Note: Portions of this article were excerpted from Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. All quotes are sourced therein.
Earlier this month, when Polish lawmaker Dominik Tarczyński was asked how many “refugees” Poland has taken in, he flatly responded: “Zero.” When the British interviewer, whose nation has taken in millions of Muslim migrants, scoffed, “And you’re proud of that?” Tarczyński responded: “We will not receive even one Muslim, because this is what we promised… this is why our government was elected; this is why Poland is so safe, this is why we have not had even one terror attack.”
That Polish voters are determined to keep Islam out has been demonstrated time and again, such as late last year when “Thousands of Catholics formed a human chain along the borders of Poland … to pray for peace and ‘against the Islamisation of Europe.’”
What accounts for this candidly anti-Islamic response that is so different from Western European responses, which have culminated in the open-armed acceptance of millions of Muslim migrants?
The answer rests in history. Unlike most Western European nations, which, thanks to their geographical proximity have for centuries been out of the reach of—and thus have forgotten all about—Islam, Eastern Europeans are intimately acquainted with it.
Indeed, an event that occurred this week in history sheds much light on the current situation. On July 14, 1683, the largest Islamic army ever to invade European territory—which is saying much considering that thousands of invasions preceded it since the eighth century—came and surrounded Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire and de facto nemesis of Islam.
Some 200,000 Muslim combatants, under the leadership of the Ottomans—the one state in nearly fourteen centuries of Islamic history most dedicated to and founded on the principles of jihad—invaded under the same rationale that so-called “radical” groups, such as the Islamic State, cite to justify their jihad on “infidels.” Or, to quote the leader of the Muslim expedition, Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, because Vienna was perceived as the head of the infidel snake, it needed to be laid low so that “all the Christians would obey the Ottomans.”
This was no idle boast; sources describe this Mustafa as “fanatically anti-Christian.” After capturing a Polish town in 1674 he ordered all the Christian prisoners to be skinned alive and their stuffed hides sent as trophies to Ottoman Sultan Muhammad IV. Such supremacist hate was standard and on display during the elaborate pre-jihad ceremony presaging the siege of Vienna. Then, the sultan, “desiring him [Mustafa] to fight generously for the Mahometan faith,” to quote a contemporary European source, placed “the standard of the Prophet…into his hands for the extirpation of infidels, and the increase of Muslemen.”
Once the massive Muslim army reached and surrounded the walls of Vienna on July 14, Mustafa followed protocol. In 628, his prophet Muhammad had sent an ultimatum to Emperor Heraclius: aslam taslam, “submit [to Islam] and have peace.” Heraclius rejected the summons, jihad was declared against Christendom (as enshrined in Koran 9:29), and in a few decades, two-thirds of the then Christian world—including Spain, all of North Africa, Egypt, and Greater Syria—were conquered.
Now, over a thousand years later, the same ultimatum of submission to Islam or death had reached the heart of Europe. Although the Viennese commander did not bother to respond to the summons, graffiti inside the city—including “Muhammad, you dog, go home!”—seems to capture its mood.
So it would be war. On the next day, Mustafa unleashed all hell against the city’s walls; and for two months, the holed-up and vastly outnumbered Viennese suffered plague, dysentery, starvation, and many casualties—including women and children—in the name of jihad.
Then, on September 12, when the city had reached its final extremity, and the Muslims were about to burst through, Vienna’s prayers were answered. As an anonymous Englishman explained:
After a siege of sixty days, accompanied with a thousand difficulties, sicknesses, want of provisions, and great effusion of blood, after a million of cannon and musquet shot, bombs, granadoes, and all sorts of fireworks, which has changed the face of the fairest and most flourishing city in the world, disfigured and ruined [it] . . . heaven favorably heard the prayers and tears of a cast down and mournful people.
The formidable king of Poland, John Sobieski, had finally come at the head of 65,000 heavily-armored Poles, Austrians, and Germans—all hot to avenge the beleaguered city. Arguing that “It is not a city alone that we have to save, but the whole of Christianity, of which the city of Vienna is the bulwark,” Sobieski led a thunderous cavalry charge—history’s largest—against and totally routed the Muslim besiegers. (See Sword and Scimitar for a detailed recounting of this pivotal battle.)
Although a spectacular victory, the aftermath was gory: before fleeing, the Muslims ritually slaughtered some 30,000 Christian captives collected during their march to Vienna—raping the women beforehand. On entering the relieved city, the liberators encountered piles of corpses, sewage, and rubble everywhere.
It is this history of Islamic aggression—beginning in the fourteenth century when Muslims first established a foothold in Eastern Europe (Thrace), and into the twentieth century when the Ottoman sultanate finally collapsed—that informs Eastern views on Islam. Whereas Western nations cite lack of integration, economic disparities, and grievances to explain away the exponential growth of terrorism, violence, and rapes that come with living alongside large Muslim populations, Eastern nations see only a continuity of hostility.
