Saints and Miracles, Ottomans and Turks

'Pope canonises 800 martyrs killed by Turks.' It's an eye-catching headline that appeared in the Australian ABC news on May 14. Well, first let's be clear that Pope Francis did not, in fact, pound said martyrs bodies into dust with papal artillery. The process of canonisation refers to an arcane medieval process by which human beings are said to be elevated to sainthood[1].

Well and good – but I’m more concerned about what those dreadful Turks have been up to. More slaughtering and massacring, it seems. When did this heinous crime take place? Not all that recently, it turns out. If you are a devout Catholic and in the habit of commemorating such events, you'll be able to polish up your rosary beads prior to the 533^rd anniversary on August 11 this year.

The clan of Osman, one of many Muslim Turkish principalities dotted around Anatolia, began its rise to prominence towards the end of the 13^th century. 1299 is generally accepted as the year they achieved supremacy over their contemporaries, emerging as an entity which rapidly grew into a major empire. By the early 15^th century Ottoman armies had made major inroads into continental Europe, and in 1453, their young Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople, capital city of the 1000-year-old Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Now, in case you're wondering what right those Turkish Ottomans had to be in Italy murdering Christians, you have to realise that Mehmet had a reputation to uphold. He had earned the sobriquet of ‘The Conqueror’ after that business with Constantinople - and anyway, conquering is what empires do; it's in the definition. Ask the British, the Russians, or a nearby historian. Sultan Mehmet's target was Rome. Having conquered the Eastern Roman Empire (in fact the only one left since the Western one had fallen to barbarians in the 5^th century), Mehmet felt he had a right to add ‘Emperor of the Romans’ to his royal CV. Nevertheless, it would clearly increase the credibility of his claim if he also added the actual city of Rome to his dominions.

Evidently the Romans themselves felt the imminence of the threat. When a largish Ottoman force landed at Otranto in July 1480 and began a siege of the city, plans were made for evacuation. Now one thing we should understand at this point is that besieging other people's cities was perfectly normal practice in those days. A Christian crusading army from Western Europe had done it to Constantinople in the 13^th century before that imperial capital ever fell into Muslim hands. Their successful siege was followed by three days of raping, murdering and pillaging, which is another important concept to grasp. Capturing a walled city by siege without the cooperation of the inhabitants was often a long drawn-out process. The usual procedure was to give the local citizens a chance to surrender and be let off lightly. If they chose to resist, however, the consequences were pretty much as you would expect. The victorious general would reward the efforts of his troops with license to let off steam and seize what booty they could, in the ancient and modern senses of the word. Members of the losing side would expect to be killed or sold into slavery as a matter of course. If the Ottoman general Gedik Ahmet Pasha gave the Otrantan males the option of saving their bacon by converting to Islam, he was probably being more generous than most of his contemporaries.  Let's not forget that, a decade or so after this event, thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the attentions of the Inquisition in Spain took sanctuary in Ottoman domains on the invitation of Sultan Mehmet's son and successor, Bayezid II.

Still, the first casualty of war is truth, they say. In the ongoing civil war in Syria, the first, I am informed, to be waged in the age of social media, we are seeing the use of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube for propaganda purposes. It is in the interests of both sides to demonise the other, and, as we are reminded by a certain well-publicised incident involving a rebel leader, an enemy corpse, a knife and some internal organs, to intimidate the opposition with demonstrations of their own ferocity.

It was definitely not in the interests of the Ottoman besiegers of Otranto to deal leniently with defenders who had put them to considerable trouble. On the other hand, it might well suit the Italian authorities to portray the invading foe as inhuman beasts. So, we are told, 813 men of Otranto, steadfastly refusing to accept the Prophet Mohammed into their lives, were duly beheaded. Incidentally, you might want to ask what the total population of the city was at the time. Estimates range from 8,000 to 20,000. Even if you run with the lower figure, that raises the question of what happened to the other 7,187 citizens Did they convert to save their own lives?

Leaving that question aside, thereafter, by some process not entirely clear, the bones of some of those steadfast gentlemen were installed in the cathedral of Otranto and others in the church of Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples, where, apparently, they can be seen today, providing a gruesome reminder of, exactly what, I'm not sure - the price of too strict adherence to the Catholic faith? The monstrous inhumanity of Muslims? A general memento mori warning against too great an attachment to things of the world?

