The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Issue 51

Issue 51 [@53:48]: Robert Spencer – “On September 11, 1683 the siege of Vienna was broken. That was high point of Islamic Jihad in Europe. After that Islam went into decline and the Islamic world was colonized and in a drastically weakened state. It seems very likely, almost certain as far as I am concerned that Osama bin Laden chose September 11 in 2001 to signal that decline of Islamic world is over. And the Jihadist were back and we are going to pick up where they left in Vienna in 1683.

Rebuttal 51: This is clearly a broadsided wide swoop by Spencer. Before, Shoebat was rhyming in punch lines, now this gentleman is rhyming the history into the present, and that too quite distorted.

For the record the dates by Spencer are wrong. The Battle of Vienna (as distinct from the Siege of Vienna in 1529) took place on September 11 and September 12 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by Turks for two months. It was the first large-scale battle of the Habsburg-Ottoman Wars, yet with the most far-reaching consequences. The siege itself began on 14 July 1683, by the Ottoman army commanded by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha. The decisive battle took place on 12 September [Time line Index] and NOT on September 11th as cleverly and maliciously manipulated by Robert Spencer.

Never will the movie producers tell the audience that The Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, or simply the Holy Name of Mary, is a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church celebrated on 12 September to honor the name of Mary the mother of Jesus. It has been a universal Roman Rite feast since 1684, when Pope Innocent XI included it in the General Roman Calendar to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. [Wikipedia]

Neither will the makers of this movie ever tell the audience as to what Ottomans were doing at the gates of Vienna in 1683. It all started when Protestantism was pitted against Catholicism of Holy Roman Emperors in The Thirty Year War. Factually, Ottomans had responded to a call for support by Imre Thököly (April 25, 1657 – September 13, 1705), who was a Hungarian statesman, leader of an anti-Habsburg uprising, Prince of Transylvania, and (briefly) vassal king of Upper Hungary. Vienna was put under siege by joint forces of Transylvania and Ottomans, but the tide was turned against this alliance on September 12, 1683, significantly by the Polish cavalry consisting of Lipka Tatar who were Muslims. The Lipka Tatars who fought on the Polish side at the Battle of Vienna, on 12 September 1683, wore a sprig of straw in their helmets to distinguish themselves from the Tatars fighting under Kara Mustafa on the Turkish side. Lipkas visiting Vienna traditionally wear straw hats to commemorate their ancestors’ participation in the breaking of the Siege of Vienna. Readers might be familiar with Hollywood actor Charles Bronson, but they might not know that he too was a Lipka Tatar.

The movie makers do not let go of any battle of Muslims in history from labeling it as “Jihad”. Ottomans knocking at the doors of Vienna was anything but Jihad. The entanglement of Ottomans for another allied king was no different than that of United States responding to a similar call by French in Vietnam and then we all know of the subsequent imbroglio in South East Asia.

The current documentary is actually a continuation of anti-Muslim hate tactics by its producers and its experts including Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or and Serge Trifkovic who have a much larger agenda to embed in the minds of the West that Muslims are a foreign element in the West and that Muslims are incompatible with the West. This fully comes to light in the manifesto of the Norwegian terrorist who mentioned Robert Spencer 64 times [New York Times], Bet Ye’or dozen times [Foreign Policy], Serge Trifkovic, Abdullah Al Araby and Walid Shoebat as recommended authors [Alternet.org].

It is quite interesting to note the commonalities between Osama-bin-Laden and Robert Spencer. We cannot say for Osama that he flew the planes into World Trade Centers, but by common knowledge, he inspired those terrorists to kill the innocent in thousands. Similarly, Robert Spencer did not press the buttons or pull the triggers in Norway attacks in which scores were killed, injured and buildings destroyed, but Anders Behring Breivik‘s manifesto clearly points towards Robert Spencer for his inspiration. If Navy Seals can take out Osama, it begets the question, should Norway contemplate similar action against these documentary characters who inspire and infuse hate and venom, by Judicial due process?

“European are not Muslims” is a myth that only dwells in the minds of xenophobes of the documentary who want to revive crusades or fear of crusades in the minds of the West. Fact is that Muslims have been part of European fabric for over thirteen centuries. In modern times, United States of America has set the standards for citizenship rights. The first European settlement in North America was James Town which was established in May 14, 1607, that was much before the Battle of Vienna. It took only 167 years for the settlers to fight the American War of Independence (1774-1783), fully claimed a new country for themselves and wrote its venerated Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Thereafter, The Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. Thus from its first settlement to its constitution it took merely 180 years. What American experience tells us is that if a “foreigner” finds him/herself in a new land, descendents of such persons have a full right to claim ownership of that land, its institutions and its citizenship forever in less than 200 years.

Using the American standards, Muslims in history should had been conferred the same rights of citizenship in Spain where they were living as citizens for about 8 centuries (711-1492) and then eliminated by Reconquista in 1492 and the Inquisition made the peninsula completely Catholic. Sicily was a Muslim majority island (827-1091). Muslims in Sicily were wiped off by Norman invasion in late eleventh century and the remaining were interned in a colony in Lucera, southern Italy, by Frederick II in 1224, and then exterminated soon thereafter his death. Muslims populations in France along with others (Jews, Huguenots, Cathars) were expelled repeatedly in 1010, 1182, 1306, and finally in 1394. After the Battle of Poitiers and Tours in 732, fought between Muslims of Spain and Charles Martel’s armies, the Muslims established their settlement in Fraxinet (modern day La Garde-Freinet, near Saint-Tropez, in Provence) in southeast France. Fraxinet was destroyed between 975 and 983 by the Christian armies. The Tatar Muslims of the neighboring Golden Hoard had settled in Lithuania in fifteen and seventeenth century when their population is estimated to be between 25,000 and 100,000. They settled mainly in Podlachia, where in 1679 they were granted land by the King John III Sobieski, under whom they fought the Ottomans as contingent of Polish cavalry. Tartars continue to be part of current Polish populace. The “population exchange” of Turkey and Greece in 1923 saw the arrival of 400,000 Muslim into Turkey, a tenth of Greek population. History tells us that Muslims are as European as any non-Muslim, except that as peoples they repeatedly faced expulsions, forced conversions and ethnic cleansing which in modern times is commonly known as Genocide. Alas! Europe only remembers its last genocide, only of the last century.

