Granted there were Christians and Muslims on both sides but that doesn't change the story too much. It's a fact that the Turks forced conversion or put in place heavy taxes on Jews and Christians. Had the Turkish empire taken Austria there is no reason to believe that Europe would have remained Christian.

This article is well written, though old news in its details and partially wrong in its conclusion.

That both sides in the long war against Islam's expansion made alliances with the other side is something so old that it shouldn't need discussion. The crusader states worked with the Assassines and forged alliances with Muslims against other Muslim states. 
When Constantinople's wall was breached in 1453, the cannons that shot were made by a hungarian Christian, Orban, because the Sultan could pay his wages and the christian Emperor, whom he worked for before, wasn't able to keep him in service due to the lack of money.
Christian rulers submitted to the Ottomans to keep their land when their alternative was to fight a futile war without chances and thus fought on the Ottoman side later.

France forging an alliance with the Turcs does only proof, if at all, that **they** didn't care about christianity as much as they did about gaining power - at that certain moment. It is easy to abandon some far distant christians if you gain the rule over estates close at home in exchange. 
The same France had just before supported the protestant side in the 30-years war to gain power against the catholic empire. Is this suddenly a proof that the 30-years war wasn't about religion? And we're still talking about christians on both sides here.
Just a few decades before, the catholic French massacred their protestant countrymen in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. It is a difference to tolerate infidels at the other end of the world than to tolerate them close by.

The alliance with France only proofs that france felt the Ottomans to be far enough away to not post a direct threat while they were on the other side of France's main rival, Germany.
Members of another faith on the same side in a battle only proofs that both sides could be tolerant if they shared goals or considered the unbelivers to be loyal.

A ruler deciding to make an unholy alliance also neither automatically changes the beliefs of the people nore does it proof anything but his will for power.

He is right that Poland was the only major help which can be explained as Poland itself was facing the Ottomans at other fronts and thus just fighting its usual enemy.

Where he's completely wrong though is his conclusion. For the contemporaries, the siege of Vienna has been just one more war with the Seljuq/Ottomans. Christians were fighting them for about 600 years at that point. So Christianity was used to the idea of Muslims fighting other Christians *somewhere in the south east*. 
Another Turkish war was thus just that. *Another war*. Nothing special. Why would you send all your troops on your own account then?

The fall of Vienna on the other hand might have very well forged a bigger alliance to push the Turks back, as other military desasters had before. The second crusade started after Edessa fell to the Muslims, for example.

Vienna 1683 is this symbol not because of it was, but because of what it turned out to be. While it might have been just one more major battle in the time, it turned out to be the final end of military expansion into Christian land for the Ottomans and the beginning of the (at least for now) permament reconquista of Christian lands in the Balkans. 

Conclusion:
It is one of the big battles between Christianity and Islam because of its results, not because of what contemprories think. Tours and Portiers is exactly the same. Just one battle that proved to be **the** battle only when they didn't come back.
Alliances and armies of mixed faith don't prove anything except where those individuals see their loyalty. As rulers with their personal power, as soldiers with their ruler.

Vienna 1683 was one of the descisive battles in the now over 1.000 year old conflict with Islam.

Thanks for both your answers. I tend to agree with you. Nonetheless I found the article well written and there are details I didn't know, especially concerning the parties involved in the two alliances.

The bottom line is that it was still a war between Christianity and Islam. Although the "Christianity" has an asterisk. Catholics aren't Christians. The Lutherans of the time weren't either.

[Source](https://aeon.co/essays/the-battle-of-vienna-was-not-a-fight-between-cross-and-crescent)
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@steemcleaners: 

This post should initiate a discussion and it did. 

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What is steemit if not a community discussing a broad spectrum of interesting topics?

And what do you think you do here? You're just a bunch of wannabe rogue cops.

interesting...