CONSTANTINOPLE FALLS…AGAIN

The whole world is aware of the controversy surrounding the proposal to build a Muslim mosque on the Ground Zero site that sustained the attack of September 11, 2001. Suddenly people who despise the idea of religion in public life and who become squeamish at the thought of public prayer are becoming misty eyed in their support for the religious freedom of the Muslims whose motives for building this mosque are rightly being questioned. Strangely, the clash of three civilizations is repeating itself at the site of Islam’s expansionist rebirth. Surely you recognize the conflict of Islam and Western Christianity as it boils over into the streets of New York. But what of Eastern Christianity? It too has a role in this controversy just as surely as it was at the center of the storm that resulted in the Medieval Crusades, and once again we see how little man has “evolved” in the 915 years since the Western Christian powers came to the aid of the Christian East. It looks disturbingly as much like 1095 as it does 2010.