and reality is a prudent way to construct society? Are you so sure that the Arabs and Muslims feel the same?
Are you certain that you are smarter than the man who said this, “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
Winston Churchill would be amazed at how far and how fast Europe and the West has fallen in their timeless struggle with Islam. We are truly naifs and incompetents.
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