The Financial Times Foreign Correspondent tweeted to me that the Turks changed through their judiciary the Hagyia Sofia to a Mosque. His meaning was that India and Turkey use the courts to validate political will of a leader. I pointed out the Indian Supreme Court is as respected as the British one.
I explained on the BBC why Turkey will not be admitted to the EU. And the news from Syria continues to sadden. I am reminded of a recent trip to Turkey…
“We’ll show them someday soon, the evidence of truth we are all over the world and to themselves, until light to them, that the Qur’aan is the truth. It not enough that thy Lord is witness over all things. “(Surah Fushshilat: 53).
Dear Prime Minister of Turkey,
I prayed to a Hindu God today in a Mosque – the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Not the new one, which was a tourist attraction before.
I prayed for the children of Syria, your neighbour, being murdered and slaughtered and exterminated and eradicated by your Assad. Prove me seditious for praying to another God on behalf of the children of your faith, because their God has deserted them.
I prayed, that your God, who my faith teaches me is my God too, listens to me in your Mosque, because He does not listen to His own children in their mosques – because surely as they are being murdered their parents pray for salvation – and none comes.
I prayed to Shiv, the destroyer, in your Mosque, that He may become death and the destroyer of worlds…the world of Assad.
(Forgive my impertinence, I confess, my God also fails to listen to the cries of His children in His mandirs.)
I prayed that your blood boils with anger and the wrath of the Lord flow through your veins and you strike down with a mighty vengeance those who harm your children. And should you need friends to stand by you, you can invoke Chapter V of the Nato Treaty, which makes an attack on one Nato member on Nato soil, an attack on all Nato members. Tonight I prayed you realise that Assad has declared war on not just his weak and innocent children, but on the United States of America, the strongest military power in history and that that divine providence gives you strength to act.
What relevance that I am Indian? More Muslims reside in these two secular countries, India and Turkey, than any other secular State – so it is that India and Turkey have a responsibility to the world’s Muslims to show them secular liberal democracies will be their defender. It is a duty and opportunity both countries have yet to grasp. China has more Muslims than Syria, yet China fails to protect Syrian Muslim children or its own. Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined – yet Russia too fails to protect Syrian Muslim children. So it is surely left to India and Turkey.
Prove me seditious for praying to another God on behalf of the children of your faith, because their God has deserted them. Prove me your bloodline from Turk to Ottomon.
Alpesh Patel
www.PoliticalAnimal.me
