New Global Configurations: The Hostile Beginning of the Millennium’s World Order

Early in the new millennium, a type of book began to appear with increasing frequency. This set of books offered a fresh analysis of the global diplomatic situation.

Exemplary of this category were Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert Kaplan, which underscored how little attention was being paid to southeast Asia by the mainstream American news media; The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America by Jim Sciutto, which pointed to the coordination of seemingly unrelated events; The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, which encompassses a longer view of China’s global ambitions; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger, which highlights the relentless, constant, and hidden cyberwar unfolding across the globe.

Although two of these works contain the word ‘America’ in their subtitles, none of them are parochial in perspective. The systemic patterns which they reveal will interest readers in Zambia and Chad, in Paraguay and Bolivia, in Cambodia and Thailand.

Neither are these books overly sensationalistic, although their publishers may have titled and marketed them with passion.

The picture which emerges from these books is that any and every nation around the globe is under constant cyberattacks. Every country must therefore be engaged in cybersecurity and countermeasures.

This ceaseless cyberwarfare is no mere harassment, but can be quite deadly, and is also coordinated with economic pressure and occasionally with direct military action. This ongoing conflict is invisible and largely ignored by the news media.

While huge amounts of media coverage were and are devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, actions undertaken by the much larger aggressors - Russia and China - go unreported by newspapers and unchallenged by world governments, as Robert Maginnis writes:

A major factor in the new great power competition is the leadership at the helm of these countries. Both China and Russia are headed by autocrats who test international order just as the United States seems to be losing its way.

China and Russia carefully watch any response to their espionage and weaponized cyber activity. When they see little or none, the increase such efforts. Robert Maginnis continues:

In the fact of this confrontation, the West seems feckless at stopping Putin’s and Xi’s great power ambitions, efforts driven by their authoritarian personalities and evidently accepted and cheered by their domestic power bases.

The nations of the world need a greater degree of awareness, both about China’s and Russia’s plans and goals, and about the consequences which the world would endure, should those goals be realized.

China’s “Belt and Road” strategy includes selling technology and construction projects to ‘emerging’ third-world nations. When those nations can’t pay the debts incurred by those purchases, China offers to ‘forgive’ the obligations in return for permanently stationing Chinese military in those nations, and in return for trade and transportation rights being given to China in, around, and through those countries.

The global community of nations also needs to form a steady resolve to resist, and to engage in countermeasures against, cyber aggression and economic extortion by Russia and China.

Spain’s Conviviality: How It Ended

The 711 A.D. marks a turning point in the history of Spain. Prior to that year, a diversity of people lived peaceably with each other.

The cultural diversity included Germanic Goths, Romans, native Celts, and Semitic individuals from the Middle East. The linguistic diversity was composed of Latin, Germanic dialects like Gothic, Hebrew, and Celtic. Religious diversity consisted of Jews, Christians, and a few reclusive adherents of Celtic paganism.

These groups coexisted in a largely amiable way. Certainly they did not agree with each other on all points, but there was no large-scale conflict or violence among them.

The year 711 A.D. would change that.

An Islamic invasionary fleet landed on Spain’s southern coast. The officers were largely Arabic; the soldiers and sailors were mainly recruited from the Berber population of northern Africa. As historian Dario Fernandez-Morera writes, “Spain was conquered and colonized by the forces of the Islamic Caliphate.”

To make their intentions clear, the Muslim officers burned their ships after the invasionary force had landed on the beaches. The message to the soldiers was clear. There was no option for retreat. The only way to survive was to defeat the inhabitants of Spain.

“The conquest was carried out by force,” as Fernandez-Morera notes. After conquering large portions Spain, the remaining portions sometimes chose to surrender and submit to a life of dhimmitude. The word ‘dhimmitude’ describes a non-Muslim who has been allowed to live in an Islamic region; the non-Muslim must agree to an inferior status as prescribed by Islamic law.

The Islamic invaders burned Jewish synagogues and Christian churches. The rules of dhimmitude, sometimes referred to as the ‘Pact of Umar,’ prevented non-Muslims from wearing certain types of clothing or constructing any house or building of significant size.

