Posted on 12/07/2006 10:26:19 AM PST by ZeitgeistSurfer
Many in the West are congratulating Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to Turkey, where in the Blue Mosque he prayed facing Mecca and made other gestures meant to salve the wounds raised by his references to Islam’s history of violence. Personally, I found the whole scene a depressing exhibit of the West’s terminal failure of nerve, one particularly distressing given this Pope’s documented understanding that what we call the “war on terror” is in fact the latest episode in the centuries-long struggle with a militant Islam.
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
You are correct.
Islam isn't a religion - its a death cult.
We must realize we are at war with a political ideology maasquerading as a religion and even more dangerous than NAZIsm or Communism.
But it was a great church, and it would be great if it could become a church once again.
Good luck. With a handful of exceptions, there are two kinds of Muslims in my book - the live ones who re trying to kill us and the ones enjoying the thirty-nine virgins - or whatever.
Kiss my ass.
The Turks would not lose control in any sort of Orthodox Vatican set up - the church building will be part of the native Orthodox community and it would serve both Christians and Muslims.
And you want me to kiss your ass for that suggestion?
I mean how long can Turks go on cleaning German toilets to figure out that their nation is a joke that survives by playing off of regional power rivalries - which she can't do forever since the end of the Cold War and rise of the EU and the Kurdistan/Iraq development?
But thanks for confirming what I always knew of what Turks and Muslims are. Barbarians who ape at being civilised.
I guess you were correct, Z.
Constantinople is Turkish, by Right of Conquest, a legal principle recognized by all parties from the beginning of time
The right of conquest, under the modern international law established in the times of the great jurists like Bodin and Grotius, recognizes the right of the conqueror to become the lawgiver in the territory he has conquered.
It does not give the conqueror the right to deprive the conquered of life, liberty or property unless emergency measures are needed for public security.
I assume, AK, that you and I both agree that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people through right of conquest.
I will point out that the Jewish people confiscated very little property from the Arabs living in Israel and then only for security reasons, extended full citizenship rights to Arabs living in Israel, allowed their religious buildings and institutions to remain unmolested (even, puzzlingly, the mosque atop Judaism's holiest ground!) and did not impose a "Muslim tax" on Arabs to punish them for practicing their chosen religion.
The Turkish conqueror dispossessed almost every landowner, made the Greeks second-class citizens deprived of all legal rights except insofar as they paid a tax for the privilege of remaining Christian, and seized all the major church buildings and monasteries, despoiling them.
Prevailing international law at the time permitted this, but simple justice demands that Hagia Sophia be restored to to the Orthodox Church.
Exactly. Conquest is conquest. We own Texas. Israel owns the Golan. The Muslims own the Hagia Sofia. Unless the author is willing to draw up armies to invade Turkey, he should stop whining like some left-wing sociologist.
If stealing property was allowed under rules of conquest we would not have had to hang all those Nazis for theft.
When the loyalists during our Revolutionary war were forced to leave they USA paid a settlement to them via treaty. Such is the legal ways of such things. This attitude that the Turks stole this or that by force of arms and thus it is theirs is anathema to Western thinking.
If Turkey wants to stay in the Asiatic despot Mongolic mindset then she can, if she wants to join the Western world as a Western but Muslim nation that attitude can not stand.
See post 68.
Mexican citizens who lived in and owned property in Mexican Texas were not robbed of their property in the Republic of Texas or subsequently in American Texas - as long as they acknowledged the sovereignty of the Republic and then of the USA over the territory and abided by its laws.
I'm not sure who "we" is - if "we" is the federal government of the USA, you must surely realize that at least some of the land in Texas is privately owned.
What kind of conservative makes a statement like that?
Texas is a sovereign state within the Union. No one owns 'Texas'. The Texas people are sovereign and they Texas Republic never confiscated any Texas-Mexican private held land as a result of gaining their independence.
What I meant is Texas and the entire American Southwest is sovereign U.S. territory.
In any case I offered a proposal for returning this Church in question back to the church it once belonged to @ # 58:
If Turkey was smart it would give to the Phanar the now Hagia Sophia museum allowing it to be restored to a church and it would not only get into the EU quicker but would make billions in tourist and pilgrim money it would also possibly allow healing between Greeks and Turks to take place and end the enmity. I would support having a portion of this hypothetically restored Hagia Sophia church have a mosque like the set up at St. Cathrine's monastery in the Sinai.
To which a Turkish forum member suggested I should kiss his ass for my trouble.
Then I guess you support the continued Islamic presence in all the territiry they have stolen over the past 1500 years from non-Muslims and are CONTINUING to steal from them by the sword, murder, rape and pillage.
Hagia Sophia ranked right up there with St. Peter's as a symbol of Christianity.
That's why MEhmet wanted it. He took it, enslaved all the people who weren't murdered by his savage Turks, and then converted this beautiful Christian house of prayer into a Mosque. Later, it became a Museum.
Its a Christian House of God and should be returned to the Christians.
Even the Indians got reservations - for the little that was worth.
If you think might makes right and support the right of the conqueror, then perhaps we should take back all the territory stolen from Christians and other non-Muslims and use the same terror tactics Muslims have always used againt "non-Believers" to force THEM to convert from Islam.
Maybe we should turn the Kabba into a base for a giant new pork and liquor store - complete with topless waitresses and dogs as guards..
Then I guess you support the continued Islamic presence in all the territiry they have stolen over the past 1500 years from non-Muslims and are CONTINUING to steal from them by the sword, murder, rape and pillage.
Hagia Sophia ranked right up there with St. Peter's as a symbol of Christianity.
That's why MEhmet wanted it. He took it, enslaved all the people who weren't murdered by his savage Turks, and then converted this beautiful Christian house of prayer into a Mosque. Later, it became a Museum.
Its a Christian House of God and should be returned to the Christians.
Even the Indians got reservations - for the little that was worth.
If you think might makes right and support the right of the conqueror, then perhaps we should take back all the territory stolen from Christians and other non-Muslims and use the same terror tactics Muslims have always used againt "non-Believers" to force THEM to convert from Islam.
Maybe we should turn the Kabba into a base for a giant new pork and liquor store - complete with topless waitresses and dogs as guards..
"To which a Turkish forum member suggested I should kiss his ass for my trouble."
He was just speaking Turkish.
Hagia Sophia was taken at the point of a sword and Gun and it will have to be retaken at the point of a sword and a gun.
In the coming war with Islam, all Christians should remember Hagia Sophia, good Emperor Michael Palaeologus, the brave people who died defending Constantinople against the Turk, and the poor souls who were murdered, raped and enslaved by those demons, and settle for nothing less than the removal of Islam from all of Europe, and the Christian lands they stole in Anatolia.
I have more than a little problem with posters not referring to the Pope in the correct fashion. Being as blatantly anti-Catholic as you are, there's no sense in referring you to any of the Catholic blobs perspectives on this since your small mind is firmly closed.
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