The situation you refer to was not a first time the Ottomans had entered an alliance with France, when speaking of the time of Francis I: The first (informal) alliance between him and the Sultan was caused because of the rivalry between France and the Habsburgers with the anti-France alliance formed by the Habsburgers, the Pope and England. This led France to seek an alliance with the Ottomans, especially after Francis got captured by Charles V (Pavia,1525). Suleyman the Magnificent (you people with your Englis-ised names! Hopeless…) was proposed to launch a general attack to force Charles to release Francis (the Venetians entered that alliance too) in order to restore the political balance in Europe. (Suleyman however choosed to first of all undertake his first war against Hungria.)
Alliance with France (and others) and occasional betrayal of this alliance when France entered the Catholic alliances against the Muslims were part the European policy in this period.
The entering and remaining of the Ottoman fleet at Toulon in August 1543 was not exactly at the invitation of Francis I, who at that time once again was led forget his earlier promesses to alliance with the Ottomans against the Habsburgers, while Barbarossa as commander of the Ottoman fleet had led a campaing in the Western Mediterranean partly in reponse to the demands of France for help against the Habsburgers.
Thus after some ravaging of the Italian coasts and leaving Rome and Naples in what one could describe as a state of panic, the Ottomans went on to Southern France and were welcomed there, while at the same time Francis decided to forget once again about his alliance with the Muslims.
Hence Hayruddin occupied Toulon (august 5 1543) without permission. (He also - one can imagine this was a bit forcibly - got the local French authorities to give assistance for a try at taking Nice (august 20-september 8 1543) before going back to the Mediterranean.)
So I should say that the French love for Muslims was and is ambiguous and unreliable at the very least
I feel for you for having to deal with a sister sister who is convinced that the creative rewriting of history leaving out all history is true histoy
Since the creative writer himself makes obviously money of his creations, I think I’m going to change focus here.
How much do the members of the SDMB offer me to rewrite Islamic history?
I can do so much better then the writer we discuss here and who obviously has no clue of anything.
I can let all the Western fairytales and rewritings become the truth and nothing but the truth and in the end I let the West win it all. Promise.
Yes, they (al Qaeda and similar Sunni Islamist groups) want the US to leave. No secret there.
They want control of the governments in the Middle East more than just their oil wealth. The oil just produces the income that would allow them to run these governments.
The 75% of reserves figure is wrong
They sure want to wipe out Israel. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to use nuclear weapons - they’d kill everyone in the region, not just Israelis. Similar situation for biological and chemical weapons. Also, such an action would destroy the territory and make it impossible to live in.
They don’t want the UN poking its nose in any more than they want the US. This is just anti-UN / anti-multilateralism rhetoric.
In closure, I used a lot of the information gleaned from this thread in a long email to my sister. It amounted to almost a point-by-point refutation of the original garbage she sent me. After a week’s worth of silence, she allowed as to how she had been premature in sending me the glurge and that maybe I might even yet convert her to the Democratic Party, or at least to stop swallowing all the garbage her Republican Brethren send her. Although I doubt she will ever convert, and I doubt she will stop the swallowing (no dirty comments here, please) at least, with your help, I managed to fight a little ignorance.