If the world were to use the moral standards of this movie makers who consider the Muslim presence in Europe as ‘foreign’ then they have to answer the same question with regards to Europeans Christians, who in 1652 founded the Cape Colony at Table Bay (before the Battle of Vienna), enacted apartheid in 1948, which then was dissolved in 1994 when African National Congress came to power with Nelson Mandela as President [BBC]. The ANC, unlike the Spanish Inquisition, fully assimilated and forgave the “foreign” elements, living in their midst since 1652, instead of instituting Nuremberg Trials. Obviously, no European settler in South Africa is a “foreigner,” neither in the minds of White minority, neither in the minds of the their European ancestors, nor in the mind of current majority and nor in its constitution. South Africa secured its place in history and for the future by following in the footsteps of Prophet Muhammad when he, about 13 centuries before, overcame his oppressors of Makkah and forgave them even without a formal Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

…the Holy Prophet delivered a sermon urging the unity of God and universal brotherhood of man. Thereafter he addressed a special gathering of the Quraish. They were before him in a position of offender. What tortures had they not inflicted on the Muslims! What horrible pains the Muslims had been put to, in utter disregard of all moral and traditional laws! The recollection of the fantastic forms of persecutions sends a shudder into one’s heart. Again, their tyranny had not been confined to the soil of Makkah; they had pursued the Muslims wherever they fled to take shelter. Repeated attacks had been led against Madinah to crush them. So heinous was the guilt of the Makkans now standing for justice before the Holy Prophet! Malicious, vindictive, destroyers of fundamental rights of man, oppressors of the innocent, the Makkans deserved the most exemplary punishment under the most humane laws. If the ringleaders had been put to the sword, and others thrown into jails to serve as a warning and a lesson for the future, no one could have questioned he justice of the verdict. The most civilized way of dealing with offenses of this nature is to mete out exemplary punishment to some of the offending party, whether really guilty or not. And the rest are reduced to a state of abject servility. This had been the treatment ever accorded to the vanquished foe by the victors, and the same is the method of dealing with a subject people today, under the most civilized Governments. Strong is the instinct of revenge in the nature of man, and it is apt to run riot particularly when the foe lies at one’s sole mercy.

But the Quraish had an implicit faith in the noble and merciful nature of the Holy Prophet. They never expected harsh treatment at his hands. So, when the Holy Prophet asked them what treatment they expected, they replied: “Thou art a noble brother, and the son of a noble brother”. They were not unfamiliar with the generosity of the Holy Prophet. They were persuaded that magnanimity which had distinguished his character during a period of forty years before his claim to prophethood was not in the least changed. But the treatment he accorded them exceeded even their own expectations. “This day,” he said, “[I speak to you in the same words as Yūsuf spoke to his brothers,] there is no reproof against you [.Go your way, for you are free – Related by Ibn Kathir, recorded by Ibn al-Hajjaj Muslim].” What a generosity! To say nothing of punishment, they were exempted even from reproach for their black crimes. Not even a pledge as to their future behavior was demanded from them. The refugees were asked to forgo all their previous rights [including the rights to their vacated property, before exile to Ethiopia and Madina]. Even the worst offenders were not punished. Ikraimah, Abu Jahl’s son, who had attacked Khalids’s detachment at the time of the entry into Makkah fled for his life elsewhere. In a state of great distress, his wife came to the Holy Prophet and asked forgiveness on behalf of her husband. He was granted pardon. To Wahshi, murderer of Hamzah, the Holy Prophet’s uncle, and to Hindah, who had chewed his liver, was also extended this generous clemency. Habbar, who had stoned the Holy Prophet’s while on her way from Makkah to Madinah so badly that the injuries led to ultimately her death, was also forgiven. World history fails to produce the like of the Holy Prophet’s generous forgiveness of such arch-enemies. No example of such magnanimous forgiveness is met with in the life of any other prophet. Christ indeed preach forgiveness to enemies, but he had no occasion to exercise the quality of forgiveness, for he never acquired power to deal with his persecutors. [Muhammad The Prophet – Muhammad Ali, p. 131-132]

Just as a reminder to Spencer, following in footsteps of Muhammad is commonly known as “Sunnah”, which is not too bad after all.

References:

Roman Emperors – Wikipedia

Battle of Vienna – Time Index

Holy Name of Mary – Wikipedia

The Thirty Year War – Wikipedia

House of Habsburg – Wikipedia

Lipka Tatars – Wikipedia

Siege of Vienna – Wikipedia

James Town – Wikipedia

American War of Independence – Wikipedia

Declaration of Independence – Wikipedia

United States Constitution – Wikipedia

Vietnam War – Exit of French – Wikipedia

Lucera – Islamic Period – Wikipedia

Muslim Fraxinet – Wikipedia

Population exchange between Greece and Turkey – Wikipedia

September 11, 1683: Myth of a Christian Europe and the Massacre in Norway – Aktürk, Sener

Muslim Women in Poland and Lithuania – Agata S. Nalborczyk

South Africa Profile – BBC

Nuremberg Trials – Wikipedia

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) – Wikipedia

Muhammad The Prophet – Muhammad Ali