Even if they had to endure the humiliation of Islamic ‘Sharia’ law, many of the Spaniards chose to surrender to the Muslim armies, so that they could at least live and hope for the eventual liberation of Spain:

The Muslim conquerors used force to defeat the resistance of the Christian Visigoth kingdom, a nascent civilization. But they also granted pacts to those Visigoth lords and Christian leaders who saw it as advantageous to accept the offered “peace” and become dhimmis (those Christians and Jews living in sub­altern status in Islamic lands) rather than face the consequences of resisting. Behind the “peaceful pacts” was always the threat of brutal force.

Thus began several centuries of “religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of certain groups — all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities.” Spain was not fully liberated until 1492.

But neither was Spain fully subjugated. The Spaniards resisted. Some parts of northern and northeastern Spain were never defeated by the Islamic armies. The Spaniards defended those regions successfully.

Even in the regions which were occupied by the Muslim armies, many Spaniards risked their lives by secretly engaging in acts of defiance, meeting to carry on their religious traditions.

Austria’s Place in the World: Mutating from Century to Century

The modern nation of Austria is geographically smaller than Germany or Poland, and a bit smaller than Hungary too. Austria’s population is likewise smaller than the populations of Germany, Hungary, and Poland.

In previous centuries, however, Austria was bigger in terms of geography, in terms of population, in terms of world influence, and in terms of historical importance.

During the early Middle Ages, Austria did not exist as a concept. Rather, a number of smaller kingdoms which occupy the area which is now Austria functioned semi-independently of each other. Starting in the 700s and 800s, the region came under the influence of the Frankish Empire, which would later be known as the Holy Roman Empire (HRE).

In the late 1200s, the Habsburg family rose to power within the HRE, and would remain in power until 1806. The Habsburg dynasty was an Austrian family, and so the Austrians took control of the empire which had at first been an external influence on Austria. The Habsburg dynasty would develop influences reaching as far as Spain, and therefore be at least the nominal head of nearly all of Europe.

The rulers of the HRE did not have absolute power like the earlier Roman emperors or the later French monarchs. Their reigns were contingent on forming a consensus among a group of electors, called Kurfürsten, of whom there were approximately six.

So for nearly a thousand years, Austria’s identity was that of a loosely connected collection of kingdoms within the HRE, but forming a significant power bloc in the empire because, for the last five centuries of that millennium, the ruling dynasty had its family roots in Austria.

A significant change in Austria, as well as throughout the rest of Europe, happened in 1806. Napoleon’s French army was on a rampage. He was attempting to make himself ruler of all Europe – as well as parts of Africa, Asia, and the Near East. Napoleon, despite some early brilliant victories, failed decisively. In the aftermath, however, the HRE was dissolved.

Austria emerged as its own standalone empire, allied for the most part with the various Germanic kingdoms which would later combine to form Germany. But in the 1860s, Austria pivoted away from those alliances, and formed new alliances, primarily with Hungary. Hungary had been a territory under the rule of the Austrian Empire, but became a proper part of the empire in the 1860s. This new entity was called the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Also incorporated into this new empire were parts of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and Serbia, as well as all of Bohemia, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bohemia would later be known as the Czech Republic. Austria also included Tyrol, part of which is in modern-day Italy.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was large: it included approximately 240,000 square miles of territory, compared to Austria’s area of 32,382 square miles at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Habsburg dynasty retained control, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a major political, diplomatic, economic, and military player in European affairs.

Prior to 1900, people rarely confused Austria with Germany. But today, partly due to sloppy education in American high school History classes, such mixups are common, as historian Lonnie Johnson writes:

Austria is often almost exclusively associated with its imperial past or frequently confused with Germany. Germany began to play a much more important role in Europe at about the same time that Austria gradually lost influence in European affairs towards the end of the 19th century.

For nearly all of its existence, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was ruled by Francis Joseph I, or Franz-Josef I. He was coronated as Emperor of the Austrian Empire in 1848, and became Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. He reigned until his death in 1916.

Because of his long reign, Franz-Josef was influential, well-known, loved by many, and hated by some.

When World War I ended in 1918, the empire was dissolved. Austria became a standalone country without an empire, assuming its present geographical boundaries. The Republic of Austria lasted from 1919 to 1933, when it ended abruptly by means of external and internal Nazi takeovers.

