Happy Anniversary, Mehmed II

Clifford May recalls an anniversary.

There’s an anniversary this week we might do well to recall. On May 29, 1453 — just 555 short years ago — troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople.

Changing Constantinople into Istanbul was just the beginning--

Mehmed cast himself as not just as a master builder of the Ottoman Empire, but also as the caliph — the supreme spiritual and temporal ruler of all the world’s Muslims, chosen to “act as Allah’s Sword ‘blazing forth the way of Islam from the East to West.’” He would go on to conquer Greece, Serbia, the Balkans south of the Danube and the Crimean peninsula. His grandson and great grandson would extend the caliphate to include the Levant, Egypt, the Arabian Hijaz including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Iraq, North Africa, and most of Hungary.

May points out that Islam does not have a monopoly on the desire for world conquest (although historically they have been very successful at it). But times have changed.

In recent years, however, the West has rejected not just Genghis Khan’s perspective on the joys of conquering, but the very idea of empire building, at least through martial means. Indeed, so thorough has this rejection been that many Americans and Europeans can no longer imagine anyone continuing to harbor such ambitions.

On that basis, they further assume that violence and terrorism — from the attacks of 9/11 to the missiles raining on Israel to the suicide-bombings in the marketplaces of Iraq — must be a response to oppression or occupation or some other “legitimate grievance.” History suggests otherwise. So, too, do the leaders of the various modern militant Islamist movements.

Ah yes, "the joys of conquering".
But at some point, the West decided that civilization has its privileges.
Maybe at some point the West will remember just what those privileges are.

Technorati Tag: Islam.