The "Siege of Vienna" was in 1529. The "Battle of Vienna" - which also had a siege - was in 1683.

"the next day the united West triumphed..."
The war continued for another 16 years.

"the united West..." The anti-Ottoman forces were a "Holy League" Of Catholic Austrians, Poles, Venetians, and Hungarians. A Protestant Hungarian army fought WITH the Ottomans. The French under Louis XIV used the opportunity to seize Austrian lands in the west. Most of what we think of as Europe wasn't paying attention.

"High water mark.."
Actually it was more like a last gasp. The Ottoman progress into Europe had been stopped several decades earlier. If they had taken Vienna, that would have changed the direction of history but- they didn't.

Ain't Wikipedia wonderful?

It is also ridiculous to call the Ottomans "Islamic extremists". By 1629 Islamic religious fervor was not at a high point by any means,and I don't believe the population of the Ottoman empire was even majority Muslim at the time.

Both the 1529 and 1683 sieges are described as the "Siege of Vienna," with the 1683 one being better known. The Battle of Vienna of 1683 was just one incident in the siege - when the Polish-Imperial army under John Sobieski and Charles of Lorraine arrived to relieve the city and defeated the Ottoman army there. There was no particular battle in 1529, because, iirc, the Turks basically retreated on their own due to poor weather and the end of the campaigning season.

I don't think that capturing Vienna in 1683 would've actually made much of a difference. I don't think they could've held onto it permanently. And European and French public opinion (such as it was) would probably have forced Louis XIV to make peace with Leopold and join him in repelling the Turks. Which would, I suppose, have changed the direction of history, but probably not in the direction of Ottoman domination of central Europe.

One could argue that the real high point of the ottoman empire was in 1565 and the siege of Malta. Failure to take malta followed by lepanto in 1571 turned the western and central med into a christian lake which allowed the austrians to start pushing back into the balkans.

So Senator Santorum thinks the Crusades should be revisited?  Why else would he frame current events in the ME in such historical terms?

Between Gingrich's comments on MTP and now this I think the wingnuts are trying to frame this as a new Crusade that will be fought by having WWIII.  It is not Islam vs. Christianity it is radical Muslim extremists vs. God fearing Christian extremists...the key is religious extremists are driving this whole GWOT on both sides of the fight. 

Questioning Rick Santorum's statements about anything reminds me of Wash's comment in "Serenity:"

"Do we care about that? Are we caring about that?"

I agree with Libertine - this sort of nonsense just ramps up the rhetoric to no good purpose. The radical Christian cultists want WWIII so they can have their "Rapture" and Santorum is using that for his own political purposes.

There's no point in discussing it as if it matters that Santorum doesn't know history.

Even though I didn't say it as such here Seth I should have.  In my reply on Juliette Kayyem's thread I did refer to the to the people of "The West" as Judeo-Christian extremists.  Not to say all Judeo-Christians or Muslims are extremists...but the ones driving this to new lows in terms of rhetoric are.  Bottom line is whatever the "reasons" are both sides are trying to frame this struggle, war, or whatever it is called, as having to do with Western Judeo-Christian values against Middle-Eastern Islamic values.  It is The West (Europe, The Americas and Israel) against the Middle-East and they are waging a battle for control of the planet...I don't see it that way but that is how it is being framed.  

Certainly, one who has expressed it that way is Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. I disagree with some of his ideas, but also should note that's a 1998 book (possibly even earlier, but I have...somewhere...a 1998 paperback).

One of my issues, which might be worth a whole post of its own if I had access to my largely packed library, is how monolithic is Islam, and dealing with the subcase of the desire for Islamic (i.e., Shar'ia) rule. Often, I think we overfocus on the Middle East and ascribe to Islamic thinking what really may be Arab or Persian nationalism. Part of my thinking may be affected by my having a number of Muslim friends from Africa, mostly but not completely subsaharan.

The situation in South Asia is also complex, with a need to separate thinking about actions tied to Kashmir from the actions of both the state of Pakistan and those of the large number of Muslims that regard themselves politically as loyal Indian citizens.

How does this affect the framing? Mind you, I grow depressingly weary of policymakers and pundits that get challenged by more specific questions than "where is the continent of Africa on this world map?"
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Might throw in the Sufis there, too, Howard.

I've read some stuff from Peter Lamborn Wilson, who is an anarchist radical who also apparently happens to know quite a bit about Islamic mysticism. Some of that stuff, the Ismailis, the Sufis, the Yezidis, etc., is fairly interesting.

I tend to find cults and schisms of major religious movements - Eastern or Western - interesting because they tend to expose issues that are either glossed over or suppressed for social, economic or political reasons by the major sects.

The lack of uniformity in Judaism - Madonna and her Kabbalah, or the Neturei Karta - Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism - for example - might be amusing to dissect some time, along with the Islamic sects.

Last Thanksgiving was especially memorable for me. My ex-wife and I were the guest of a clan of people originally from Sierra Leone. It's worthy of thanks that people once in a bitter divorce can be friends.

More to the point, these people are like extended family to us, and vice versa. Spiritually, the family is a mixture of Muslims and Christians, the Christians mostly coming from intermarriage with people in the US for a long time, and they often from traditional black churches.