At the end of World War II in 1945, Austria’s future was in peril. It seemed as if the Soviet Socialists would enslave Austria as they had enslaved Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other eastern European nations. The Austrians, however, managed to buy their freedom from the Soviet Socialists. The Soviet army, which had occupied much of Austria in 1945, left in 1955, and the Austrians gave the Soviets $152 million dollars and ten million metric tons of crude oil.

The modern nation of Austria has a complicated past, and unless the details of this past are studied, misunderstandings abound, as Lonnie Johnson notes:

With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, Austria assumed a role in Europe comparable to its radically reduced size, and this is one explanation for the fact that so many Austrians associations tend to predate World War I. They have the faded charm of old photographs and awaken nostalgic or sentimental feelings about the good old imperial days of Strauss waltzes, operetta, or the grandfatherly emperor Francis Joseph. Associations with Germany, on the other hand, are frequently as harsh as a 20th century newsreel: World War I, Hitler (incidentally one of the most frequently disclaimed Austrians), World War II, the Iron Curtain, or the Berlin Wall. However, if these historical associations are not present in one way or the other, Austria is nowadays sometime[s] confused with Germany or demoted [in people’s imaginations] to the status of being some kind of a German province.

At the beginning of the 21st century, then, Austria shares a language with Germany, but also has huge cultural influences from Serbia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The daily customs and cultural life grow out of a shared past with other German-speaking regions, but modern Austria, especially the eastern half of the nation, is socially and ethnically shaped to a significant degree by the Slavic regions of eastern Europe.

Austria has its own distinct identity. Students of history and culture will note the differences, and anyone walking the streets of Vienna will not confuse them for the streets of Berlin.

The Slow-Motion War Between Russia and Ukraine: The Church Stands for Freedom

When the Soviet Union dissolved in late 1991, Ukraine again became an independent sovereign nation. But its independence was endangered from the start.

During the Soviet Socialist era (1917 to 1991), and during earlier Czarist times, Russian ambitions included Ukraine, which Russia thought to be its possession. During the years in which Gorbachev held office in the USSR, and during the years in which Yeltsin held office in post-Soviet Russia, the Russians seemed, if not friendly, then at least a bit less hostile to Ukraine.

Since Vladimir Putin took office in Russia, however, his policies, reminiscent of the older Soviet Socialist policies, have been more aggressive, including the 2014 military occupation of the Crimean Peninsula.

Working for Barack Obama, diplomat Victoria Nuland urged that the United States and the European Union together take a firm stance against Russian aggression. The credibility of Obama’s and Nuland’s diplomacy dwindled, however, when it was discovered that they were meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics.

Obama and Nuland were using their positions in the United States government to interfere in questions which were Ukraine’s to resolve.

Nuland further undermined relations between the US and EU when she dismissed the EU’s ability to be helpful in the Ukraine situation.

Inside Ukraine, the Orthodox Church took on a renewed significance as the Russians escalated their threats. In a December 2018 edition of the Wall Street Journal, James Marson reported:

For 27 years of Ukraine’s independence, its only internationally recognized Orthodox Church was controlled by Russia, a pillar of the Kremlin’s continued influence in its former vassal.

But 4½ years into an armed conflict against Russia and separatists in the country’s east, Ukraine on Saturday founded its own national church, endorsed by the foremost leader of global Orthodoxy.

The church, an essentially spiritual institution, would not allow itself to be an instrument of Russian foreign policy. The creation of a Ukrainian church manifests the church’s alliance with the oppressed, despite the oppressor’s attempt to use the church.

Although the event was formally the creation of a new church, it was more a redefinition of an already-existing church. Both the clergy and the members of the new church are largely from the old church, as James Marson writes:

“We will get out from under Moscow’s hoof,” said Viktor Kolesnyk, a 67-year-old retiree who was among several thousand people gathered near St. Sophia Cathedral, where bishops from three Orthodox churches met for a Unification Council.

The creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is a signature victory for U.S.-backed President Petro Poroshenko, whose country has lost control over parts of its territory in the conflict, which has left more than 10,000 people dead. Mr. Poroshenko, who faces an election in March, told the crowd that “today we finally attained our Ukrainian independence from Russia.”

