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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Why September 11? History my dear friends.


I picked today to restart my Blog after some vacation/start of semester down time. And what a day it is. Any one know why Osama bin Laden chose September 11 as the day for that dirty deed 11 years ago? History holds the answer.

Islam was spread in western Europe up from Morocco across Gibraltar and into the Iberian peninsula. The Islamic influence is still there today in Spain. From there Islam spread to France and ultimately hit its high water mark in 732 where Charles Martel stopped the Muslim advance at the Battle of Tours. It then took until the golden year of 1492 until the last of the Islamic forces were ejected from continental Europe from the port of Grenada, Spain. Thus you would hear OBL lament about what he called the "crime of Iberia".

To the east there was the Ottoman empire which was controlled by the Turks of course. Islam was spread in eastern Europe by the Turks and their influence is still present today. The many Muslim areas of the former Yugoslavia are testament to this expansion. Well, folks like OBL held on to days of infamy, just as I suppose December 7th and September 11th will be part of our history forever. For the folks who hold on to the glory days of Islamic conquest, September 11 is a date of infamy. That was the date that the Ottoman forces were stopped in their western advance at the gates of Vienna.....September 11, 1683. That was the high water mark of Ottoman Islamic conquest.

The victory was secured largely by the forces of the Polish Hussars.


And now you know the rest of the story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A very Western/Christian-centric perspective.....Did you not know that Muslims have their own calender?---We use the lunar calender and the year 1 starts with the year of immigration to Medina/Yathrib (Hijra)----So "September 11" actually has no meaning whatsoever!!!!

Randall Parker said...

I know more of this than you could ever imagine.

Hey, I tell you what. These Blogs are free. So why don't you start one from the Middle Eastern/Muslim-centric perspective?