Two days ago we saw how September 11 was, before being a day of tragedy, a day of victory, after a small band of knights delivered the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta from Islam on September 11, 1565.
As a reflection of the nonstop jihad against the West, it just so happens that another major Christian victory — much more famous than the siege of Malta — also took place around the now ominous date of 9/11: the delivery of Vienna from arguably the largest Muslim army ever to invade European territory. That instructive story follows.
In July 1683, some 200,000 Ottoman combatants invaded Austria. By July 14, they had surrounded the walls of Vienna, where Ottoman grand vizier Kara Mustafa was following the protocol laid out by his prophet Muhammad in 628: “Aslam taslam” — “submit [to Islam] and have peace.” Before 1683, that formulation had been in use for a thousand years, resulting in the older and greater portions of the then-Christian world — including all of the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, the Balkans, and Constantinople — to be conquered.
Although Starhemberg, the Viennese commander in charge, did not bother to respond to the three choices he was offered, graffiti inside the city — including “Muhammad, you dog, go home!” — captured its mood.
The next day, Mustafa unleashed all hell against the city’s walls. For two months, the holed-up and vastly outnumbered Viennese suffered plague, dysentery, starvation, and many casualties as their walls rocked day and night to the thunderous bombardment.
Then, sometime around September 11, as the Muslims were about to burst through the walls, the desperate commander fired distress rockets into the night sky to give “notice to the Christian army” — that is, the relief force Vienna had beyond all hope been counting on — “of the extremity whereto the city was reduced.”
