Pope Francis Visits Iraq
photo taken by Skatebiker at English Wikipedia
Heading for the stars! In the description below, note the original names were in Arabic,
“The two bright stars are (left) Alpha Centauri and (right) Beta Centauri, both binaries. The faint red star in the center of the red circle, at right angles to both and south-east of Alpha is Proxima Centauri, intensely red, smaller in size, weaker in brightness and a distant third element in a triple star system with the main close pair forming Alpha Centauri.
“α Centauri (Latinised to Alpha Centauri) is the system's designation given by Johann Bayer in 1603. It bears the traditional name Rigil Kentaurus, which is a Latinisation of the Arabic name رِجْل القِنْطورُس Rijl al-Qinṭūrus, meaning 'the Foot of the Centaur'. The name is frequently abbreviated to Rigil Kent or even Rigil, though the latter name is better known for Beta Orionis (Rigel).
From Wikipedia article on Alpha Centauri
The recent newspaper articles about Pope Francis visiting Iraq were of a story I was following. When he sat down with the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, (ٱلنَّجَف) now that was newsworthy.
photo by Office of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
“First, Pope Francis showed up at the modest residence of Iraq’s most reclusive, and powerful, Shiite religious cleric for a delicate and painstakingly negotiated summit. Hours later, he presided over a stage crowded with religious leaders on the windswept Plain of Ur, a vast and, now arid, expanse where the faithful believe God revealed himself to the Prophet Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.
“In settings both intimate and theatrical, in gestures both concrete and symbolic, Pope Francis on Saturday sought to protect his persecuted flock by forging closer bonds between the Roman Catholic Church and the Muslim world, a mission that is a central theme of his papacy and of his historic trip to Iraq.
“By meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf, Francis threaded a political needle, seeking an alliance with an extraordinarily influential Shiite cleric who, unlike his Iranian counterparts, believes that religion should not govern the state.”
from NY Times article, Pope Meets With Iraqi Cleric in Appeal for Solidarity Among Faiths by Jason Horowitz and Jane Arraf
Rolling back ten centuries to the 1100s, popes were cursing Muslim infidels and whipping up their European cohorts to go on crusade. By the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire was eating whole chunks of Eastern Europe any time the Sultan chose to. Which was causing alarm in the Vatican–where could they stash the gold chalices?
Wee tykes in the English speaking West were preached at that the Crusades were sent by the Church to smite the enemies of God—along with fairy tales of King Richard the Lionhearted. There was even a Children’s Crusade–which didn’t turn out so well–although Pope Innocent III is said to have told them, ‘ya’ll go home, you hear?’
The man needed glasses for an astigmatism, but otherwise a great portrait! Go dude; we’ll be right behind you!
Fresco of Innocent III—image from an unknown source
But when bin Laden declared his own, modern version to rid the infidels from the califate–mostly sand and oil–by flying jets into New York City, the term had gone viral into the age of Twitter and Facebook, aptly, given bin Laden’s confused theology. Obama’s book, A Promised Land, closes with bin Laden being taken out. One more act in a long running morality play. With his usual discretion, Obama doesn’t linger on the bloody details, and he doesn’t wave the flag. He does meet with the Special Forces team who dispatched bin Laden to the land of forty virgins.
What the hell would you do with forty virgins? I’m not sure that would be heaven–I like women who know what they’re doing.
It wasn’t so long ago that American troops had traveled to Najaf in armored convoys, and only when necessary. So Pope Francis has balls–science tells us even popes have them. And al-Sistani–you don’t hear too much about him in the news, but during the days of Iraqi rage against the American troops occupying the country, he stood apart from the “Death to Americans” crowd; still he demanded they leave.
The Christian-Muslim war is a conflict born of power—not the spiritual kind—going on for a millennium and probably won’t be tamed by this single visit. But it’s a milestone. Which doesn’t explain why something as fundamental to human culture as religion has produced such a trail of pain and misery. Akin to what’s said about diplomacy, religious disputes seems to be warfare by other means.
History is a wicked teacher and takes very few prisoners.
God’s Shadow by Alan Mikhail is a historian’s speculation on how the conflict between Catholic popes, kings, queens and so forth against Ottoman and Mamluk sultans, emirs, etc. led to the ‘discovery of the New World,’ even if the American First People knew it had been there all along. Historic speculation mainly because no one alive in the 15th Century has been interviewed on Oprah of late.
Oprah’s latest talk with royalty didn’t turn out too well for Queen Elizabeth, I hear tell. God bless, but that woman does endure.
So consider the setting in 1492: Rome had fallen to the Goths a long time before—Germans looking for a warmer clime—and then Constantinople was overwhelmed (collapsing the time frame a smidgen) by Muslim invaders led by Sultan Selim’s grandfather.[1] The latter conquest had been preceded by Muslim invasions boiling across the far side of the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. In Selim’s life, the Ottomans had established a foothold (boot hold?) in Italy and were nudging and nibbling north toward Venice along the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea. Sell the children if you must, but save the Papal china..
