Friday, December 17, 2004

Turkey’s day of destiny

"This week, with Turkey’s entry bid to the European Union likely but not certainly to be given final approval, we cannot help but ask, "What is Europe?"

"It is Christianity that has provided the common morality and common identity that made talk of union in the late 1940s a possibility despite the wars of past times. The poet T.S. Eliot broadcasting on the BBC to a defeated Germany in 1945 declared that "An individual European may not believe the Christian faith is true; and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will depend on the Christian heritage for its meaning."

"Through all the ages it was Islam that was, by and large, the tolerant religion that respected the ‘Peoples of the Book’, giving Christians and Jews when it ruled over them a great deal of autonomy. The bombing of synagogue in Istanbul last December was the first hostile act (probably carried out by Al Qaeda) against Jews in Turkey for 500 years.

The Christians for their part have rarely been tolerant, unable to come to terms with Islamic and Jewish minorities in their midst. The long persecution of the Jews in Europe which culminated in Hitler’s gas chambers was always pursued by Christians not Muslims."
Khaleej Times Online

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