Of course every year has a 9/11 (or as we prefer to call it in Europe, '11/9'), but a few of them stand out from the others. 2001 is obviously one when the dark forces of Islam appeared to triumph briefly.
We should also remember the victims of the sometimes-forgotten bombings in Madrid and London, in the decade since the Twin Towers. America has certainly suffered from Islamic terrorism but it has by no means been singled out. Europe has had to live with it for centuries.
There is speculation that the date for this attack was chosen as a way to exact revenge for an ignominious failure of a previous islamic army when the second islamic of invasion was halted in Austria.
The Seige of Vienna in 1683 marked the point where the Turkish army (140,000 strong) was stopped in its tracks by a Polish force led heroically by Jan Sobieski. The Poles arrived at Vienna on 11th September that year, just in the 'nick of time', and just as defeat seemed almost inevitable.
That is possibly the only reason why we are not all Islamic, and why we all have freedom of speech (up to a point), and science and civilisation. The bronze age myths of the Abrahamic religions were enforced pretty brutally by Christianity, but how much harder would it have been to escape from them if Islam had been in power.
In this way we can all celebrate 9/11 while remembering the victims in New York.
Small note - even if this idea of the Twin Towers attack being on the anniversary of the 1683 event is true (which I am skeptical about) it was of course 11 days out. Between 1683 and today the whole world has changed its calendar. It happened in 1752 in UK but in other countries even as late as the 1900s.
Another smaller note: Apologies for re-using the image from an earlier post.
1 comment:
Not only Europe. Remember Mumbai? And too many others to mention but they barely made it to the press. Bomb attack in Uganda during the World Cup, for instance?
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