It's September 11th. ⚔️ On this day in 1683, the conquering armies of Islam's Ottoman Empire were met, held, and thrown back from the gates of Vienna. The empire never recovered from that defeat. Since then, Western powers have dominated the world. In Western culture, the Battle of Vienna is often depicted as proof of Christianity's superiority over Islam. On the flip side, in the Islamic world, and especially among extremists, the battle is remembered as the first and foremost humiliation in a long series of humiliations during the past three and a half centuries at the hands of the West.
Wait, though. Is this the way Christians and Muslims should really view this battle? No. The Battle of Vienna wasn’t a clash between two civilizations. In fact, Sunni Muslim Tatars were fighting with the Catholic Polish King John Sobieski on the one side, and the Lutheran Hungarians were allied with the Sunni Muslim Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha on the other. The year 1683 turned out to be just a typical year of battles over power and influence in Europe. Loyalties crossed all borders of faith and ethnicity.
Nor did the Battle of Vienna matter as much in European history as some would have us believe. After 1683, the Ottomans continued to rule the Balkans for two more centuries. The majority of Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Serbs, and Croats stayed as Christian as ever, and are today more Christian than the Austrians. And the primary enemy of the Sunni Muslim Ottomans from the 16th to the 18th century was not a European state, but the Persian Safavid Empire and its new school of Shia Islam.
What does all this mean today? It explains a lot about what happened on September 11th, 2001, however misguided the motivation was. ☮️ Peace… Jamiese of Pixoplanet