Dinner was a very odd mixture of total informality and deep discussion, as well as assorted intercultural things like tasting the best ham glaze I've ever had, made by a Muslim. One of the discussions was led by an elder who would be in the next Hajj, and it's fascinating to talk, very honestly, on what he (and others in the family) thought of that upcoming experience.

They recounted horror stories of the banditry and civil war in Sierra Leone and neighboring countries, but they didn't really connect that with the Western GWOT -- and details of militias amputating arms for fun definitely qualifies as terror. With respect to terrorism in the US, they sounded pretty middle-of-the-road for Americans, although, to put it mildly, none were Bush fans.

The ability to connect with Muslims outside the Middle East is one of the hidden strengths in dealing with those that specifically orient themselves to a resurgence of the Caliphate.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Or, to put it another way, "Don't forget Poland!"

Actually, it could be argued that if Sobieski had ignored the Ottoman attack on Vienna and taken his army east to fight the Russians (and won), there would have been no partitions of Poland, and the history of Europe from the 18th century onwards would have been very different.

First, if you're going to call right-wingers dumb - as opposed to calling Rick Santorum dumb - then you lose all claims to civility.

Second, of course history is relevant. Muslims are very conscious of the Crusades and Crusaders (even if we weren't until very recently) and so are all the southeastern Europeans from the Balkans who remember very well what it was like to be subjects of the Muslims. We fought in the Balkans very recently to prevent a genocidal culmination of these ancient hatreds. Your ignorance of the obvious defines very well who is dumb and who is not.

I also think the actual high-water mark of the Ottoman advance was during the 1529 seige but don't quote me on that

There is no actual high water mark in the sense that you can find it somewhere. But when did Muslim power start to ebb in their fight with the West? The battle of Lepanto in 1571 would be my choice.

Yeah, I mean, it's not as if the person spouting this racist, divisive, explicitly-against-the-teachings-of-Christ bullshit was the number three ranking Republican in the Senate of the United States. So, no biggie. Matt's just being petty, pointing out that that the the number three ranking Republican in the Senate of the United States is an idiot.

THIS ISN'T CONTENT:

"First, if you're going to call right-wingers dumb - as opposed to calling Rick Santorum dumb - then you lose all claims to civility."

THIS PART IS CONTENT:

Second, of course history is relevant. Muslims are very conscious of the Crusades and Crusaders (even if we weren't until very recently) and so are all the southeastern Europeans from the Balkans who remember very well what it was like to be subjects of the Muslims. We fought in the Balkans very recently to prevent a genocidal culmination of these ancient hatreds.

THIS ISN'T:

Your ignorance of the obvious defines very well who is dumb and who is not.

Since you do have some content, I'll uprate you to 2.

Happy now?

UPDATE: Wait a minute, now I see this post above:

"95% of Americans wouldn't know enough to call him on his factual mistakes.

You are clearly a member of that group. What separates you from most of them is that you think you know something - mistaking warmed-over Marxist cant for actual knowledge."

Sorry - repetitive inappropriate insults.

Back to 1 you go.

Is is not also the case that the Ottoman Turks were tolerant of   the Greek Orthodox Christian faith.  While they kept tabs on the Patriarchs, the Ottoman rulers did not interfere with the worship of the Orthodox faithful.

Given that the Crusades ended with a Muslim victory, I don't see why they should much care at this late date.

That's not the issue. They do care. Therefore it is relevant to modern policy.

Good point. It's very hard to understand Sudan, and thus Darfur, without understanding Sufism, and how it morphed, in Sudan, into the Mahdist movement of the 19th century onwards. Perhaps the leading proponent of Sudanese hard-line and the the wild card of Sudanese politics is Hassan al-Turabi, who, oddly enough, is a moderate in some social issues.

I've been mentioning, in a number of posts, how official Israeli religious authorities discriminate against Reform and Conservative Jews.

Understanding the evolution of what the West commonly calls Jihad -- the violence called "lesser jihad" by Muslim scholars -- is also worthwhile. Lesser jihad is external violence, while greater jihad is an internal submission to the will of Allah. Interestingly, the theory is relatively recent. Lesser jihad was first thoroughly described by Ibn Tamiya (1263-1328), but today's theoreticians of violence are surprisingly recent: Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and Abdullah Azzam (1941–1989). Due to the difficulty of transliterating Arabic into Roman letters, you'll see spelling variations of these names. Qutb and Azzam were the spiritual fathers of al-Qaeda, Qutb for Zawahiri and Azzam for bin Laden.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Yes, I've seen Qutb mentioned via-a-vis Al Qaeda.

In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but a number of Wahabbists seem to complain that bin Laden is more a follower of Qutb than Wahabbism per se, if I remember correctly. Some of them appear upset that Wahabbism is "getting a bad rap" because of bin Laden.

I've always found ibn Sabbah and the Assassins to be interesting. Lamborn Wilson makes a point about how the Ismaelis were really sort of "Islamic spiritual anarchists" in that ibn Sabbah preached liberation from the Law as part of his cult. A sort of ME version of Aleister Crowley's "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of The Law."

Rating my criticism of your rating? What a dishonest, cowardly person you are.