The Pope and The Imam

Sultan Ahmet Camii - Blue mosque, İstanbul Originally uploaded by Chicaurbana.

I saw Pope Benedict standing next to an Imam within a mosque. Immediately I thought "Hagia Sophia!", but that is no longer a working mosque. So then I thought Blue or Sulaimaniya. My wife said she had heard "blue"...maybe.

Well, that's great. It is not great to everyone, however.

Many people think of Religion much like they think of the loose change in their pockets: it is mine, all mine - God-given and inalienable - and woo to he who changes any part of it!

So let's take a look, kids. I came across an unusual site which I shall go back to in the future. (I have developed an interest in Orson Scott Card's Ender stories and their use of Authoritarian imagery - there is a recent post on Mr. Card, or Scott Card as the case may be.)

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2006_11_26_alicublog_archive.html#116481609430550766

This is a site called Alicublog, and they say:

The whole Benedict Turkey trip, for all the feel-good man-of-peace rhetoric, is really just one powerful mobster cooking up a big takeover with another. I hope the ghost of Ataturk is knocking over their water glasses at least.

This is straight forward, good ol' American short term thinking. I think the Pope and the Imam are incomprehensible to a lot of people because they are quite capable of thinking of the outcome of their actions, not now, but 1,000 years from now.