As one Pole, echoing the words of Sobieski, said during last year’s human chain demonstration, “a religious war between Christianity and Islam is once again underway in Europe, just like in the past.”
Brilliant post, but where on where is our side?
Are the preachers and the pulpits all taken by the Enemy?
Will every Christian leader go to h.e.double hockey sticks for his craven cowardice and seditious silence?
Why oh why do the Pod People not know this?
Read the Koran when I was a wee lad many years ago, and I could see the horror of it. It was easy to understand Jihad, and the ensuing warfare, slave trade, racism, and mass ethnic and cultural cleansing. Not so easy to understand why the Christians gave up so easily and never returned the favor with anything approaching the gusto of Islam – that understanding only came much later with time and maturity.
Yet – every single time I read anything about the history of Islam, the law of Islam, the culture of Islam, or anything about Islam – it is always worse than I can imagine.
Just finished re-reading Herman Woek’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and he talks about how the Nazi atrocities against the Jews in WWII were so bad that people simply refused to believe it was happening, that is until the end of the war when it was no longer possible to pretend that it wasn’t. Something similar may be going on today with the refusal to accept the reality of Islamic aggression against non-Muslims.
Excellent article Raymond Ibrahim. I have a copy of your book on pre-release order and I look forward to reading it.
Also, Jan Sobieski relieved Vienna on 11 September, a fact which accounted for the date of the 9/11 attacks. I know you have written about that in the past but another article on that might be a useful reminder for many people.
I’ll start with a PS on the Battle of Antioch Post. Not discrediting divine intervention when I recall Sun Su’s instructions to the soldiers rallying towards an apparently hopeless battle and end up possibly routing a surprised enemy with their ferocity.
This one as others highly valuable in disussions about the dangerous history of Islam.
Question: Raymond or others, is it accurate to say that the world wide jihad merely paused about 1920 with disolution of the Ottoman Empire and was restarted with Iatolla Khomeni in 1970?
Congratulations to Raymond Ibrahim for his excellent article. I hope I am not quibbling but he repeatedly describes the attackers as “Muslims.” The correct term is “Ottoman Muslims” or “Muslim Turks” because the invading army was Turkish and was led by a Turk. I’m in no way absolving Muslims of killing/plundering Christians. It’s just that the attacker in this instance was Ottoman Turkey–a long-time believer in jihad. There are millions of Turks in Austria and Germany now. They are encouraged by Erdogan to refuse to become Austrians or Germans and retain their allegiance to Turkey. In other words, fifth columnists in the heart of Europe. What the sword of Kara Mustafa failed to do, Muslims want to accomplish through the cradle.
A century later, the Austrians showed their “appreciation” by joining the Germans and the Russians to end the Kingdom of Poland and divide up its territory between them. The consequences of that ingratitude came in World War I, when those three empires could go to war because they were no longer territorially separated by Poland. Result: all three emperors met their downfall and Poland was reborn. Also World War II started with a fresh decision by Germany and Russia (aka the Soviet Union) to divide up Poland between them. So Poles are aware both of the debt owed to them by other Europeans and of the historic ingratitude of those other Europeans.
Why is this no longer taught in school in the third year of Senior school. This was taught when I was in the third year and over the years I was beginning to think I imagined this so much crap dished out about the ‘bloody savage’ followers of Muhammad. One would think today he is still heading up his hoards of marauding barbarians. Anyone in their right mind would follow the example of Poland, Hungary, and the rest of those Eastern European nations who don’t want Muslim immigrants.
Raymond, I hope your book “Sword and Scimitar” is made into a sweeping, historical docudrama, the likes of which the world has never seen. Both sides of this story need to be told in great historical detail. People need to realize how clueless and dismissive most of the non-Muslim world is, and has always been, regarding the global Islamic movement, including in particular the ideological basis and actual historical reality of Islamic Jihad.
Both Muslims and non-Muslims need to know how passionate and determined many Muslims still are about the founding tenets of Islam and what that means for all of us. Most Westerners don’t even take their own religion seriously, much less the religion of anyone else, so how could they possibly understand the millions of Muslims who do take their religion very, very seriously and are willing to die for it? Are Muslims “savages”and “brutes” as many Westerners seem to think? I don’t think so at all. They’re human beings like any other, and there is no group of human beings anywhere that can’t be driven to the depths of brutality and barbarism under extreme circumstances. The difference is that Muslims are taught that making war against non-Muslims is a religious duty and the only sure way to get to paradise.
War is a dirty and ugly business no matter who engages in it, but Islamic warriors guided by the teachings and life example of Muhammad and his early followers are probably the best, the most determined, and the most effective in the history of the world, and they are likely to remain so until the end of time. Sun Tzu said that the key to winning any war is to know yourself and to know your enemy. Unfortunately, it would appear at this point in time that most Westerners don’t even know themselves, much less their enemies.