Saintly remains in Otranto Cathedral

Whatever, it's an impressive display, I'm sure you'll agree. Apparently it provided a focal point for the prayers of a nun, sister Francesca Levote who, diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, was miraculously cured by the intercession of one (or maybe all) of the 813 Otranto martyrs. Hard for the Almighty to turn down a deputation like that, I guess. Certainly that was the feeling of the Holy Vatican Fathers, who decided to count the nun's cure as one of the two miracles required for canonisation. In the absence of a second one, it was apparently further decided that that requirement could be waived in view of the fact that the Blessed martyrs had been killed 'in hatred of the faith'. Once again, it's not easy to know how church authorities established the exact motivation of the Ottoman victors back in 1480, but perhaps they too had divine assistance.

Anyway, it seemed the Otranto 800 were headed at last for sainthood and glory - and not before time, you might think, given that the first step, beatification[2], had actually been taken way back in 1771. In retrospect, it's a pity that Pope Clement IV couldn't have moved things along a little faster at the time, since he probably didn't have to contend with the level of scientific and news media scrutiny that bedevils miracle-workers in the 21st century. Now, apparently, an Italian doctor by the name of Salvatore Toma has challenged the efficacy of the nun's miraculous cure with a counter claim that he had been treating Sister Francesca with a special mix of chemo and radiotherapy, and was attributing her recovery to his own less divine ministrations.

Well, I have to say, I'm with Hamlet on this one. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Salvatore, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ The Roman Catholic Church has a long tradition of working miracles, and I wouldn't want to get into debating the mysteries of divine intervention with their new Pope or any lesser cardinals. As Tristram Shandy remarks in the novel by Lawrence Sterne, ‘So long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him – pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?’

What does disturb me a little, however, is a feeling that, despite Papal protestations to the contrary, there’s a bit of an anti-Islamic thing going on here. Coming at a time when news media in Western societies seem only too ready to stir up the flames of Islamophobia, it ill-behoves leaders of a religion of peace to fan hot coals. I hope it’s not a pre-meditated ploy to distract media attention from persistent accusations of sexual misconduct by priests, and high-level cover-ups.

On the other hand, maybe I’ve got it wrong. I read that Pope John Paul II and his successor Benedict have considerably simplified the procedure for beatification (more or less a guaranteed ticket to heaven). In fact, John Paul is said to have handed out more Papal passes than all his predecessors combined since 1590.  Maybe those guys know something we don’t. Is it possible they’ve been given a date for the Second Coming? Maybe they’re working on getting a bunch of Catholics into heaven early to avoid the rush when all those American Pentecostals get Raptured.

Incidentally, Osman, the second Ottoman Sultan, married a Greek Byzantine princess, making their son Murad I no more than half Turkish. He in turn fathered his successor with another Byzantine lady, making Bayezid I at least 75 percent Greek. This was pretty much standard procedure for Ottoman sultans, as was the appointment of non-Turks to the role of Grand Vizier, or chief minister, and other high military and civilian positions. To equate ‘Ottoman’ and ‘Turk’ is as much of a nonsense as identifying ‘English’ with ‘German’.

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[1] A person officially recognized, especially by canonization, as being entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on earth.

[2] Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name (intercession of saints). Beatification is the third of the four steps in the canonization process. A person who is beatified is in English given the title "Blessed".

What Happened to the Ottomans? - The ageing of empires

‘I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said, 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, in the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies . . .'

. . . all that remained, in the early 19^th century imagination of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, of an ancient, once mighty emperor, Ozymandias, who no doubt thought his empire would last forever. Perhaps Shelley had in mind the empire of which he himself was a subject, currently approaching the zenith of its power, and wished to remind its ruling elite, ever so subtly, that their time too would come, that a little humility might not go amiss.

But it is not generally in the nature of the mighty and powerful to be humble. Wealth and temporal power are mind-distorting drugs imparting to their possessors a sense of entitlement and immortality, endowing them with the arrogance to deny or defy the lessons of history.

The British Empire reached the limits of its global outreach in 1922, the cartographical red dye of its jurisdiction covering 34 million km², or twenty-five percent of the world's land area. It lived on for a further thirty years, perhaps, huffing and puffing geriatrically through increasingly insurmountable crises in India, Iran and Egypt, until finally forced to recognise that its place in the unsetting sun of God's grace and favour had been arrogated by the United States of America.

Out of curiosity, recently I went a-searching online for an answer to the question: ‘Which empire in the history of the world lasted longest?’ It's a surprisingly debatable question, and not only because of the difficulty in defining what an empire is, though that in itself is problematic. Consider that the British Empire never actually had an emperor (unless you count Queen Victoria's claim to be Empress of India). Or reflect on whether the United States qualifies for imperial status. Then there is the matter of when you date the beginnings of empire. England's Golden Age would be considered by many to have been the reign of Elizabeth Tudor - but she wasn't even Queen of Scotland, never mind Great Britain, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada could be attributed more to good luck or the hand of God than actual naval supremacy. The exploits of Clive in India, between 1748 and 1765, when he acquired that jewel for the British East India Company - an interesting example of privatisation actually preceding state ownership and control – coinciding with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, can be argued with more confidence. If we run with that period, we can credit Imperial Albion with a maximum span of 200 years.

