Western Victories Over Islamic Hordes

11/14/02 | Sparta

[Sparta]

I am trying to compile a list of Islamic defeats since the beginning of that disgraceful religion. This is to try to prove that Muslim soldiers really are not that scary. The West has consistently kicked Islam's a$$ since its beginning. Please post examples of this religion's stellar military performance. (links to websites welcome)

[wideawake]

The Battle of Tours 732.

The Battle of Lepanto 1571.

The Siege of Vienna 1683.

[CatoRenasci]

Well, obviously, the arabs (proto-Mahometans) had quite a string of victories up to 732, and in the East therafter, including the first Battle of Kosovo and the fall of Constantinople in 1453. And, thereafter, the Turks were successful in the Balkans and South central Europe, conquering Hungary, and culminating in the first Seige of Vienna in 1529.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Spain drove the last of the Moors (old name for moslems) out in 1492.

[Sparta]

I've heard the Moors were the educated ones in Spain, was this true or more liberal anti-Catholic PC BS?

[jdege]

Omdurman

http://www.omdurman.org

[Sparta]

Love the website, thanks.

[jdege]

Omdurman

[RLK]

The West has consistently kicked Islam's a$$ since its beginning. Please post examples of this religion's stellar military performance.

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If you knew enough of what you were taling about to make the first statement, you wouldn't need to make the second statement.

Islamic armies did rather well during their time. The Islamic empire disintegrated because of poor administration. The caliphates became independent countries, fractionating military power. What started out as the caliphates of Libya and Morroco and so forth became the independent countries now so named.

Of course now, in a nuclear age, the fielding of massed Islamic armies would be disastrous. What will occur is the type of warfare going on in Indonesia, the Philipines, and India.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I don't know. But in 1492 literacy was rare and mostly confined to scolars and the clergy and the Gutenberg Bible was only 40 years old.

[Burdened White Man]

First Crusade: Crusaders triumph over the Seljuk Turks and capture Jerusalem, AD 1099

[Sparta]

The only time Islamic forces were able to gain a foothold in the West was when we were divided. In the 700s, Europe was in the midst of the Dark Ages. Technology was advancing at a slow pace and much of Europe was in the stranglehold of Feudalism. When Constantinople fell in 1453, the Muslims were facing an isolated, dying empire. When the Muslims engaged the Spanish, Venetian, and Papal Fleet at Lepanto, they had wintered in French ports. Mohommad's(sp) early successes were against equally barbaric tribes in Arabia.

[Sparta]

This post is meant to illustrate that and also to tell everyone that the Muslims are not invinsible.

[billybudd]

The "West" vs. "Muslim soldiers"? You've got to be kidding. Do you really think in those terms? Let me ask you a simple question that perhaps someone so ignorant of history as you could answer: What do the battles of swords and bows from 1000 years ago have to do with the present day terrorism and nuclear weapons? What does the bravery of a soldier 1000 years ago have to do with the technological capability to shoot down rockets with lasers, to detect nuclear or chemical materials, or to send a remote-controlled drone on the other side of the planet?

Let's be serious here. The "West" and "Islam" are categories that only superficially apply to today's situation. Islam today bears almost no resemblance to the Islam of yesterday, anymore than today's "Christendom" does to yesterday's. The conflict we see today is not religious in nature but primarily geopolitical and secondarily ideological. Trying to look to the past for evidence of superiority is useless, especially since the modern West is clearly superior to modern Islam here and now.

[livius]

It's just that: liberal anti-Catholic PC BS.

Islam was a very new religion when Muslims, mostly from Persia - a very sophisticated society, at the time - conquered Spain. Within a couple hundred years in any place it conquered, Islam snuffed out learning, something that happened throughout the Middle East. In the case of Spain, even the more learned and moderate "new" (formerly Middle Eastern pagan or Christian) Muslims who first arrived there were conquered by a more aggressive group of North African Muslims, who set about destroying what the first group had brought from Baghdad.

The Muslims were in Spain for almost 800 years, but their domination was secure only in certain parts of southern Spain - they were driven out of the North very rapidly, and pursued by the Spanish kings all the way to their stronghold in the South.

And the famous "three cultures" (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) that people gush about was the city of Toledo, in Christian territory, ruled over by a Spanish Christian King (Alfonso X).

The only reason there was any luster at all to Moorish Spain is that it was far enough away from some of the hotbeds of Islam to permit the more moderate rulers (the caliphates) to develop some of the things that had been strengths of pre-Islamic Middle Eastern culture (astronomy and medicine, for example), in many cases because of the earlier influence of Greece and Rome.

[Burdened White Man]

The conflict we see today is not religious in nature but primarily geopolitical and secondarily ideological.

Looks like someone has been buying into Al Qaeda propaganda and W's political correctness all at the same time!