CONQUEST VS. CONCESSION
by Raymond Ibrahim

National Review
December 5, 2006 Tuesday

Previous to Pope Benedict XVI’s November 30 visit to the Hagia Sophia
complex in Constantinople, Muslims and Turks variously expressed
apprehension and rage. Turkey’s independent paper Vatan put it thus:
"The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the
Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that
the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to
Muslims." A sign of the cross, apparently, would be interpreted as
a signal for a crusade.

Built in Constantinople in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia —
Greek for "Holy Wisdom" — was Christendom’s greatest and most
celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from
Arabs, Constantinople was finally sacked by Turks in the jihad of
1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, this millennium-old
church — as well as thousands of other churches in the then Byzantine
Empire — was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets
of Islam surrounding it in triumph. As part of Ataturk’s reforms
aimed at modernizing Turkey, the Hagia Sophia was secularized and
transformed into a museum in 1935.

In protestation of Benedict’s visit, a gang of Turks stormed and
occupied Hagia Sophia on November 22, exclaiming "Allahu Akbar!" and
warning "Pope! don’t make a mistake; don’t wear out our patience." On
the day of the pope’s visit, another throng of Islamists waved
banners saying "Pope get out of Turkey" while chanting "Aya Sofya
[Hagia Sophia] is Turkish and will remain Turkish." And of course,
al Qaeda in Iraq got in on the action by denouncing Benedict’s visit
in an Internet statement. One of the pope’s expressed purposes for
visiting Turkey was to promote inter-religious dialogue and denounce
violence in the name of God.

To the intolerance of Muslims, the West responds with tolerance.

Consider, for instance, the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The Muslim site,
annexed by Israel after its victory in the 1967 war, was not defaced by
the Jews or converted into a Jewish synagogue or temple — even though
the mosque is deliberately built atop the remains of the Temple Mount,
the most important site in Judaeo-Christian eschatology. Moreover,
since reclaiming the Temple Mount, Israel has granted Muslims control
over the complex (except during times of crises). And under Muslim
control, Christians and Jews are barred from freely worshipping there.

Despite such concessions, jihad has been declared on Israel, while
Muslims worldwide are simultaneously demanding "justice" from the
international community. It is an illustration of the privileged
status many Muslims have come to expect for themselves in the
international arena: When Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories,
such as Constantinople — through fire and steel, with all the
attendant human suffering and misery — those whom they conquer are
not to expect any "apologies," let alone political or territorial
concessions. Indeed, Turkey has yet even to recognize its genocide
against its Armenian population in 1917. Yet Muslims constantly
demand and expect apologies and concessions from the West — and they
receive them.

When Islamists wage jihad — past, present, and future — conquering
and consolidating non-Muslim territories and centers in the name of
Islam, never once considering ceding them back to their rightful
owners, they demonstrate that they live by the age-old adage that
"might makes right." Yet, if we live in a world where the strong
rule and the weak submit, why is it that whenever Muslim regions are
conquered, such as in the case of Palestine, the same Islamists who
would never concede one inch of Islam’s conquests resort to the United
Nations demanding "justice," "restitutions," "rights," and so forth?

What such actions lack in intellectual consistency, they make up
for in practical success. Muslims cannot be blamed for expecting
special treatment for themselves, as well as believing that jihad is
righteous and decreed by the Almighty. The West constantly goes out
of its way to confirm such convictions. By incessantly criticizing
itself, apologizing, and offering concessions — things the Islamic
world has yet to do — the West reaffirms that Islam has a privileged
status in the world.

It is obvious enough that some Muslims wish to wage eternal jihad until
Islam dominates the globe. But why should those who divide the world
into two warring camps — Islam and Infidelity, or, in Islamic terms,
the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War — expect any concessions from
the international community? It is impossible to meet with toleration
the demands of those who reject the principles upon which the Western
value of tolerance is based; attempts at doing so are nothing more
than the appeasement of aggressors.

When the pope visited Hagia Sophia, he refrained from any gesture
that could be misconstrued as Christian worship. And therein is the
final lesson. Muslim zeal for their holy places and lands is not
intrinsically blameworthy. Indeed, there’s something to be said about
being passionate about and protective of one’s faith and heritage.

Here the secular West — Christendom’s prodigal son and true usurper
— can learn something from Islam. For whenever and wherever the West
concedes — ideologically, politically, and especially spiritually
— Islam will be sure to conquer. Where might does not make right,
zeal apparently does.

— Raymond Ibrahim is editor of the upcoming The Al Qaeda Reader.