[1] “May 29, 1453, Turkish invaders captured the city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. The fall of the city was a significant turning point in history, marking the end of more than 1,000 years of Christian rule and the rise of the Islamic Ottoman Empire.” From Encyclopedia.com
Those were the days. When men were men and the sheep ran scared.
In his book, Alan Mikhail doesn’t come across as a fan of the Church of Rome–least not the earlier one. What I wasn’t taught by the nuns was the full back story. Here were Italian politicians pretending to be clerics–or vice versa–urging their followers by bribe and lecture to go kill or enslave heathens. Jerusalem was occupied! The Holy Land! Were the prelates all working for Standard Oil?
The bigger problem being the price of silk and other exotics from China, with the known trade routes to the Orient via the Black Sea passing a succession of Muslim countries all exacting tributes, taxes or bribes—depending on which side of the Bosporus you lived on. In those days, the Ottoman Turks tolerated the Greek traders who maintained outposts along the way.
And the Ottoman Emperors liked their harems full of nubile slave girls. Not at all like the popes who took whoever they could lay their hands on, girls, boys, whatever titillated their, er, fancy. I suspect Jesus just became disgusted with the project and left town.
Pope Francis is the first Roman Catholic pontiff to visit Iraq. One has to respect that. Not like he’s going to win big points on Twitter. Not so many Christians left in Iraq since Issis–before them the Shiite radicals–and before them Hussain’s Sunni henchmen… What were the pope’s marketing consultants thinking? I kid Francis–he’s the best we’ve seen in some time.
Alan Mikhail makes the claim that a large part of the split between Sunni and Shiite came in the struggles between the Ottoman (Sunni), the Safavid (Iranian Shiite) and Mamluk Empires (Sunni). Muslim on Muslim—like Martin Luther against the Papacy. How many lessers—poor peasants—got in the way of either?
Latter day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordon and Israel lay in the Safavid lands between the Ottoman and Mamluk Empires. Following World War I, the British, French and Greek governments–with Woodrow Wilson’s support–carved chunks of the Ottoman Empire to create those countries. Oh what a magnificent job those Enlightenment scions did.
And we don’t know why the Middle East hates the West?
Unlike the Spanish in the New World, the Ottomans—in the countries they conquered—sought to maintain previous governing structures and societies instead of imposing their own–and early example of ‘live and let live’ ensured a regular tribute even if it irritated the European proto-capitalists.
Before Selim rose to Emperor–on the convenient death of his father and two half brothers–the Ottomans had been a minority in their own country, with Arabs, Christians and Jews all in the hot mix. Not until Selim conquered the Near East and Egypt did the Ottoman Empire become a Muslim majority state.
The Ottoman much feared Janissaries were composed in large part of Christians enslaved as boys and raised to be well-cared for warriors. The Mamluk sultans did much the same. Ottoman Emperors took their wives from slave families, many of whom were Christian. Thus their sons were as much of one culture as another. If Finding Your Roots wants to tackle a conundrum, I can contribute to PBS.
The Ottomans held a practice distinctly different from the Spanish—who chased the Jews and Moors from Spain with extermination in mind, then went about enslaving Africans and the Native Americans who couldn’t be saved for the Lord. A Jewish diaspora settled in an arc around the Mediterranean Sea away from Christian Spain and Italy, holding more in common with Muslims than Christians. God bless Queen Isabella!
Xenophobia hasn’t ever kept Europeans from spreading their genes as it were.
I was puzzled, living in Miami, to discover the Cuban caste system still alive in the exile community where darker pigmentation made clear the descendants of Africans and Native Americans. Cuba was a large port of entry for Africans brought over in chains.
It’s said of African Americans that a sizable amount of European blood flows in their veins–not the result of willing partnerships.
When Isis fighters were grabbing women as booty (in all senses of the word) in Iraq and Syria, they were following a well-trod tradition in the history of that part of the world–of the broader world to be more accurate, thus the Han Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs continues.
You can see why the Queen of England might feel a skosh uncomfortable with a grandchild marrying a mulatto, eh? Not to mention a twinge, a tad, of guilt for what her predecessors did back in the slave trade. Apparently worse than even marrying an American like Winston Churchill’s father had done.
The original English colonies were founded in part by people fleeing religious persecution in Europe: Puritans, Pilgrims, Calvinists, Quakers–and Catholics. In elementary school, the nuns, for obvious reasons, made a point of religious freedom being foundational to the United States.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Amendment 1 to the U.S. Constitution.
Worth noting that the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani believes in the separation of church and state.
