Sanity
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Joined: 6/14/2006
From: Nampa, Idaho USA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Zonie63
The problem you're addressing is a very old one, since we (the West) have been at odds with various Muslim nations for over a millennium. We in the United States have had minimal dealings with them prior to WW2, apart from the brief episode with the Barbary Pirates shortly after Independence. But it's only been a relatively recent development that the Muslim world and/or Middle East played any relevance at all in our national security aspirations.
100 years ago, the only Muslim nation of any consequence was the Ottoman Empire, while most of the rest of the Muslim world was under the thumb of either Russia or the West, in one form or another. The Koran was still around back then, but the Islamists were hardly any threat at all. The only real threat coming from that area of the world was the Ottoman Empire, but even by that time, they had seriously declined and were only a junior partner in the Central Powers. They were only a remote threat to the rest of Europe, and they were no threat at all to US territory.
So, the Koran has been around all this time, far longer than the US has even existed, yet it has only become a "threat" in the last few decades. How does something like this happen?
In some ways you have answered your own question when you stated that much of Islam was under the thumb of the colonialists. Slow and steady resurgence from those days and the addition of oil wealth has played a part in their making the news so much, and sending Jihadists abroad etc, certainly. There are other factors... It is impossible to properly address everything in one post
The threat of Islamism has been around constantly since the time of Mohammad but at certain points in history the threat has been physically suppressed through push back, and it is doubtful that life has always been pleasant in many Islamic backwater areas for many non-Muslim types, or for anyone who failed to measure up to their "holy laws"
There is also the minor issue of a lack of reporting through the ages, it can be difficult to write without the use of ones head. Remember, at one time all of the territory they hold now was previously occupied by others - Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc
Do you ever wonder what happened to those people? There is some history of the battles available, and what I have read (much like what the Islamists of today do to their "enemies") wasnt pretty.
The following is just for reference. If you dont like the source find your own, and feel free to dispute anything in the timeline
It would be nice to have an actual civil discussion about such things just once
quote:
A Timeline of Islamic Expansion In The Dark Ages
Let me put down here some facts that are worth returning to from time to time, as arguments over the history of Islam and Islamism are back in the news with today’s beheading in London. In debates over the history of tension between Muslims and Christians, the Crusades are often cited, out of their historical context, as the original cause of such clashes, as if both sides were peaceably minding their own business before imperialist Westerners decided to go launch a religious war in Muslim lands.
This is not what actually happened, and indeed it is ahistorical to treat the fragmented feudal states of the West in the Eleventh Century as capable of any such thing as imperialism or colonialism (although, as Victor Davis Hanson has noted, even in the centuries after the fall of Rome, Western civilization retained a superior logistical ability to project force overseas due to the scientific, economic and military legacies of ancient Greece and Rome). Moreover, when Islam first arose, much of what we think of today as Islamic ‘territory’ in Anatolia, the Levant and North Africa was Christian until conquered by the heirs of Muhammad, such that speaking of one side’s incursions into the other’s territory requires you to ignore how that territory was seized in the first place. That entire region had been part of the Roman and later Byzantine empires, and was culturally part of the West until it was conquered by Muslim arms – Rome is closer geographically to Tripoli than to London, Madrid is closer to Casablanca than to Berlin, Athens is closer to Damascus than to Paris.
All that said, it’s worth remembering that the Crusades arose in the late Eleventh Century only after four centuries of relentless Islamic efforts to conquer Europe, and the Christians of the Crusading era cannot be evaluated without that crucial context.
It’s somewhat hazy to identify the genesis of the first battle between the Byzantines and Islamic forces, which probably took place around 629 at the Battle of Mu’tah, before Muhammad had even completed the conquest of Mecca; the first sea battle between Muslim and Byzantine forces took place a few years later. The fall of Mecca in 630 solidified Muhammad’s control of the western side of the Arabian peninsula, and Muhammad died in 632. A decisive Muslim victory at the Battle of Ajnadayn in 634 spread Muslim control into modern Israel. Between 634 and 689, Muslim forces conquered Christian, Byzantine-held Syria and North Africa.
Starting in the middle of the Seventh Century, when Islam was still mostly united under a single political entity, you begin to see Islamic incursions into Europe (including Constantinople, which was effectively one of the leading European cities at the time) – and from there, the conquests and attempted conquests marched on. If you look on a map over this period, you see an almost continuous line of advance on Europe from all sides but the north – from Spain and France in the west to Italy in the center to Constantinople in the east to the frontiers of Georgia in the Caucasus, with the islands of the Mediterranean on the front lines:
650-54: Muslim conquest of Cyprus.
652: Muslim Invasion of Sicily begins.
674-78: First Siege of Constantinople, repelled with the invention and deployment of “Greek Fire.”
711-18: Muslim Conquest of Spain, which would not be reconquered completely by the Christians until 1492.
717-18: Second Siege of Constantinople.
719: Muslim invasion of France begins, establishing Muslim control of the Septimania region of southwestern France.
732: Battle of Poitiers (Tours); Charles Martel halts Muslim northward march into central France.
736: Muslim Conquest of Georgia, where the Emirate of Tbilisi would hold sway until 1122.
820: Muslim Conquest of Crete, which would be held until 961.
827: Muslim Conquest of Syracuse in Sicily.
846: The Muslim Sack of Rome by troops landing at the port of Ostia, including the sack of St. Peter’s Basilica while Pope Sergius II and the helpless Roman garrison retreated behind the city walls.
847: Muslim Conquest of Bari in southern Italy; the Muslim presence on the Italian peninsula proper lasted 25 years. In 915, at the Battle of Garigliano, Pope John X personally led an army against Islamic forces in southern Italy
863: In a rare break from the pattern of this era, the Byzantines go back on offensive, with mixed results over the next 200-300 years of warfare.
902: Muslim Conquest of all Sicily. In 965, an independent Emirate of Sicily would be established lasting until 1091.
1048-1308: The Byzantine-Seljuk Wars, yet another continuation of the mutual, longstanding efforts by the Byzantines and their Islamic neighbors to conquer each other’s territory. In 1071, the Battle of Manzikert would prove the first of a series of decisive engagements (followed by the 1176 Battle of Myriokephalon) that gradually wrested Asia Minor from the Byzantines, converting it from a Christian land to a Muslim one and isolating the remaining Byzantine presence to the immediate surroundings of their historic capital of Constantinople.
And, of course, Islamic efforts against Europe and the West would continue well after the Crusades, from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the naval incursions finally stopped at Lepanto in 1571 to the epic Seige of Vienna in 1683 (which in turn was followed by another century of bloody wars between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs).
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