From: http://nostradamusinvasion.blogspot.co.uk/
[Wikipedia Commons]
The Ottoman siege of Vienna of 1529 (note camels in foreground)
Don't blame me -- but a future Arab/Muslim invasion of Europe, albeit undated, is the pre-eminent theme of Nostradamus’s Prophecies (largely unknown though this may be to the public at large). That is why I said so in print in 1993, 1997, 1998 and 2006, in the last three cases even including versions of the maps that you can see below.
Being unable to predict future events directly, Nostradamus based his disturbing scenario on the then-common conviction that history repeats itself. He therefore took his details from the ancient invasions of the Roman Empire by 'barbarians' ranging from the Goths to Attila’s Huns; from the sweeping conquests by Muhammad and his followers; from the campaigns of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; and from the then-quite-recent invasions by the Muslim Ottomans from Turkey, which had actually succeeded in reaching Vienna during his lifetime as per the illustration above (Nostradamus didn't distinguish between Turks and Arabs), and would do so again in 1683. He also followed the general scenario foretold by the ancient Mirabilis liber, and especially the ancient prophecies of Pseudo-Methodius and the Tiburtine Sibyl (q.v.).
The following map (dating from my Nostradamus:The Final Reckoning of 1993) gives a general idea of the largely undated campaign that he envisaged up to the point where it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar. As my translation of quatrain VI.80 puts it:
From Fez shall rulership to Europe spread,
Burning their cities, slashing with the sword.
By land and sea shall Asia’s mighty horde,
Blue-coiffed, hound Christians till they drop down dead.
While this map features some actual quatrain-numbers, the detailed predictions for the campaigns in Spain, Italy and France will be shown on the more local maps that follow.
Compare the invasion map produced by the Islamic State, or on its behalf, during late 2014 (below).
The campaign now spreads across southern Spain towards France:
At about the same time, Italy, too is invaded from the south:
And so France, too, is duly attacked from both directions:
Indeed, France -- and, not least, Paris -- seems to be the principal target of the invaders – but the proposed invasion seems not to cross the Channel to England (see VI.43).
As my translation of quatrain V.68 puts it:
He’ll come to drink by Rhine’s and Danube’s shore –
The mighty Camel no remorse shall show.
The folk of Rhône shall quake, of Loire e’en more.
Yet near the Alps the Cock shall lay him low.
The general context, then, is quite clear. There is to be an invasion of Europe from the south and south-east by Arab/Muslim forces, whether massed military ones (which is what Nostradamus clearly envisaged) or simply groups of pseudo-religious terrorists who are seriously ignorant of their own scriptures.*
Yet the precise details are speculative – both on Nostradamus’s part and on mine. Given Nostradamus’s characteristic refusal to be precise, most of the quatrains indicated (and a rash of others besides) could quite conceivably apply to other contexts entirely -- though probably not to the quite recent Muslim influx into Europe of modern times, which, though vast, has been almost entirely peaceful and benevolently devout.
The result, however, is a sobering one, as quatrain VII.34 confirms:
In grief the folk of France shall mope and pine,
Light-heartedness be foolishness decreed
No bread, salt, water, beer, nor drugs, nor wine:
Their noblest captive, hunger, cold and need.
And, in particular, the French language will be mingled with Arabic. Until, that is, the West finally gets its act together and mounts an enormous counter-invasion that will sweep through a devastated France (IV.12, III.99), then into Spain and Italy (IV.37, VI.42, V.13 ), and finally on to the Middle East (V.80, IV.50, III.97, II.60), which (unbelievably) will be converted to Christianity (VII.36 -- but I'll believe that when I see it!).
But then, of course, it might not happen at all. Nostradamus never actually ‘saw’ these events. He was merely projecting selected past events into the future. The history that repeats itself rarely does so exactly. And his evident Islamophobia was merely typical of his time (for perfectly understandable reasons -- see above!) in a way that it does not need to be of ours.
As for 'ISIS' (one of the names of one of the current Muslim movements in Syria and Iraq), Nostradamus doesn’t use the name in his Prophecies, but only in his speculative work on Egyptian hieroglyphs entitled Orus Apollo, where it is of course the name of the pre-eminent ancient Egyptian goddess, who was entirely innocent of any designs on Europe!
Nevertheless, compare the movement's proposed invasion map published in July 2014:
...and its planned conquests for 2019:
*Young ideologues, that is, who blithely trot out the Koran's 'Kill them wherever you find them…' while conveniently ignoring the rest of the text at Sura II:191-2: 'Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but do not begin hostilities... But do not fight with them within the precincts of the Holy Mosque unless they attack you there...But if they mend their ways, fight nobody except the evil-doers;' or who happily cite Surah 9:5's 'slay the idolaters wherever you find them' while forgetting the caveat 'But if they repent and start praying and pay the poor-tax, then let them go on their way. Behold, Allah is forgiving and merciful'. A good deal more merciful, it has to be said, than some of His acolyres. MORAL -- Always ask what the next verse says1 And remember Surah 5.32: Whoever killeth a human being, except as a punishment for manslaughter or other wicked crimes, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.'
