The U.S., Russia, Greece, the E.U., the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ Kirill, even the left-leaning Israel-demeaning World Council of Churches and many others, have expressed various degrees of “grief and dismay” at the announcement by Turkish President Erdogan that from now on, Hagia Sophia would no longer […]
Arabs React to Erdogan’s Big Plans
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “liberate al-Aqsa mosque” from Israel after “resurrecting Hagia Sophia” as a mosque on Friday [July 10]. The story is here. The decision to change the status of the ancient Hagia Sophia church, which had been transformed into a mosque in 1453 and then into a museum in 1934, […]
Erdogan: ‘If a faith-oriented discussion is to be held, the topic should be not Hagia Sophia, but Islamophobia’
This is because in Erdogan’s world, the discussion must never be about what Muslims may have done to harm anyone else, but only about how Muslims have been harmed. He shares this perspective with Islamic supremacists the world over. It is always, always, always the other guy’s fault, no matter what. “With its new status, […]
Erdogan’s Mischief-Making, And His Comeuppance (Part 2)
Turkey’s foreign minister has said that Israel’s annexation plan “destroys all hopes” of lasting peace in the Middle East. Turkey has long hosted Hamas and sought to have Hamas play a larger role in Palestinian issues. Turkey’s foreign minister also refused to refer to Israel by name in the meeting of the Islamic Cooperation Executive […]
Why Erdogan Converted the Hagia Sophia to a Mosque, and Why the State Department Should Be Concerned
My latest in PJ Media: Most Western media analyses of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision Friday to convert Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque have asserted that Erdogan has wanted to do this because the move is popular among Turks and will shore up his base. But there is a great deal […]
Erdogan’s Mischief-Making, and His Comeuppance (Part 1)
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself as the natural leader of the Muslim world. Last year saw published in his mouthpiece, the newspaper Yeni Safak, his plan for a pan-Islamic army that, with its huge collective armory of planes and tanks, and more than a million men under arms, would be able to […]
Erdogan: “Resurrection of Hagia Sophia” heralds “return of freedom to al-Aqsa,” revival of Islam Uzbekistan to Spain
Since mainstream analysts routinely downplay or ignore altogether the existence of political Islam, they will miss the implications of this. That could be just as disastrous as the dismissal of Mein Kampf by European analysts in the 1920s, who never took seriously the possibility that in it, Hitler had provided a precise articulation of his […]
Erdogan signs decree turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque
Russia and Greece, as well as the US, France, and others, have stated their opposition to Hagia Sophia becoming a mosque. That Erdogan would move ahead with this anyway shows that he is not worried about antagonizing either friend (Russia and ostensibly the US) or foe (Greece). He appears to be much more concerned to […]
Muslim cleric says “If the sword is not used, then this is not Islam”
How could Yusuf Selami Çakaroğlu, who has dedicated his life to understanding Islam properly, have missed what is crystal clear to so many non-Muslim politicians in the West, that Islam is a religion of peace? Yusuf Selami Çakaroğlu is likely now to run afoul of Pope Francis, who has made the risible claim that “authentic […]
Turkey: Erdogan taking advantage of pandemic to scapegoat Christians and deny them basic rights
While socialists and Antifa attack the history of the U.S. and the U.K. and ignore their development of societies that recognize and protect equal justice for all, Christians are being massacred and persecuted in majority-Muslim countries, with little international attention given to their plight. “Turkish authorities have started to simply assign land owned by a […]