A) They were all stops on the famous "Orient Express" train route
B) You can't find a decent Mexican restaurant in any of them
C) They will all soon be submerged by the melting ice caps, forcing at least the French to bathe
D) None of the above

The answer below the jump...

"D) None of the above" is what I was going for, although I'm pretty sure that "B" would be equally correct.

Anyway, here is what they have in common: at all of these places Muslim military invasions of Europe were turned back.

When I was in school the way the Crusades of the 11th - 13th centuries were portrayed -- and I'm sure this is still the case today in most of the US and Western Europe (don't know about how it is down under for our Australian readers, which we have quite a few of lately) -- as European imperialism and expansionism. Supposedly, second and third sons of noblemen sat around with all this armor and a horse and nothing to do but fight each other. And they had no future because big brother was going to inherit daddy's castle. The pope, so the story goes, wanted to get rid of these guys because they ran around causing fights, stealing church revenue and raping the nuns. The one thing the Europeans could all agree on was that they would love to go make some cash in the Holy Land. So the 11th century equivalent of red-state livin', Nascar-watchin', Maxim-readin', beer-drinkin' greedy Euro adverturers went-a-crusadin' against the technologically advanced, morally developed and peace loving Muslim states in Palestine. At least that was the gist of our education in the public schools. In fact, in what very may well be the most laughable example of Hollywood movie "history" a sophisticated Muslim named Akim returns from the Crusades with Robin Hood to straighten out medieval England. Why, thank you, Akim. [and for those of you waiting for the long promised WTH movie reviews, you can bet this one will be on the list]

But back to Tours, Rome and Vienna. For hundreds of years, across the entire length of Europe's southern border Muslim armies attacked and conquered lands. Now, people had been conquering Europe since time immemorial: from the north, from the South, from the East, from the West... the ancient tribes and nations could have printed bumper stickers that read, "Honk if you haven't tried to invade Europe." So I suppose the Muslim armies were entitled to a try.

But in the contest between Islam and Christian Europe in the middle ages there is no question who the constant aggressor was. A nice list over at Scott Hong's blog of the conflicts that led up to the Crusades. Highlights:

• In 622 Muhammad leaves Mecca for Medina, essentially creating Islam and the caliphate.

• In 629 A.D. Muhammad's armies attack the forces of the Christian Byzantine Empire. Islam would be in a state of near continual warfare with the Byzantine empire until Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 -- over 900 years. The renamed the place Istanbul.

• Between 634 and the mid 700's Muslim armies invade Christian Palestine (yes, there were Christians there before Islam existed), Sicily and Southern Italy, Christian Nubia, the Ukraine (full of Christian states at the time), and Iberia (Spain and Portugal).

Back to our question about Tours, Rome and Vienna. All three of these places were high-water marks for Muslim conquest in Europe:

In 732 Charles Martel defeats a numerically superior invasion force that had crossed the Pyrannees from Muslim Spain at The Battle of Tours (also called the Battle of Poitiers). Here's a pic:

In 846 the Saracens (what the Arab Muslims were called in Southern Italy) sacked Rome itself, including St. Peter's Basilica. The pope and his folks retreated behind the city walls, which were expanded after the battle.

In 1683 a coalition of Polish, Austrian and German forces broke the Muslim siege of Vienna at the Battle of Vienna. The city had been besieged by the Ottoman Turks for two months (actually, the city had been under siege more or less for more than 150 years, after the first Siege of Vienna in 1529. Here's a pic:

[note: in the future I'll write specific stories about some of these battles]

Is "the West" in conflict with Islam today? Western liberals say that this is a neo-con fiction put forth to advance an imperialistic agenda, or as a rationale for seizing oil. Many Muslims, Muslim leaders and preachers think that the two civilizations are in conflict (and should be, they think). My point today is this: that there is a historical context to the conflict between Islam and the West, and that context is almost 1,400 years of on and off warfare between the two civilizations, with Europe largely the prize. Which way will the tide swing as we approach the 1,500th anniversary?