The author would like to point out that as he goes about criticising ignorance, poor understanding, bias, the objectification of women, ineffectiveness in British Government and the secular nature of modern society, he is in no way guilty of anything he accuses other people of. Honest.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Electoral Fraud and the 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna

The blog 'Gates of Vienna' appears quite Islamophobic, naming itself after the furthest point that the Ottoman Empire reached in mainland Europe (the gates of the Austrian city of Vienna during the second siege of that city in 1683). Yet this article about voter fraud among the Muslim community is disturbingly well-argued. I don't wish to suggest that I believe such practices to be commonplace, but the voting system in this country does seem constructed in such a way to easily allow them.

PS: Technically 'Gates of Vienna' should be 'Battle of Tours' - the furthest an Islamic army got into Europe was at the Battle of Tours (in north-central France) in 732 where Franko-Burgundian forces defeated an army invading from Muslim Spain. That and the blog seems to overestimated the degree to which the Second Siege of Vienna was an organised attempt to topple the then admittedly quite weak Austrian Hungary. See this episode of the Radio 4 series 'In Our Time' (always worth a listen) for further information on that.

(N.B: Declaration of Interest - yes, Jeremy Black pops up on this show too. He's an expert in quite a few areas!)

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