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Originally Posted by Walks_in_islam
We were discussing Sunni/Shia conflict.
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My bad, I thought by 'two religions' you meant Christianity and Islam. I did not know that you classified Shia and Sunni as distinct religions. But, on that note, I did a bit of research. I found that the split between Shia and Sunni began at the death of Mohammed in 632 AD which led to the 'battle of Siffin'. Interestingly, the battle of Siffin took place during what is called the 'First Fitna'. Fitna is a term for 'Islamic civil war' is it not? So then Islam has had more than one civil war? and the first one took place almost immediately upon Mohammed's death?
So Islam was faced with sectarian, internecine warfare
from the very beginning. At least Christians waited a couple hundred years before killing each other in the name of God...
Anyway, the first one took place right after Mohammed's death. The next one took place a couple decades after the first one. The third was some 500 odd years later and mostly seemed to involve Spain and various Islamic states there and their several wars amongst each other and christian states to the north. I assume therefore the third Fitna was largely unrelated to Sunni-Shia conflicts.
There was quite a bit of warfare and persectution between Sunni and Shia during the Abassid period, during which the Shia apparently had to go underground to escape being beheaded and otherwise persectued by Sunni Muslims.
Then there is the Shia persecution of Sunni Islam under Ismail the First in Persia/Iran in the 15th-16th century.
Palestine saw persecution of Shiites by Sunnis during the medieval period.
In Kashmir, there were 10 (officially numbered) persecution against Shiites by Sunnis between the 1400s and the 1800s. The persecutions included mass slaughter, looting, destruction of sacred sites, etc, until the Shia population there was almost gone.
Early 20th century Uttar Pradesh saw numerous Shia-Sunni clashes and violence, so much so that in 1909 public demonstrations were banned there for the days of Ashura, Chehlum, and Ramadan 21 (Ali's death). The ban was defied in the 30s when thousands of Shiites and Sunnis took to the streets and clashed in violent demonstrations against each other.
The fall of the Ottoman Empire brought about some relative harmony between the two groups, as they sort of 'joined forces' against secularism and European interests. However, after the 'decolonialisation' of much of the Islamic world, there was a revival of sorts of Islamic studies and the two sects again began to battle it out, seeing as 'Arab nationalism' had lost appeal and fundamentalism (so called) began to rise. The Revolution in Iran appears to have changed the balance of power throughout much of the Islamic world resulting in more conflict between Shiite and Sunni. The Iranians (mostly Shiite) condemned Saudi Arabia and its monarchy (Sunni) as being water carriers for the United States. This provoked a backlash among Sunnis against Shiites.
Another development was the US invasion of Iraq. The deposing of the Baath government led to conflict between Shia and Sunni. Many Sunni claim 'Shiite majority numbers' in Iraq are due to Iranian Shiites interloping into Iraq. The loss of a stable government combined with an American occupation force, ostensibly allied with Saudi Arabia, led to Sunni-Shiite conflict which is still raging in Iraq.
Interestingly enough, Al Qaeda is primarily a Sunni-dominated organization (never mind it was created by the CIA in the 70s-80s).
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But you make a point: Where since the Middle Ages has Islam or an Islamic country "invaded" the West again and how many Islamic countries in the meantime have been invaded BY the West say in the last 200 years or so?
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You ask 'since the middle ages' so I will leave off all the conquests which occurred from the 7th century to the later days of the Ottoman Empire.
But, assuming the 1400s to be the 'end of the middle ages' we have:
Tamerlane (right at the beginning of the 1400s) who tried to replicate Genghis Khan's empire. (Granted, most of his conquests were of other Muslim states.)
The Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the early 1400s. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
The Ottoman-Hungarian wars (continuation of Ottoman attempts at expanding throughout the Balkans). Vlad the Impaler, anyone?
Suleyman's wars (beginning with the invasion of Belgrade) in the 1500s.
The Ottoman's allied with France to invade Corsica and received help from them in their wars in Eastern Europe. (1500s)
Ottoman expansion into Europe continued until the Battle of Vienna in 1683, where they were defeated by a Hapsburg dominated alliance.
The Khanate of Crimea regularly attacked Eastern Europe and Russia up until the late 1600s (Moscow was burned in 1571).
The late 1500s early 1600s saw Ottoman-Austrian conflicts as part of Ottoman attempted expansions into central Europe.
Internecine conflicts led to a decrease in Ottoman attacks into Europe, but even so during the mid-late 1600s Crete, Transylvania, and parts of southern Ukraine were conquered by the Ottomans.
Then there is the 'Great Turkish War' of the late 1600s which involved Ottoman attempts at expansion in Russia as well as Austria and other places.
The Ottomans declared war on Russia again in the early 1700s, after which they attacked Austria again.
During the 1800s numerous Western states ruled by the Ottomans revolted and became independent, leading the Ottoman Empire to weaken and be known as 'the Sick Man of Europe'. Rising secularism and various emigrations contrinuted to the decline of Islamic rule in the Ottoman Empire/Turkey.
By 1914, the Ottomans had suffered numerous defeats at the hands of their former serfs and tributaries (this is the 'ethnic troubles' so often talked about in regard to the Balkan areas like Serbia, Kosovo, Greece, Moldavia, Rumania, etc etc).
In 1914 they sided with the Central Powers against England and France. The Arab revolt in 1916 (spearheaded by the British, by the way) weakened them even more. An so much for Ottoman invasions of the west.
Which... shows that Islamic attacks on the west have been essentially CONTINUOUS since the middle ages until the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th-20th centuries.
So the idea that Islam has only a brief history of invasion of the west is ludicrous and inaccurate. The last 100 years has been the only century since the middle ages ended when Islam was not militarily invading the west.
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I am not sure that you meant to reference the systematic slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia in the above? you probably want to sweep that away.
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I sweep nothing away. The Serbs and Kosovars did not just wake up one day recently and decide to kill all Muslims. They were attempting to drive out the Muslim occupiers, and the latest events were just the latest round in a war that's been going on pretty much continuously since the 15th century.
Atrocities have been committed on both sides.
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