The assertion of the church is a “setback for” Russia’s “Putin, who has used” Russia’s and Ukraine’s “shared cultures and pasts to justify his efforts to keep Ukraine in the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.”

The Russian-backed church leadership had “long been a proponent of close ties with Russia, supporting politicians favored by Moscow.” The priests and ordinary members of the church refused to endure such political influence in the church.

Russian influence in the church directed church leaders to give “vague statements calling for peace without condemning Mr. Putin.” Now, the true nature of the church emerges, favoring no political agenda. Churches, and groups which merely claim to be churches, routinely call for peace and justice. But to make concrete steps toward those noble goals, the church must deliberately distance itself from the ghosts of Soviet Socialism and its imperialist desires.

The Orthodox Church survived over seventy years of Soviet Socialist persecution. Despite the surveillance, imprisonment, beatings, torture, and murder of both church leaders and ordinary members, the church did not surrender its belief in Jesus.

The era of Putin presents the same challenges. The church is responding with the same steady conviction. The ability of the church to endure, and to continue advocating for the oppressed, derives from its understanding of Jesus.

Muslim vs. Muslim: Turkey’s Ambition to Be the New Ottoman Empire Fuels Violent Clashes with Saudi Arabia, Repeating the Wars of Previous Centuries

A map of the world deceptively divides Islam into a number of various nation-states. These divisions function like administrative districts, and are sometimes vehicles for the ambitions of their respective rulers. Islam itself is the primary unit.

“The long struggle for supremacy in the muslim world,” as Yaroslav Trofimov phrases it, must be understood as a sort of civil war within Islam. What seems to be a conflict between nation-states is in fact an intramural dispute. Within the Islamic world, the concept of ‘nation-state’ may not apply at all.

Islam unifies the Muslim world, as a social, political, and military movement. Islam functions primarily this way, and less as a meditative personal spirituality.

In these civil wars within Islam, “Turks and Saudis have been enemies for centuries.” The city of Jerusalem has been fought over, besieged, defended, and conquered many times over the centuries. The bloodiest battles for Jerusalem involved neither Christians nor Jews, but rather occurred when one Muslim army sought to take the city from another Muslim army.

Two Islamic armies, the Seljuk Turks on one side, and the Egyptian Fatimids on the other, fought each other several times for control of Jerusalem. Thousands of Muslim soldiers killed each other, and the city changed hands back and forth (e.g., in 1071 and 1098) between the two warring factions.

Recounting a “gruesome episode in the shared history of Turkey and Saudi Arabia,” Yaroslav Trofimov recounts how,

two centuries ago, in the fall of 1818, the Saudi monarch was brought to Istanbul in chains. He was displayed in a cage to the cheering crowds outside the Hagia Sophia mosque, and then, amid celebratory fireworks, his head was chopped off.

In the long history of warfare between Turkey and Saudi Arabia - or, sometimes, between Turkey and the House of Saud - the beheading of the Saudi king is merely one instance. This particular beheading, one of many, happened after

an Ottoman expeditionary corps comprised mostly of Turkish and Albanian soldiers seized the Saudi capital of Diriya, on the outskirts of Riyadh, on Sept. 11, 1818. The city was razed. According to a Russian diplomatic dispatch, the Turkish sultan then had the captured Saudi ruler, Abdullah bin Saud, escorted to Istanbul, alongside the chief Wahhabi cleric. After the deposed Saudi monarch was beheaded outside the Hagia Sophia, his body was propped up in public for three days with his severed head under his arm. (As for the Wahhabi imam, he was sent to Istanbul’s bazaar for beheading, the diplomat reported.)

Throughout much of Islamic history, the chief rivals have been the Muslims of Turkey, i.e., of the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, struggling against the Muslims of Arabia or Saudi Arabia. The terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shia’ are used, and the lands of Iran and Iraq are mentioned, but the internal dynamic of Islam is often more dominated by Turkey and Arabia than by those other segments.

