Emilia > Recent Status Updates

“Those who continue to talk of Istanbul’s beauty are certainly far away from it.” Ain’t that the truth.

The first 50 or so pages felt like they were written just for the sake of, but it’s picking up now.

‘Truth is no more than a consensus of generalised opinion’

‘What was the difference between love and the agony of waiting?’

“Even when the mujahedeen government ruled Afghanistan there were public executions, but under the Taliban the executions were given the same weekly schedule as in Saudi Arabia. Even today in Saudi Arabia, the guilty are beheaded every Friday in the town squares... Yet despite the violence of their punishments, Saudi Arabia has escaped the Western hysteria that has been directed at the Taliban.”

"“We stayed at Kaffa in the mosque of the Muslims. An hour after our arrival we heard bells ringing on all sides. As I had never heard bells before, I was alarmed and made my companions ascend the minaret and read the Koran and issue the call to prayer.” They were stopped only by the intervention of fellow Muslims, who feared a religious civil war... in all his vast travels, Ibn Battuta had never heard church bells."

"Progressively reducing the conspicuous display of signs of faith reduced the number of reasons for minority believers to maintain their stubborn dissidence, and encouraged conformity. Just how thoroughly the different faiths internalized these restrictions is suggested by an almost comic incident narrated by the traveler Ibn Battuta, visiting a Genoese settlement in the Crimea about 1330..."

"The Sufi impact on Christians was evident in Asia Minor. As Muslim power established itself during the thirteenth century, the region became a major center for Sufi activity, led by mystics like Haji Bektash, founder of the Bektashi order... subject of a popular hagiography, the Vilayet-name... In these accounts, the Haji does exactly the same things that would have been reported of a great Christian saint."

"For Westerners accustomed to the harsh simplicity of the Islam of Saudi Arabia or the Taliban, it can be shocking to realize just how focused on saints and intermediaries much of Islam was in the past, and remains today in much of the world." Fascinating!

"Although scholars debate the origins of Sufism, some of the parallels to Eastern Christianity are overwhelming, particularly in terms of practices of mystical prayer and devotion."

"Although scholars debate the origins of Sufism, some of the parallels to Eastern Christianity are overwhelming, particularly in terms of practices of mystical prayer and devotion."

"...the Quran seems to grow out of Christian and Jewish sources, and it is often difficult to separate the two influences. Even what appear to be strongly Semitic currents might have flowed from the Syriac-speaking churches."

"...Even moderate Muslim groups in Spain and Italy have expressed an interest in reclaiming such properties, or at least gaining the right for prayer space, but the Catholic response has been chilly... the president of the Pontifical Commission for Inter-religious Dialogue noted tactfully that “the Vatican has always been very careful not to ask for similar rights with regard to mosques which once were churches.""

"So extensive are the conflicting claims of ownership to sacred structures that any suggestion of restitution is extremely sensitive. As Muslim immigration into Europe has grown in recent years, the issue has resurfaced in the case of great cathedrals—Toledo, Seville, Córdoba, Palermo—that stand on the sites of ancient mosques..."

"In 1914, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople recorded a total of 2,549 ecclesiastical buildings, including 210 monasteries. By 1974, the locations of only 913 were still known. Four hundred sixty-four had completely disappeared, 252 were in ruins, and 197 were in fairly sound condition. Even this dreadful situation had already deteriorated further by the 1990s."

"Looking at acts of pogrom and massacre, it is not easy to identify specifically religious motives, to tell which acts of violence were targeted against Christians as Christians rather than as rebels against the regime."

I spoke too soon! Though examining the the motives behind genocide and ethnic cleansing are outside the purview of this book, it's important that it isn't mischaracterized.

While I understand that religion (and "Eastern Christianity" more specifically) is the subject of this book, it is a poor characterization and an over-simplification to claim that the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides were matters of religious persecution.

"Middle Eastern Christians in 1900 actually represented a much larger part of the overall population (some 11 percent) than do American Jews today (2 percent) or European Muslims (4.5 percent). The removal or destruction of that community represented a historic transformation for the region, no less than for the Christian world."

The modern concept of genocide as a uniquely horrible act demanding international sanctions has its roots in the thoroughly successful movements to eradicate Middle Eastern Christians."

"The sad fact that multinational empires have given way not to multinational democracies but to sharply defined nation-states; and the process of redefinition has often been a violent one. Even if it does not lead to outright war, it often traumatizes the people involved by sharpening divisions which may once have been blurred. It draws lines and forces people to step to one side or the other."