"lunatic ravings" and a response that I don't deserve

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jul 29, 2010 at 17:59

Hikmet wrote :

>About your lunatic ravings concerning churches, mosques etc,<

My "lunatic ravings" were centred around a relevant medieval source which I quoted and drew a number of conclusions based upon it. I understand that by calling this procedure "lunatic ravings" you can produce some valid arguments ( I hope you know how to distinguish between a valid argument and an invalid one ) agaisnt either the source or the conclusions or both to corroborate your interesting phrasing .

> as an Atheist I don't give two pennies to temples anyway, -apart from their cultural, artistic importance, of course. <

The point here is not even a church but Islam's barbarity. And whether one blieves in a god or doesn't is irrelevant to see the point. You tell me an abstract story ending with your memorable and outrageous phrase "relief in converting temples into mosques". I tell you what such a story really looked like with all the horrors involved in that alleged "relief" operation. But you refuse to face the brutal facts and stygmatize them as "lunatic ravings". Well, if your atheism leads to such conclusions , then it is not much better than Islam itself .

> But in fact, on this specific matter I was somehow referring to a truely intelligent Turkish Linguist, writer, publicist, Marxist, Intellectual [Also a Professor] Murat Belge, whom I have the honour of knowing in person, who stated that at least contrary to predecessors, Ottomans did not burn down most of the temples, but instead converted them, so let them stand, survive, exist... Do you understand?

Invite your honorable friend Murat here.Tell him I'd like to have a short chat with him on the subject.

First and forefomest , let me remind him that converting a church into a mosque is always an act of brutal spiritual rape , of violence and derision. What do you think people who had been baptised and married in these churches turned into mosques felt when they saw the Moslem hordes loot and piss on the altars and then install an imam there to perform their ... rites ?

Second, when you convert a church into stables or latrines as Moslems tend also to do you let it also stand, survive, exist ...as stables, latrines etc. So what is the difefrence between converting a temple into a mosque or a barn or a latrine from that perspective ?You pretend to care for "their cultural, artistic importance, of course", but it is exactlyw hat is destroyed in both cases. Looting and desecrating a church destroys its paintings, furniture, statues, valuables. Changing the looted church into a mosque leads to further devastations as human faces are erased, human effigies crushed to conform to Islam's barbarian commands. The same happens when we use a church as a barn, stables , latrine or a night club. The only logical way to preserve what you allegedly so care for would be to leave the church in peace and rather change all mosques back into churches - by your very logic - to get back the lost artistic and cultural values !

In Northern Cyprus the Turkish army changed 77 churches into mosques deleting the paintings , appropriated 28 further churches for its own use as hospitals or camps and turned 13 more into barns. All in all 118. But just like in the Ottoman empire there were too many churches to be all converted into mosques after their lootinga and desecrationa, so in the Turkish-occupied Cyprus there were c. 500 churches and religious sites belonging to all possible Christian denominations and to the Jews . Too many of them to be Islamized given the fact there were too few Moslems to occupy them , especially as a church has no minaret and provides for other inconveniences when forced to serve as a church. So the Turks had done what they have always done - along with the adjacent cemeteries they have wantonly desecrated, pillaged, looted and destroyed all those churches and places of worpship. Again these are no my " lunatic ravings" but findings of theThe US Helsinki Commission under the co-chairmanship of Senator Ben Cardin and Representative Alcee Hastings in 2009.

Now if your apologist of the Ottomans' barbarity meant Hagia Sophia , his example is neither representative nor can prove his point. Critobulus from Imbros describes how the Turks ravaged it : "they threw the holy icons down on earth and tore them to pieces to rip precious metals and stones out of them. They grabbed at cups, goblets and other ecclesiatical objects and melted them all to get gold and silver . the same they did with religious garments embroided heavily with golden and silver threads and preciosu stone . What is worst though they threw into fire all the holy books and the manuscripts of the ancient and later authors." ( Critobuli Imbriotae Historiae , A, p.72-73 , 1983 ed. ) . On that occasion the Turks destroyed according to cardinal Isidor 120 000 books held in different libraries of Constantinople. So not so much of your valued " cultural, artistic importance" really remained after the Moslem fury raged there except the walls, mosaics and stones that couldn't be robbed, but even the stone were stolen as the anecdote about Mehmet II and a janissary cutting off a marble tile in the floor tells us. But even after Hagia Sophia had become a mosque it experienced no revival that could make it look like it did during the late Byzantine period, let alone during Justianian.

A more interesting church in Constantinople than Hagia Sophia was teh Church of the Holy Apostoles. It was there that most Byzantine emperors were buried. After the fall of the city the church with its imperial tombs was desecrated and looted , the bodies thrown out of the tombs and robbed of any objects of value. Afterwards Mehmet decided to convert it into a mosque too. But contrary to what you after your Turkish professor wrongly imply coverting it into a mosque didn't "let it stand, survive, exist' at all ! He had the church levelled to the ground and a new mosque erected in its place. Now it is 'Fatih Cami' (Mosque of the Conqueror) with his corpse resting there. So this conspicuous example doesn't square with your (or his) glib lie of "relief in converting temples into mosques."

Another point is that churches and monasteries were rich and so they attracted the attention and greed of the Moslem aggressors in the first place. It was natural that they suffered most and the damages done to them tended to be so great that after being overrun by jihadist hordes they looked like ruins and remained such. In Bythynia at the end of the 13th century around mount Olymus there was a huge monastic complex analogous to what is now in Athos in Greece . The hordes of Osman Ghazi and his son Orkhan made it into virtual desert. They plundered, killed, raped, carried off the monchs into slavery and burned the rest. There is nothing there at present that reminds of what it looked like before. The same happened all over Asia Minor which is covered by a nice study "Der Verfall des Griechentums in Kleinasien im XIV. Jahrhundert " by A. Waechter , Leipzig 1903.

> I don't think you deserve a detailed response. ...<

True, what you call a "response" on closer examination turns out to be either lack of logic, dissimulations or outright lies and nauseating pro-Turkish propaganda. I don't deserve all of that , do I ?

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