The Turks had mounted their 1818 attack on their fellow Muslims because,

in Ottoman eyes, the Saudis were bloodthirsty murderers who had plundered the holy city of Karbala in Ottoman Iraq, slaughtering 4,000 civilian inhabitants (most of them Shiite), and later destroyed many shrines in Mecca and Medina.

By the time the Turks beheaded the Saudi king in 1818, Muslims had been slaughtering each other for over a millennium. Since then, the pattern has not changed. “The long legacy of rivalry between the two Sunni Muslim powers,” notes Jaroslav Trofimov, “has fueled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s determination to punish the House of Saud.” The wars of past centuries live on in the Muslim mind, and fuel today’s violence.

This, of course, is also the role that the House of Saud sees as its natural right because of the kingdom’s control over Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, and over the hajj pilgrimage that brings more than two million Muslims there each year.

Iran and Iraq are major objects of interest on the global scene, but inside Islam, they aren’t the main contenders.

In this contest, Iran — whose Shiite version of Islam represents a small minority of the predominantly Sunni Muslim world — can’t really compete. For now, Tehran is happy to watch from the sidelines as its two main regional rivals undermine each other.

From an outsider’s perspective, it is easy to get the impression that Islam’s hatred is directed toward Europeans and Americans, toward Jews and Christians. But a more careful look at the Muslim world reveals that Muslims direct huge amounts of hostility toward each other.

In addition to warfare and assassinations, it’s worth noting that a great deal of Islamic terrorism targets competing Muslim groups. Again, the outsiders may assume that Islamic terror is aimed primarily at Europeans, American, Jews, and Christians. But insiders see it differently.

Saudi Arabia’s 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has tried to assert Riyadh’s ambition to lead the Middle East ever since his father ascended to the throne in 2015. In a major departure from Saudi Arabia’s previous policy of behind-the-scenes checkbook diplomacy, Prince Mohammed has built a coalition of Sunni states such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to launch a war against Iranian allies in Yemen. He imposed an embargo that unsuccessfully sought regime change in Qatar. He also attempted to meddle in Lebanese politics by forcing that nation’s prime minister to announce during a stay in the kingdom that he would resign, a decision that the prime minister rescinded once he was home.

The maneuvering and scheming for power and influence continues nonstop among the Saudis and the Turks. Neighboring countries are pawns in this power struggle.

A number of organizations who operate in both politics and terrorism serve as further tools which the rivals use against each other. To identify these groups as either ‘terror groups’ or ‘political parties’ is to miss the point that the two are inseparable and interrelated in this context. “Saudi Arabia and its allies also have relentlessly pursued the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political movement,” writes Trofimov. Typical of such groups, the Muslim Brotherhood is linked to other terrorists: “its affiliates include Hamas.”

Though professing a commitment to democracy under Islamic law, the Brotherhood has turned autocratic when in power in Egypt and Sudan. Mr. Erdogan has supported the group across the Arab world since the 2011 revolutions of the Arab Spring.

As the leader of the Turkish government, Erdogan is willing to use his connections with terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood to attack the Saudis.

Mr. Erdogan has made several efforts to resist Saudi Arabia’s rise. He sent Turkish troops to protect Qatar, ousted Saudi allies from Somalia and announced a deal to lease an island across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia in Sudan, possibly for a military base. He has also become a vociferous champion of traditional Muslim causes, such as Palestine, and of new ones, such as the suffering of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Istanbul has turned into a favorite hub for Islamist dissidents from across the Arab world.

Erdogan hopes to win the long struggle and become the leader of Islam. For centuries, the Ottoman Empire saw itself as the rightful government of the Muslim world. Erdogan wants to draw on that older attitude. Turkey is the modern remnant of the Ottoman Empire.

But the Saudis also see themselves as the rightful leader of Islam. So the same contest continues. Only the names change.

“The Turkish president’s foreign policy strategy aims to make Muslims proud again,” said Soner Cagaptay, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of a recent biography of Mr. Erdogan, “The New Sultan.” “Under this vision, a reimagined and modernized version of the Ottoman past, the Turks are to lead Muslims to greatness.”

There is a long history behind that claim. For four centuries, the sultan in Istanbul was also the religious leader, or caliph, of the entire Muslim world. His spiritual authority was recognized well beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire, which at its peak included parts of central and eastern Europe, north Africa and the Arabian peninsula.

