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Good points all. In the 100 or so years after Mohammed the Muslims expanded their empire faster than anyone in history. Were it not for Charles the Hammer, all of Europe would have fell. The Muslims did very well for themselves in the crusades. It was not until @1500 that Ferdinand and Isabella were able to unify Spain and cast out the Moors. The Muslims last ditch effort to take Europe was dashed by the Polish Hero Jan Slobieski at the gates of Vienna.

The real turning point for the Muslims happened when they rejected enlightenment (I think the leading Cleric advocating enlightenment was Al Jazeera Sp?) and embraced fundamentalism. They rapidly proceeded to descend into the stone age.

MattinNJ
I read a "counterfactual" history/sci fi story a few years ago....I don't remember the ins and outs. The short version is that, at the end of the story, Charles Martel announces that "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." Creepy, huh?

The irony is that the current population of France is composed of (according to last week's "Economist") 6-7% muslims, largely of North African extraction.

Maybe we should all have a look at "The Song of Roland" to get our spirits up.

Again, this notion that they "expanded faster than anyone in history" has to be put in context. They conquered plenty of uninhabited LAND in northern Africa; they were utterly halted when they met the Mongols; they were halted until 1453 at Byzantium, and only then conquered due to stolen cannon designs from HUNGARY; and they managed to come through Spain (which, by the way, Hannibal also did with his non-western army), but were defeated, despite a Europe that was highly fragmented.

If you look at Constantinople (700 A.D.), Potiers (932 A.D.), Lepanto (1571 A.D.), you get some STAGGERING western victories. The most remarkable, as you mention, was Vienna (1529) where a mere 16,000 Austrians defeated Suleiman's army twelve times its size.

Overall---and there are certainly exceptions---the Muslim military history of the world is more similar to what happened in Baghdad than in the Crusades.