OUTSTANDING Article on the Battle of Lepanto, October 1571

[Mike Ellis]

One of the finest articles I have had the privilege to read, about the victory of the West over Islam at the Battle of Lepanto - 07 October 1571 - quite literally the battle that saved Europe from Islam for the 2nd time. It's a long read, but you'll be a better and wiser man for it... guaranteed.

It is sad that here in 2007, the vast majority of Americans (and possibly Europeans) have no idea that this battle was ever fought, nor how important it was.

-They have no idea that Don Juan was an actual hero who saved their people.

-They have no idea that in 1570 a jihad was declared against the Christians on Cyprus and that Muslim terror was beseiging Europe.

-They have no idea that the legendary Janissaries, the most feared and capable of the Muslim warriors, were a legion of Christian boys who had been seized from their families as slaves (a tax of sorts) and forced to convert to Islam.

-They have no idea that 20,000 citizens of Nicosia were slaughtered by the Muslims after the city finally surrendered.

-And they have no idea that Pope Pius V was the champion of the West who marshalled the forces to oppose Islam's conquest, and who picked Don Juan to be his commander at the pivotal battle. Without the efforts of the now much-hated Catholic church, there wouldn't BE a Western civilization.

Read this article, and honor the memory of the great men who built and protected our civilization. Protestant, Catholic, Atheist, or Pagan, remember what those long ago men did to enable EVERYTHING that you know and love to exist.

Learn the lessons of history, men - or you and your loved ones shall surely be fated to repeat it. Oppose the spread of Islam in Western lands!

Crisis Magazine

Lepanto, 1571: The Battle That Saved Europe
By H. W. Crocker III

The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but only the pope fully appreciated the threat. As Brandon Rogers notes in the Ignatius Press edition of G. K. Chesterton’s poem “Lepanto”: Pope Pius V “understood the tremendous importance of resisting the aggressive expansion of the Turks better than any of his contemporaries appear to have. He understood that the real battle being fought was spiritual; a clash of creeds was at hand, and the stakes were the very existence of the Christian West.” But then, as now, the unity of Christendom was shattered; and in the aftermath of the Protestant revolt, Islam saw its opportunity.

The Ottoman Empire, the seat of Islamic power, looked to control the Mediterranean. Corsairs raided from North Africa; the Sultan’s massive fleet anchored the eastern Mediterranean; and Islamic armies ranged along the coasts of Africa, the Middle and Near East, and pressed against the Adriatic; Muslim armies threatened the Habsburg Empire through the Balkans.

The Ottoman Turks yearned to bring all Europe within the dar al-Islam, the “House of Submission”—submissive to the sharia law. Europe, as the land of the infidels, was the dar al-Harb, the “House of War.”

But the House of War was a house divided against itself. The Habsburg Empire was Europe’s bulwark against Islamic jihad, but its timbers were being eaten away by the Protestants who diverted Catholic armies and even cheered on the Mussulmen, whom they saw as fellow enemies of the pope in Rome.