The battle at the Gates of Vienna, in 1683, is an historic battle in the history of the West and Islam. This battle was the beginning of Islam's decline in Europe, and the world.
Soon after this defeat came the Industrial Revolution which saw Western technology give the Europeans an unfair advantage on the battlefield. It almost ensured the colonial power's rule and success in its conquests.
From what started with the battle at the Gates of Vienna culminated with the First World War: the complete destruction of the Islamic world, not only militarily, but ideologically too with Seljuk Attaturk abolishing the Caliphate and accepting the Western concept of democracy (a method of rule antithetical to Islamic rule: Shari'ah law).
Political writer and commentator Christopher Hitchens calculates the precise date of this battle of 1683, to be the eleventh of September, of that year.
"...it is extremely unlikely to me, that the forces that wish to restore the Caliphate [Al-Qaida, Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood etc] which believe in sign, symbol and dream; and superstition and prophecy, picked a 'nothing' date for their grandest of all operations. It may be one of the many things that they know about but that we do not."
(the above quote from an excerpt of video two: 2 min 40sec)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVSXzDYYDjA
Material Hitchens found whilst researching his book on Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man.
Further to this, Robert Spencer gives further illumination on the topic:
"The jihad advance into Europe did end in 1683, and then we didn't see, at least not on that scale, jihad warfare until relatively recently. At least not until the last few decades of the 20th Century.
Many people believe, that at that point this was because of some kind of reformation in the Islamic world that led to the disguarding the ideology that had led these conquests to begin with.
...in 1683 it simply became impossible for this jihad to be persued because of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, and the decline generally, of the Islamic civilisation. It was not a matter of setting aside these [Koranic] doctrines, it was simply not being strong enough to persue them.
Now in our own generation, because of the Iranian Revolution, because of Saudi petro-dollars, it has again become possible to take up this war again. And so people believe because we have not seen this on such a scale, until the last few decades, that it is something new. It is not. It is something radically traditional. It is something very old, it is something deeply rooted in the Islamic religion, and it is being reasserted today."
Robert Spencer
I wonder, with the Industrial Revolution only a short while after the battle at the gates of Vienna, if the Turks had won and the Ottoman and Islam's appalling record of oppression, subjugation
and slavery
had taken hold in Europe, where we'd all be now?No Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no literature, no art...
Europe seems poised to be the first to find out...
