September in terrorism history

By Nora Soriño

ILIGAN City–The blasts that occurred in Isulan Sultan Kudarat had kept other areas in Mindanao on edge especially those about to mark their tourism month, fiestas and other activities.

This city, has leveled up the security measures and Alagar has even sent 550 cops to Cagayan de Oro Oro and this city.

Were the blasts that occurred in Isulan  “terroristic” attacks?

It seems so per assessment of the police and the military. But, as far as the perpetrators are concerned, they are acts in furtherance of their goals.

Based on the report from historian Michael Novak, in ADD 622, “Mohammed set out from Medina to conquer the whole Christian world for Allah by force or arms.” In other words, today’s battle with the Islamic State in the Middle East is not new.

So within a hundred years from that, his successors had occupied and pillaged every Christian capital of the Middle East, from Antioch through North Africa (home of St. Augustine) and Spain. All that remained outside Allah’s reign was the northern arc from Southern France to Constantinople (now Istanbul).

One battle, that we must note, is the Seige of Vienna, in September 1683.

The Protestant nations regarded the expanding Ottoman Empire at that time, as a Catholic problem. And few Catholic nations took the Muslim threat seriously. The French had become used to buying off the Turks in trade and commerce, rather than warring against them. They even somehow favored the German-speaking Austrians and even wanted their defeat. It was said that the nation Germany did not yet exist, only some political units –Brandenburg, Saxony, Bavaria and others, some Protestants and Catholics. The Muslim overland advance through the underbelly of Europe seemed not only relentless but mostly unopposed.

Mehmet IV, Sultan of Islam was serious in his Islamic expansion then and chose Mustafa to be general for the conquest of Hungary, Slovakia and the south of Poland. And he warned Mustafa not to take Vienna as doing so would arouse the West retribution. So, Mustafa drove northward through  Anatolia, Greater Syria, and out to the scores of nations from Morocco to India. His army was ever increasing, more than 300,000 of them, on horseback to spread terror in advance of his main forces. In five months, they occupied Budapest, rested, and then further pushed northward, easily swatting resistance, “like flies”’ along the way.

Walled cities that refused instant surrender were bypassed as Mustafa planned to deal with them later.

But the Christian relief forces were belatedly and all too slowly advancing from the north in four separate columns.

To make a long story short, Vienna and the Christians there were doomed.

But the latter, led by King Sobieski of Poland, came up with a strategy. His army  march in double time through the heart of Vienna Wood. The area had narrow valleys and deep summer streams so the march was very difficult and slow.

This was late Sept. 11, 1683, the historian tells us.

Sobieski decided to make an immediate attack so as to surprise Mustafa and his army. The latter also had difficulty with the terrain. Mustafa was then defeated. The ambition to take the rest of the world, after Vienna receded. But not the ambition. As on Sept. 11, 2001 or 318 years later after that Vienna Seige on Sept. 11, 1683,the world was stunned as the announcement came “in vivid orange bursts of blossoming flame and dark black smoke from the 2 tallest towers of the West financial capital.”

It is said that the West has always refused to give this long and “deeply rooted Muslim threat against the West’s own soul the attention that it requires.”

Novak says that in some ways, “the pluralism of the West is a blessing, even an advantage.”  Yet, its weakness too is “in its own divided spirit.”

Based on the analysis of that historian, the ultimate issue between Islam and the West is not military force; it is the “depth of intellect and engagement.” In matters of the spirit, it is said that we always seem “to become tongue-tied, as if lacking in spirited confidence.”

There’s even this joke regarding Christians, especially the Catholics. St. Peter was screening in the gates of heaven, beings who wanted to pass through the portal and who did not have any ID with them. So, they were to recite their prayers. The other religions recited smoothly their prayers.

But not the Catholic. He just began some words and then stammered.

And stammered some more.

St. Peter said: “You really are a Catholic! So you enter.”

In closing, I’d like thank my friend Gonie for  the facilitation of this piece of world history.