A storm in a glass of water

A small Turkish newspaper has discovered - quite possibly with the provokative aid of some flemish nationalists - that the 17th century pulpit in the church of Our Lady in Dendermonde depicts a "Mahomet" and a "Koran" being crushed by two angels.

That is front page news : the paper demands that this scandalous infamy be ended at once.

See : http://www.standaard.be/Artikel/Detail.aspx?artikelId=3P1RT2M8.

Yeah, right. Some authorities already responded with some hypocrite, but politically correct hogwash - it is not Mahomet, but a Persian, and everyone knows that Mahomet was an Arab ; the book may not have been the Koran etc ...

But they are forgetting, probably never have known, that Islam was the main threat to Europe in the 17th century. Remember the siege of Vienna ? Remember how christians are treated in Turkey ? And remember what the Turks did to the magnificent Byzantine mosaics they discovered when they conquered Constantinopel in the fifteenth century ?

Are we going to rewrite our whole history so as not to step on some sensitive toes ? Are we going to let foreigners, and very weird strangers at that, tell us what we can consider part of our cultural heritage or not ?

In the context of such inanity, provoked or not, there can be but one answer : piss off !!

**

For one moment, I thought it was April first.
Then I remembered that journalists cannot always be trusted, and that the second version of the facts often is very different from the first.
But this looks so in character that I have been less that careful and spit out my thoughts without waiting for further confirmation.

Turkey in the EU? Not in my lifetime, not if I can help it (which I can't) !