alternatehistory.com

From Zarqawi's letter to Osama bin Laden:
The Shi`i Safavid state was an insurmountable obstacle in the path of Islam. Indeed it was a dagger that stabbed Islam and its people in the back. One of the Orientalists spoke truth when he said that had the Safavid state not existed we in Europe would today be reading the Qur'an just as the Algerian Berber does. Yes, the hosts of the Ottoman state stopped at the gates of Vienna [in 1529, contextually], and those fortifications almost collapsed before them [to permit] Islam to spread under the auspices of the sword of glory and jihad all across Europe. But these armies were forced to return and withdraw to the rear because the army of the Safavid state had occupied Baghdad, demolished its mosques, killed its people, and captured its women and wealth. The armies returned to defend the sanctuaries and people of Islam. Fierce fighting raged for about two centuries and did not end until the strength and reach of the Islamic state had waned and the [Islamic] nation had been put to sleep, then to wake up to the drums of the invading Westerner.​

While the history here is rather... dubious, it's certainly true that until the seventeenth century, the main enemy of the Ottomans was the Safavid empire, not any Europeans. So if the Safavids never form and Iran remains fractured between petty tribal princes, how likely is that the Ottomans could make further headway into Europe?
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