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ANALYSIS

Not since the Battle of Vienna in 1683 have so many Muslims tried to make their way to Europe at once.

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The difference between that conflict, which pitted the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation against the Ottoman Turks, and the drama unfolding in Europe today is that this time it is to escape war that hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and perhaps hundreds of thousands more, have flooded the continent.

The reception to the influx of refugees and migrants has been an odd patchwork.

Outwardly, at least, they have been warmly embraced in Germany. But they are being received with profoundly mixed feelings in Sweden, Britain and France and treated with outright hostility by Danes, Czechs, Hungarians and Serbs.

The tragic images of the corpse of a Syrian Kurdish toddler lying face down on a Greek beach outraged Canadians and Europeans alike, and galvanized them to try to help more of the millions of Syrians uprooted by the savagery of Syria’s Assad regime, the Islamic State, and other powerful extremist factions.