Martin Henry
THIS PAGE, last Friday [Feb 10], carried a most interesting joint message from Spain and Turkey. The message, 'A call for respect and calm', was released in light of the rolling international protests by Muslims over the publication of cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in the 'Christian' West in the name of free speech.
What, to me, was most striking about this message was its revelation of the launching last year of the Alliance of Civilisations Project over which Spain and Turkey are presiding.
No two countries could be more representative of the historical square-off between Christianity and Islam. At the height of Spanish imperial power, the Spanish monarch and ruler of much of the rest of Europe, Charles V, also held the title of Holy Roman emperor which made him the chief defender of the Roman Catholic faith and punisher of heretics.
CENTRE OF OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Turkey was the centre of the Islamic Ottoman Empire which rose to power at the very end of the 13th century and lasted until the end of World War I. The Ottoman Empire, sharing hostile borders with the Holy Roman Empire, was a torment to Christian Europe. The Muslim Middle East had earlier suffered the harassment of the seven crusades between 1096 and 1254.
Spain had its own more direct encounter with Islam. In 711 AD, the Muslim Moors invaded Spain from North Africa. They were only finally pushed off the Iberian peninsula in 1492, the same year that Christopher Columbus first sailed West.
As the Spanish/Turkish message for inter-cultural [politically correct code for inter-faith] peaceful co-existence notes, "historically, Spain and Turkey have been at crossroads between East and West" [code, again, for Islam and Christianity].
CONSTANTINOPLE
The Ottoman Turks captured Christian Constantinople in Turkey in 1453 using artillery bombardment by heavy cannon, the first in the history of warfare. Constantinople had been established by Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, and named after him, some 1,100 years before and up until then the city had proven impregnable against all attackers. It had been the seat of both the Eastern Roman Empire, which had survived the defeat of the Western Empire in 476, and of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Now it was the capital of the powerful Islamic Ottoman Empire.
Several interpreters of Bible prophecy have seen the rise and power of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, including its pioneering use of firearms in war, predicted in the Books of Revelation and Daniel. One interpreter, the American Josiah Litch, using the year for a day in prophecy principle, confidently predicted in 1838 that the supremacy of the Ottoman Empire must end on August 11, 1840.
PERPETUAL WAR
Litch's calculation ran along the following lines: The Ottoman Empire, named after its founding king Othman and uniting several Muslim states, launched its first attack against the Eastern Empire on July 27, 1299 and for the next five prophetic months [150 years, at 30 days to the month] engaged in almost perpetual war against the Eastern Empire without conquering it.
But in 1449, exactly 150 years after the first attack, a new Christian emperor in the considerably weakened empire would only accept the throne after seeking and obtaining the agreement of the Ottoman ruler. In effect, the independence of the Eastern 'Christian' Empire had been surrendered by diplomacy, not war.
OTTOMAN SUPREMACY
Ottoman supremacy was to last for a year, a month, a day and an hour [or for 391 years and 15 days]. Litch argued that the end of Ottoman supremacy would be as its beginning: by a diplomatic surrender of authority, and the date would be on August 11, 1840.
In 1840 England, Austria, Russia and Prussia, the great powers of the 'Christian West' of the day, intervened in a long-running conflict between what remained of the Islamic Ottoman Empire and Egypt which was a former subject state. These powers assumed control of resolving the conflict, issuing diplomatic ultimatums and the subtle threat to back compliance with force. They did so precisely on August 11, 1840, effectively terminating the autonomy of the Ottoman Empire.
Spain and Turkey, with their conflicting faith-culture roots, have become secular parliamentary democracies and participants in the current EU phase of the ancient project, with its many failures, for a united Europe. The prophets, in all their varied assortment and reliability, have spoken. "Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good."
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
