Posted on 01/04/2003 3:22:22 PM PST by LSUfan
Some 13 centuries ago, radical Islamic fundamentalism burst upon the world, spreading in just a few decades across most of the Middle East and North Africa and threatening the very existence of the West.
In their expansion, the armies of Islam took advantage of the weakness of the world’s great powers at the time. Byzantium had just defeated Persia in a long war that had left both empires weakened. As Will Durant writes in The Story of Civilization, "…both Byzantium and Persia, exhausted by war and mutual devastation, were in a tempting decline…"
John Norwich echoes that view in A Short History of Byzantium, writing, "In one respect in particular, luck was on the side of the Arabs: the Byzantine-Persian war had left both Empires exhausted."
Within a few decades, the Muslim armies had utterly destroyed and completely conquered Persia, were at the gates of an apparently doomed Constantinople, and were pouring across the Pyrenees from Spain into France, bent on the subjugation and conversion of the West.
T hat they were stopped, that the West survived at all, is not far short of miraculous. Somehow Byzantium rallied. Constantinople survived two great sieges, the last ending in 718, and Byzantium subsequently went on the offensive against the Muslims. The Byzantine Empire ultimately survived another 700 years before falling to the Ottomans.
In 732, Frankish forces led by Charles Martel engaged Muslim forces near Poitiers in southern France and in what Durant called "one of the most crucial battles of history," won a great victory, perhaps saving Western civilization. Its limits roughly established, Islam flourished and then declined over the centuries.
Now, taking advantage of another power vacuum – the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the strategic retrenchment and uncertainty of America in the post-Cold War world, radical Islamic fundamentalism has emerged onto the world stage again. This time it takes the form of stateless terrorism supported to varying degrees by totalitarian Islamic states in the Middle East, and by radical fundamentalist Muslims around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalsecurityonline.com ...
How do you spell Eat-My-Shorts, I'll tell you J-E-T-S!
Gimmie a J
Gimmie a E
Gimmie a T
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Whats that Spell! JETS!
Whats that Spell! JETS!
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