One website I visited announced confidently that the crown for imperial longevity must go to the Romans, asserting that their continuous existence of 2206 years, from 753 BCE until 1453 CE could not be bettered. But do those dates stand up to scrutiny? Sure, what we count as 753 BCE was taken by Imperial Romans as the year of their foundation, all years numbered from there and labeled AUC – the abbreviation for a Latin sentence meaning 'I'm the emperor so do as you're told.' Still, that year is highly questionable as a starting point for Rome's period of imperial glory, being more mythical than factual. The Carthaginians had some claim to serious Mediterranean rivalry until they were wiped off the map in 146 BCE, but the earliest safely defensible date is probably Julius Caesar’s appointment as dictator in 44 BCE.

Some might argue that converting to Christianity was the death of the Roman Empire, in which case the cut off point has to be 391 CE, when Theodosius I decreed that citizens henceforth would give up their pagan practices and follow Jesus. Even if we allow the Christianised Romans to claim imperial continuity, it is generally agreed that the city of Rome fell to barbarian invasion in 476, and with it, arguably, the eponymous empire ended too. For sure, the Empire of the East continued for a further thousand years - but contemporary Western Christendom was reluctant to count them as Roman, preferring to call them Greeks, by virtue of the language they spoke, and the need to justify the claim of Popes and their earthly disciples to be leaders of a Holy Roman Empire. Well, we could count that one, I suppose, but you can see how the whole definition thing gets exceedingly messy. Even more so if we take seriously the claim of the Ottoman Sultans who, after conquering the eastern capital in 1453, subsequently began, with some justification, to consider themselves heirs to the Romans. In that case we can add a further 480 years to our figure of 2206. To sum up, we could ascribe any figure from a minimum of 435 to a maximum of 2,686 years! You might say the Egyptians could beat that, but then geographical size must be a major factor in defining an empire, and the Nile Valley isn't really competitive in that department.

Well anyway, I'm not taking sides in that debate. Superior minds to mine, better versed in the minutiae of historical data, continue to wrangle, and in the end, who really cares? The one thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that, in the modern age, with the advance of industrial technology, communications, economic wizardry and military hardware, the lifespan of empires seems to be getting shorter, and the record of the Romans, whatever you think it was, is unlikely to be broken. The Ottoman sultans, with a relatively undisputed collective reign of 624 years, are probably the only contenders for the title in modern times. A question often posed is, ‘Why did their empire collapse?’ and I definitely want to address that - but in the process, I think we should also consider their achievement.

The beginning of serious Turkish incursion into Anatolia is usually accepted as 1071 CE, when the Seljuk Sultan Alparslan defeated the Byzantine/Roman/Greek army led by the Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes. The Seljuk Empire stretched from north India to the Aegean coast, from present-day Kyrgyzstan to the Persian Gulf, and the threat it posed to medieval Christendom was one of the major reasons for the Crusades that took place over the next 130 years. There is a good deal of impressive architecture still to be seen in Turkey today from the Seljuks and the Beylik fiefdoms that subsequently divided its Anatolian lands amongst themselves. One of these, led by a certain Osman, from whose name we derive our word Ottoman (Osmanlı in Turkish), rapidly gained supremacy, and began an expansion which would see it, by 1683, control an area of five million km² spread over three continents, Asia, North Africa and Europe.

Once again, however, the dates are debatable. What serious claim did Osman’s territory have to imperial status in 1299, the year normally cited as the beginning of the Ottoman Empire? In retrospect, the reign of Sultan Suleiman, from 1520 to 1566, is widely accepted as that entity’s Golden Age. Known in English as ‘The Magnificent’, and to Turks as ‘The Law-giver’ (kanuni), Suleiman probably came nearest to bringing Islam to Western Europe, famously turned back from the gates of Vienna in 1529.

The Treaty of Karlowitz, signed in 1699 with the so-called European Holy League, is often cited as marking the beginning of Ottoman decline, being the first time they had been obliged to give up previously conquered territory. Nevertheless, it was a further 224 years before the Empire breathed its last. Decline was a long slow process during which it continued to play a significant role in European politics and power games. The Sick Man of Europe was still strong enough, in 1915, to turn back the Royal Navy from the Dardanelles, and repel a land invasion by the British Empire and its allies, while simultaneously under attack on at least two other fronts. The end, interestingly, came from within rather than without. The last sultan, Mehmet Vahdettin, having become a virtual puppet of the occupying forces after World War I, was more or less legislated out of power by the newborn Turkish Republic, and quietly spirited off to England with the tatters of his imperial power.

