There were reports in the press this week that two men who have been arrested in relation to terrorism charges in Australia were advised by their religious mentor that it was the duty of all obedient Muslim men to practise jihad. While this is nothing new, I was drawn to the next part of the story which was that the Muslim cleric said the reason that it was their duty to practise jihad was as retaliation for the taking of lands that were formerly Muslim such as Spain.
… some Greek Australian university students were carrying the Byzantium’s flag, strutting peacock like their Greek ‘supremacy’, making all sorts of foolish statements about their stake to this past empirical identity.
I couldn’t help chuckling at this. After all, the Muslims were defeated in Spain in the 14th Century. That was over 600 years. That is a lot of years. But then, as I was relaying this story to a friend with a Greek background, he said:
“Oh that’s not that long ago. Don’t forget Constantinople, was Greek until 1452.”
Don’t forget. That Constantinople was Greek. Until our parents’ generation this was something that was ingrained into the Greek psyche. There was still some imperial longing for the lost glory of the Byzantine Empire. Some dream or hope that perhaps Constantinople, Istanbul, would be returned or that we would get it back.
How this was to happen was never really clear given that modern day Turkey has a population of 74 million to our 11 million and if we were ever foolish enough to mount a war, we would most likely be decimated. And then who would fight this war? None of the Greek men I know are particularly interested in soldiering or going to war. Many of them are in fact opposed to it.
Ten years ago, I attended an Independence Day function where some Greek Australian university students were carrying the Byzantium flag, strutting peacock like their Greek supremacy, making all sorts of foolish statements about their stake to this past empirical identity.
“So are you suggesting that there’s a legitimate reason for this jihad?” I asked my friend. “That the taking of Spain has to be revenged?”
“They are two completely different issues. Spain wasn’t always Muslim, but Constantinople was part of the Greek and Roman world for centuries. There’s a bit more justification for reclaiming Constantinople.”
Intellectually I think this is all a bit ridiculous. But in all honesty, I am not totally divorced from having some feelings about this issue. Several years back I read William Runciman’s book The Fall of Constantinople. At the end of the book, the author says the fall of the city signalled the end of the Greek world, as we know it, for good.
Greece, the nation state, came again, he wrote, but it would never capture what Constantinople stood for and entailed. It was a turning point in the history of the West. I remember being moved at this and surprised that I was moved.
However, having feelings of sadness of what has passed and what that meant for Western history and the Greek identity does not mean that I harbour ideas of claiming Constantinople again. I certainly wouldn’t encourage my son to fight a war for it. The loss of territories five, six, seven hundred years ago just doesn’t grab me as a good enough reason.
The fact that other young men can be talked into waging war for that reason alone signals that something is seriously missing from their life.
That they feel that this is the most important contribution that they can make to their community, to their people means that little else is going on for them, that they must be profoundly disenfranchised from this society.
If that’s the case, that’s all of our problem.