The First Amendment was put first for a reason. After all the sad human history, leaders of that era felt if they couldn’t settle the arguments, they might at least temper them. The founders of Colonial Massachusetts had been of a different mind–they insisted on a theocracy, if you recall your Scarlett Letter.
And returning to the papacy, at one time there were the Papal States in Italy, god bless.
“The Papal States… were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until… 1870. At their zenith, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio (which includes Rome), Marche, Umbria and Romagna, and portions of Emilia. These holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy.”
From Wikipedia article on the Papal States
What created the conditions enabling the United States to rise to its present status–and wealth? Fortune was something the founding fathers believed was in their favor. The fact they understood enough about British law to organize their own governing principals, then follow through with enough consistency to make it to the present day–we owe those people respect, white, black, native and immigrant. Not nomination to full sainthood, just respect.
Were slaves the reason the nation succeeded? Cheap labor always helps, enforced or not.
Ask a son of immigrants, did my father choose to go down into a Pennsylvania mine with a lamp light risking a methane explosion looking for coal? Would he, given a choice, choose not to? Unlike a recent President’s belief, I seriously doubt West Virginia coal miners think it’s a wonderful way to make a living. Trump’s father never died from working a Pennsylvania coal mine.
In reply to the question put to Benjamin Franklin: “What have we got, a republic or monarchy?” his famous riposte was, “We have a republic, if we can keep it.” The person questioning Franklin was a woman, for goodness sake:
“… Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent society figure and the wife of Philadelphia Mayor Samuel Powel. Like Franklin, Powel was known for her wit and knowledge. She often hosted convention delegates and their wives in her home, and later became a close friend of George and Martha Washington, who spent most of Washington’s presidency in the temporary capital of Philadelphia.”
from the WP article, ‘A republic, if you can keep it’: Did Ben Franklin really say Impeachment Day’s favorite quote? by Gillian Brockell
We also owe those who stood against secession in the Civil War, without whom the country would have fallen apart. Was Lincoln a saint? From Illinois–you’re kidding, right? Was Sherman? Southerners reviled both of them for a long time and too many still do. One pursued the war, and the other chased Joseph Johnson from Atlanta then took his army on a tour of Georgia and South Carolina. After the war, Sherman was ordered west to ‘pacify the pesky red men,’ a man whose middle name was for a Native American of stature, Tecumseh.
Roosevelt was persuaded to intern Japanese American citizens in internment camps, but left the German descendants to keep on keeping on. Yet Roosevelt’s Social Security kept my mother’s small clan in clothes and food. So I salute the dude. Roosevelt had privilege and polio both. Did his fight to walk help him see poor folk for humans?
So the First Amendment may seem like a minor evolution, but given what had come before, it was a vast improvement. As a lady Texan once said:
“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her concurring opinion in McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005).
Born on a ranch in Texas, she was the first woman on the Supreme Court, nominated by Ronald Reagan. Not so long ago, being a Republican didn’t mean being batshit crazy, though I digress.
In the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi, I first learned of the Mamluk Empire. In the same museum, shooting through glass, I was able to capture what an American sculptress captured in stone.
Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum—photo by William E Evans, © 2018
“For the Louvre Abu Dhabi
Jenny Holzer USA, New York, 2017
“Limestone relief of three pages with Arabic script from a manuscript of the Muqaddimah by lbn Khat dun, a 14th century treatise on the writing of history. Commissioned by Louvre Abu Dhabi
“Jenny Holzer (USA, b. 1950) transformed three literary treasures into stone reliefs that reflect on the origins of civilization, the recording of history and the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange.
“The Muqaddimah is considered one of the first texts to lay methodical foundations for the study of history. Its author, Abd Al-Rahman lbn Khaldun (Tunis ia, 1332-Egypt, 1406), was one of the most eminent scholars of medieval Islam: historian, geographer and even sociologist before its time. He asks how we can understand the past while producing a lively picture of human intellectual, aesthetic and scientific achievements.
“Holzer rendered in stone three pages from a manuscript of the Muqaddimah held in the Atif Effendi Library in Istanbul, Turkey. In this selection, lbn Khaldun suggests that abstract thinking is the most elevated and noblest human activity, and that languages only exist to facilitate communication. The text includes a poem by the calligrapher lbn al-Bawwab, which lbn Khaldun considered to be an aesthetic model.”
from the plaque beside the glass in the Abu Dhabi Louvre
‘When we meet the intellectuals from Alpha Centuri–assuming the world’s tribes don’t go batshit crazy in the meantime–how can we explain to them all of humanity’s self-inflicted wounds? Survival of the fittest? Certainly not a deeper understanding of life. So my question to Pope Francis: does he believe in his creed or just accepts how we seem to roll?
I wish him well, this pope. I’d pray if I knew to whom to should address it. And were Francis ever to get around to asking for forgiveness for his predecessors, I’d be glad to nominate him for sainthood, red hat or blue.