Benedict XVI between Constantinople and Istanbul

Wednesday, November 29, 2006
American Chronicle
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, and Islamologist, Historian, Political Scientist, Dr. Megalommatis, 49, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages. He refuted Greek nationalism, supported Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, and rejected the Greco-Romano-centric version of History. He pleaded for the European History by J. B. Duroselle, and defended the rights of the Turkish, Pomak, Macedonian, Vlachian, Arvanitic, Latin Catholic, and Jewish minorities of Greece, asking for the international recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Born Christian Orthodox, he adhered to Islam when 36, devoted to ideas of Muhyieldin Ibn al Arabi. Greek citizen of Turkish origin, Prof. Megalommatis studied and/or worked in Turkey, Greece, France, England, Belgium, Germany, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Russia, and carried out research trips throughout the Middle East, Northeastern Africa and Central Asia. His career extended from Research & Education, Journalism, Publications, Photography, and Translation to Website Development, Human Rights Advocacy, Marketing, Sales & Brokerage. He traveled in more than 80 countries in 5 continents. He defends the Right of Aramaeans, Oromos, Berbers, and Beja to National Independence, demands international recognition for Somaliland, and denounces Islamic Terrorism.

When, within a few hours, the Pope will land in Istanbul, he will find himself for a few days outside Time; the evenly balanced gravitation of Istanbul and Constantinople will place the Pontiff at a uniquely equidistant point between Turkey and Europe, Christianity and Islam, and Orient and Occident. Few moments counted as much as this in the World History.

Pontiff’s visit is the Terminus Post Quem

Conflicting interests and disastrous policies cultivated and pursued for hundreds of years by all parts involved, in the past and the present, have brought the world at the brink of the abyss. Few realize how close the Mankind has reached to the point of collapse. From ecological disasters caused because of the Industrial revolution, the emergence of a besotted society of consumers, and the repeated arms races of all sorts to cultural and educational alienation of hundreds of millions of people, the Mankind deviated to the utmost materialism, extreme oppression, and absolute disregard of the Other, let alone the other’s sensitivities.

Suddenly, the world has become too small to accommodate an ill-conceived European unification, an American presence in five continents, two expansionist economies like those of China and India that are based on extreme and at times inhuman exploitation of masses without alleviating poverty and misery, plus unjustified and unsolicited anti-Americanism that emanates from uncultured and thuggish dictators like the Venezuelan clown, and last but not least, the hysteria and the hatred directed by the pseudo-Islamic sheikhs and their millions of followers against all the rest.

And all interconnected and interrelated to an extent that you almost cannot mend this without deteriorating that. What to do, and where to start?

Benedict XVI does not represent the Occident!

To some this statement may sound odd and erroneous, but brief thought is enough to drive us to the conclusion that Benedict XVI does not and by definition cannot represent the gay couples legalized in Spain or the accepted adoption of children by them. Furthermore, Benedict XVI does not represent abortion, pedophilia, and the ceaselessly increasing consumption of drugs by Western youth. No one can disagree on this; Benedict XVI and the Roman Catholic Church do not represent the advanced materialism that invaded the Western societies, taking all possible forms of existentialism of the Left, Marxism, anarchism and/or nihilism. Even more so, Benedict XVI does not represent secretive groups, plots and conspiracies, racism and anti-Semitism, all the ideological contaminations that brought wars and disaster to Europe and the world.

Benedict XVI represents, is the only Authority in the West to represent, Justice, Equity, Humanism, dedication to Spiritual Concern, and a certain Hope for many.

Benedict XVI represents Jesus, a person highly revered by Muslims, and adored by Christians. There is no divergence between the Christian and the Muslim sources about, and references to, Jesus as regards his Foremost Authority in terms of Justice and Equity.

Representing Jesus’ Legacy – or at least part of it as Muslims claim that too –, Benedict XVI can truly offer great service to the confused Mankind of our times, by sticking to the most representative Criterion for Jesus’ Concept of Justice; he must make it his, apply it everywhere, and support the approach:

Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.

Representing this sentence, Luke, 20:23-25, bringing forth Justice in the relations among states and nations, religions and ideologies, Benedict XVI has a chance to be heard and accepted by a significant number of Muslims, who know that the Right and the Just is not the monopoly of those who pray – like the Pharisees of Jesus’ times – five times per day, but forget to endure self-criticism and rejection of egoism.

Benedict XVI to vigorously support Turkey’s adhesion to the European Union

The Pontiff is a Head of State; and as such, he is able to understand that Vatican’s policies are not situated at the miserable level of parochial politicians like the former French Prime Minister Alain Juppé and other lower and lewder fellows of the French Right.

The Pontiff cannot tolerate perverse political interests that would jeopardize the entire relationship of Christianity with Islam. As an institution, millennia long Vatican cannot be compared with, and therefore cannot allow policies corresponding to those of, the French Fifth Republic (est. 1958). The horizon of the universal Christian – Muslim relations cannot be damaged at the hands of people like Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy, and their likes. Looking at the centuries ahead, Benedict XVI, although German of origin, cannot take into consideration the current pocket interests of German employees and workers.

What could all this miserable microcosm of the European politicians say, when Benedict XVI stipulates that Ephesus, Smyrna and Thyateira are as European as Stockholm and Dublin?

What would they answer to the Pontiff stating that Basil of Caesarea is as European, although Cappadocian, as Mohyieldin Ibn Al Arabi of Andalusia?

One sentence of the Pontiff can avert a most perilous blockage of the Turkish candidature at the hands of the Southern Cypriot president who is known for his long dated hatred of Catholic Christianity.

Benedict XVI to adamantly denounce colonial practices

The possibility to understand is one of the most significant privileges of the human being. Certainly the Pope understands that the masses gathered at the Aghia Sophia Museum two days ago do not hate him personally; they reject the injustices and the crimes carried out by the French and the British in Algeria, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia.

By denouncing practices that were never accepted by Vatican, the Pontiff will demonstrate to hundreds of millions of Muslims that he agrees with them in the Search of Justice, namely that he indirectly condemns the murderous work of the colonials, and their illegal, unjust, and ultimately antihuman interference in the lands of the Ottoman Empire.

The Pontiff understands very well that the manipulation of Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire by the French, the Russians, and the British, who mercilessly and cynically abandoned these populations, after they had first long incited them against their own country, was a disreputable work for which the absolute condemnation is badly and urgently needed.

France rather than Turkey stands accused for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians of Van and of Aramaeans of Julamerg (the Kutshanus Patriarchate) and Tur Abdin. What does it mean except dishonesty and duplicity that France is vociferous when it comes to Armenians killed in WW I, but keeps silent about the parallel extermination of hundreds of thousands of Aramaeans?

The act of the genocide speaks for itself without resorting to justifications.

Either all will be denounced or we all will forget it all. The cynical, unethical and disreputable attitude of thugs like the racist Kotcharian tyrant of Armenia, and his French presidential friend, must be castigated in Jesus language and terms.?

Even the longest trip starts with a first step.

Only then, the Muslims will be able to repent for their mistakes, regret for the oppression of millions of Aramaeans and Copts at their hands, be apologetic for their anti-Semitism, and finally, commonly with the Roman Pontiff, and all those who seek Justice and Truth on Earth, contribute to shaping a future faraway from the contamination of the anticlerical French conspirators.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.