Holy War Rooms

There has been considerable interest recently in the issues raised by Turkey's application to join the European Union, and one remark by now PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan which caused him trouble some years back has returned to haunt him. Erdogan was barred by Turkish courts from seeking higher office back in 1997 after reciting these lines penned by secular nationalist poet Ziya Gokalp.

The mosques are our barracks,
the domes our helmets…

It's a striking image, transplanted into the dreams and nightmares of "is it a Christian club?" Europe.

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More than one possible counterpoint suggested itself to match this quote, one being the Um al-Qura mosque in Baghdad, described thus by Anthony Shadid in his December 20th Washington Post piece, In Iraq: One Religion, Two Realities:

For years, the mosque was perhaps most distinctive for its kitschy design: In a memorial to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, four of its minarets were built to resemble Kalashnikovs, four others Scud missiles. Its old name, the Mother of All Battles, is still inscribed over the entrance of the mosque, built of sand-colored concrete and blue tile, its dome adorned with the phrase, "There is no god but God."

I also pondered a skyline view of Istanbul, with its minarets...

For its echoing ironies, however, I finally chose the image of US Marines in Khulafa Rashid Mosque, Fallujah.

Our minarets?