In previous centuries, the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire fought with the Muslims of Arabia for a chance to be the leading force within Islam. In the twenty-first century, Turkey is fighting against Saudi Arabia. The fight remains the same; the names have changed.

There was an interval, however, when it seemed like the situation might get better. When the Ottoman Empire ended, around 1923 or 1924, a modern Turkey started to emerge under the leadership of Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, a popular president of the country. During Ataturk’s time, Turkey began to shed the rigid demands of Islam. The harsh demands of Sharia law were relaxed, and a modern trend made itself felt in education and politics.

Turkey seemed on the verge of a breakthrough. Ataturk ended the Caliphate, the Islamic notion of imperial government, and the country moved toward rule by freely-elected representatives. Freedom of speech and modern universities were starting to emerge. Ataturk’s dream didn’t include wasting lives and energy fighting with the Arabs for control of Islam.

Sadly, Erdogan’s effort have been to do the very opposite of Ataturk’s. Erdogan is working to reinstate the harsh oppression of Islam in every area of live and society.

The Arabs did not engage in the type of modernization that Ataturk brought to Turkey:

The caliphate was abolished only in 1924, six years after the Ottomans lost control over Mecca and Medina to a British-sponsored Arab revolt during World War I. The modern, secular Turkish Republic, which rose from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat by the Allied powers, banished the last sultan, Mehmed VI, to Europe in 1922. With the Ottomans gone, the House of Saud quickly expanded from its desert strongholds to much of the Arabian peninsula, first capturing Mecca and then establishing a powerful new state in 1932.

With Turkey pursuing a modernized path, and Saudi Arabia clinging to the strict enforcement of Islam, the two nations could peacefully coexist, because they were each pursuing different goals. They weren’t in competition.

Until Mr. Erdogan’s embrace of neo-Ottoman politics — and more authoritarian rule — a decade or so ago, the modern Turkish state wasn’t much interested in leading the Muslim world and was content to leave religious proselytizing to Saudi Arabia. Turkey joined NATO, sought membership in the European Union and nurtured close military links with Israel.

But when Turkey abandoned modernization, and Erdogan began to instate an oppressive Islamic regime, Turkey and Saudi Arabia came into conflict: they were in competition, each wanting to be the source of leadership in Islam.

Mr. Erdogan’s new Turkey, by contrast, presents a major challenge to Saudi Arabia by offering an alternative Islamic model, said Madawi al Rasheed, a Saudi professor at the London School of Economics and the author of a history of Saudi Arabia. “It is an existential threat to Saudi Arabia because of Turkey’s combination of Islam and a kind of democracy,” she said. “After all, Erdogan is still ruling over a republic that has a parliament, opposition parties and a civil society — while Saudi Arabia has nothing like that.”

Erdogan has not been able to erase all traces of modernization. Those remaining fragments of modernity give Turkey an edge over Saudi Arabia. But how long can those shreds of modernization last under Erdogan’s imposition of strict Islamic social and political concepts?

While Turkey seems to be sliding back into the darkness of Islamic oppression, Saudi Arabia seems never to have left it.

Indeed, today’s kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a monarchy as absolute as they come. It’s also the third state run by the House of Saud since the family’s alliance with the puritan preacher Mohammed ibn Abdel Wahhab rallied the Bedouin of the Arabian peninsula under the banner of an uncompromising new creed (since known as Wahhabism) in 1745.

Understanding the conflicts within Islam is essential for understanding the past and present of the Muslim world. Europeans and Americans can tend to think of themselves as the primary target of Islamic hate, but Muslims are often more likely to be the victims of Islamic terrorism than Jews or Christians.

Pivotal Points in Islam’s Assault on Europe: When Did the Tide Turn?

Historians debate about exactly when it became clear that Europe would not collapse under the weight of ongoing Muslim attacks. In 711 A.D., Islam made its first major invasion into Europe, conquering most of Spain.

