The New Conquest of Vienna

In 1683, the Ottoman Muslims lay siege to Vienna, in what turned out to be the high-water mark of their conquest in eastern Europe. They were pushed back by the Polish troops of Jan III Sobieski in a battle as consequential for Europe as was Charles Martel’s defeat of the invading Muslims at Poitiers in 732 A.D., where the Frankish forces attained a decisive victory over the Umayyad Caliphate’s army, commanded by Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi. Today the Muslims are again hoping to conquer Europe, not through force of arms, but by demographic conquest. As the Algerian leader Houari Boumedienne said in 1974, “One day, millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.” Other Muslim leaders have made the same triumphalist prediction. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, for example, said in 2006 that “Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot.” And he gave the reason: “Some people believe that Muhammad is the prophet of the Arabs or Muslims. This is a mistake. Muhammad is the prophet of all people.”

More about recent demographic changes in Europe, focusing on Vienna, where the Muslims were turned back in 1683, can be found here: “Vienna’s fall: Islam wins Europe’s war of the generations,” by Giulio Meotti, Israel National News, February 22, 2026:

…Welcome to the imperial capital of the old Austria felix, once the most Catholic among the Catholic cities of Europe. And what applies to old Vienna, reduced to a museum inhabited by elderly people strolling in the Prater, will apply to every other metropolis in Europe prey to completed secularization and Islamization.

In the districts of Brigittenau (68.7 percent), Margareten (63.7), Favoriten (62.3), Simmering (57.7), Meidling (57.6), and Ottakring (56.1), the percentage of Muslims exceeds 50 percent, with two out of three students in Brigittenau practicing Islam.

This is precisely Schönborn’s district. Old and exhausted Europe dissolves under the weight of Islamic immigration that does not integrate, but replaces.

Two pupils out of three grow up calling Allah their God and observing Ramadan, while their once-Catholic classmates have evaporated into a generic “no confession” or a residual Christianity.

A student at a Viennese high school wanted to read a passage from the Bible in class as part of a lesson, but the teacher refused, saying it would “offend Muslims.”

It is not a conspiracy; it is biology applied to sociology. Childless Europe has only a glorious past and a twilight present.

Rod Dreher wrote:

“It is particularly disconcerting that Vienna, the ancestral capital of the Habsburgs, with current demographic trends will be majority Muslim by the end of the century. This is what happens when you stop believing you have a culture worth defending.”

Or when you are mesmerized, as by a basilisk’s stare, into paralysis as you helplessly watch the ongoing transformation of your world. Europe’s political and media elites have for too long been unable to respond, as Muslims flowed into their lands; there are now 47 million Muslims in Europe, and only Hungary has successfully managed to keep them out.

Dreher is wrong: it will happen much sooner.

Krone Zeitung published striking data: “By 2046, one in three Viennese will be Muslim.”…

And Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen publicly congratulated Muslims on the beginning of Ramadan, downplaying the importance of Christian Lent. Van der Bellen shared an image of a type of lantern used by Muslims to decorate streets and homes during Ramadan, with the Arabic slogan “Ramadan Kareem!” and the Austrian coat of arms, accompanied by the message:

“With the beginning of Christian Lent and Ramadan, we are reminded to pause, to be grateful and to be there for one another. I wish everyone a peaceful period in which we can grow closer together in mutual respect and active community.”

Why use a Ramadan image while speaking about Lent?

Austria’s President Alexander van der Bellen sent a message on social media to those in Austria who were observing Ramadan or Lent, but the screen image was directed solely to Muslims, with the screen covered by a “Ramadan Kareem”message, but no image of anything connected to Lent.

A gloomy view, this from Giulio Meotti, one that does not take sufficient account of the powers of resilience and resistance of the advanced Western democracies, nor for the West’s capacity to learn from experience. But that will be discussed later today.