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| Olde Tyme Religion |
| Islam gets concessions; infidels get conquered |
| 2006-12-06 |
| What they capture, they keep. When they lose, they complain to the U.N. By Raymond Ibrahim IN THE DAYS before Pope Benedict XVI's visit last Thursday to the Hagia Sophia complex in Istanbul, Muslims and Turks expressed fear, apprehension and rage. "The risk," according to Turkey's independent newspaper Vatan, "is that Benedict will send Turkey's Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims." Apparently making the sign of the cross or any other gesture of Christian worship in Hagia Sophia constitutes such a sacrilege. Built in the 6th century, Hagia Sophia — Greek for "Holy Wisdom" — was Christendom's greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople — now Istanbul — was finally sacked by Turks in 1453, and Hagia Sophia's crosses were desecrated, its icons defaced. Along with thousands of other churches in the Byzantine Empire, it was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph. Nearly 500 years later, in 1935, as part of reformer Kemal Ataturk's drive to modernize Turkey, Hagia Sophia was secularized and transformed into a museum. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #1 Can we have a Crusade, please? |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2006-12-06 16:21 |