“The notion of historical turning points has proved irresistible: especially, of late, the watershed between expansionist Islam and” defensive Europe, as historian Colin Thubron writes. The decisive turning point could have been the Battle of Tours, or the fighting around Vienna. Both battles featured outnumbered European defenders offering brave, and ultimately successful, resistance to invading Muslim troops:

This crucial event has been assigned inter alia to the Battle of Tours in 732, where the Frankish leader Charles Martel turned back the Moorish army flooding across France, and variously to the siege and the Battle of Vienna (in 1529 and 1683), which checked the Ottoman advance into Eastern Europe.

So which is it? Tours or Vienna? When was that moment at which it was clear or inevitable that Europe would survive, and that Islam would fail to destroy Europe?

The Battle of Tours was certainly significant: Charles Martel turned back the Muslim army which had been flooding across France.

The fighting around Vienna was also significant: the defending Europeans stopped the Islamic advance into eastern Europe.

Colin Thubron offers a third option. The big turning point might have happened in the Mediterranean, at Malta and at Lepanto. To understand the military actions at those two places, a bit of background is necessary. The setting takes place between

1565 and 1571, when the Ottoman Turks pushed westward across the Mediterranean. Their empire was then at its height. They had absorbed Egypt and almost the whole North African littoral; to the east they were battering on Persia, to the north threatening Vienna. Over the Mediterranean itself — ancient Rome’s “center of the world” — the imperial Turkish navies and their corsair auxiliaries were spreading terror down the coasts of Italy and even Spain. But lying strategically across their path, in a pendant below Sicily, was the tiny island of Malta.

From Malta “the Knights of St. John, soldier-monks” offered resistance to the Muslim navies.

In those years, Islam had expanded westward across the Mediterranean; the Muslim navies attacked the coasts of Italy and Spain.

Malta was one small point of resistance, a place which refused to allow Islamic armies to invade and occupy.

The great turning-point in the Mediterranean may have happened at two points of resistance: Lepanto and Malta.

Malta’s survival of the great Ottoman siege in 1565 was to become one of the redemptive epics of Christendom. And a greater one was to follow. In 1571 the western Mediterranean powers — Spain, Venice, the Papacy — united at last in fear, put an end to Turkish maritime expansion at the horrifying Battle of Lepanto.

The Muslim siege on Malta in 1565 and the Muslim attack at Lepanto in 1571 were two major military offensives. Again the Europeans were outnumbered and on the defensive. Their survival showed that Europe refused to collapse in the face of attacking Muslim troops.

A Complex Set of Texts: Foundational Documents and Conflict in the Muslim World

It is at least an oversimplification, and more probably simply wrong, to reduce Islam to the Qur’an (“Koran”). There are several texts which are foundational to Islam as a socio-political vision.

Scholar Timothy Furnish describes the textual basis for Islam:

For Muslims two authoritative poles of religious reference exist: the Qur'an, and the Sunnah plus the Hadith (Arabic plural Ahadith). The Sunnah is the customary practice of the Islamic community as derived from the actions and words of the prophet Muhammad.

For the practical purposes of Islam, i.e., sorting out the details of Sharia law, and especially the non-negotiable core of Sharia, which is called Hadd or Hudud, Muslim scholars must rely on the primary texts.

But not all primary texts are viewed with equal trust. It is the task, and the conflict, of Islamic scholars to rank these various texts in terms of their reliability.

Hadiths are narrative accounts of the these same actions and pronouncements, rather like “hearsay” records of what Muhammad did and said. Hadiths are not the word of God in the sense that the Qur'an is, but they are of only slightly lesser importance. They were almost certainly orally transmitted for some time before being redacted in the first few centuries of Islamic history. A specialized field of hadith criticism and analysis developed as a means of sorting the wheat of legitimate traditions - that is, ones that ostensibly truly went back to Muhammad - from the chaff of forgeries.

The opportunity both for ambiguity and for dispute is apparent. Because Islam in practice is more of a socio-political program than a personal meditative spirituality, points of textual interpretation are less about conceptual abstractions regarding the nature of the deity, and more about concrete details of communal living.

More than a millennium’s worth of armed conflict within and between Muslim communities fuels, and is fueled by, the prioritization of one text over another.

The complexities of Islamic politics cannot be explained by the Qur’an alone. Any student of Islam must survey a much broader variety of principle texts which form an underlying basis.