So why did the Ottoman Empire fall? It’s an academic question. The fact is all empires fall, as Shelley warned. They are born, grow to maturity and experience a Golden Age when they feel themselves invincible and immortal, before lapsing into decline and finally death, or geo-political insignificance – a fate worse than death in the eyes of some. It happened to the Hittites and the Hapsburgs, the Moghuls, the Romans and the British – why should the Ottomans have been different? Perhaps the thing is that we in the West always looked upon the ‘East’ as ‘Other’, and have an enduring resentment of the centuries when power, wealth and prestige were centred there. We want to believe that those civilisations were somehow imperfect and corrupt, and contained within themselves the seeds of their own destruction.

The reality is simpler and universal. ‘To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.’ The Roman Emperor Constantine I built his second Rome at the southern mouth of the Bosporus Straits because the contemporary world had shifted. The fertility of Asia Minor and its strategic location astride trade routes to the east, combined with Constantinople’s invincibility as a fortified city made it the capital of two major empires for a thousand years.

What happened next, essentially, was that the world shifted again. The European Renaissance, the consolidation of nation states, and a powerful desire to avoid paying tribute for the right to pass through Ottoman territory to access the wealth of India and China, provided the spur to develop instruments of navigation and a new generation of ships that would permit sea-farers to journey west, into the unknown, out of sight of land, with some chance of finding their way home again. The result, within a century or so, was that the Atlantic Ocean became the strategic centre of a new world order. Those European countries fortunate enough to have an Atlantic seaboard, Spain, Portugal, France, England and the Netherlands found themselves in a position to exploit the riches, mineral, vegetable and human, of the Americas, Africa and beyond.

Increasing wealth, competition for resources, a huge boom in international trade, led to the growth of cities, exchange of knowledge, the shift from a rural to an urban industrial society, the development of banking and capitalism – all of which created a situation where military technology advanced along with the ability to maintain professional standing armies.

What happened to the Ottoman Empire? Even at the height of its power in the 16^th century, it had reached the limits of its potential for further expansion. Sultan Suleiman’s failure to capture Vienna owed as much to the length of his supply lines as to the strength of Viennese resistance. Over the next two centuries, the Ottoman government lost its main source of revenue as world trade routes shifted to the Atlantic. For that and perhaps other reasons, they were unable to develop a financial system capable of financing industrialisation – their shrinking share of world trade and possibly their lack of coal and iron resources were contributing factors, as was their dependence on taxing agriculture as their second major source of income.

Undoubtedly the Ottoman system of government was anachronistic and inherently unstable in a modernising world. As it became less acceptable to do away with surplus male claimants to the throne, the alternatives produced less competent sultans. Grand viziers came and went too frequently for settled policy-making. Certainly, moreover, there were powerful military and religious elites resisting change in order to hold on to their own privileged positions in society. These tend to be the reasons traditionally offered for the Ottoman decline and fall.

Equally significant, however, were strengths which, over time became weaknesses. Ottoman society, for example, was tolerant of religious minorities, Christian and Jewish, according them freedoms not generally allowed in contemporary western lands. These minorities filled certain specialist roles crucial to the imperial economy. The rise of nationalism in the early 19^th century, especially Greek nationalism, created serious divisions in the body politic, and severe weakening of the economy. Added to that was a huge influx of impoverished Muslim refugees displaced by, first the foundation of the kingdom of Greece, and later by the expansion of the Russian and Hapsburg empires into the Balkans, Crimea and Caucasus regions.

In the final analysis, history teaches us, empires rise and fall. As the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard observed, ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’ What is true for a human life is equally true for the most powerful temporal empire. As humans engaged with the business of life in general, we lack the perspective to see our individual lives as a whole, and to foresee, or even to conceive our end. So it is with earthly empires. Undoubtedly the Ottomans, faced with the undeniable fact that things were not what they had been, were torn between those who saw economic, industrial and social progress as the only way to compete in the new world, and others harking back to a semi-mythical past where faith was stronger, morality black and white, life simpler and political decisions were more clear-cut.

So what of the present day? A couple of years ago I paid my first visit to the United States. Going there had never been a high priority for me, so I can say I was pleasantly surprised by enjoying my stay in New York City. This is not the place to describe my holiday, but I did come away with one striking impression – that the city had had its heyday. Maybe it was the scurrying rats in the dingy subway stations or perhaps that the main architectural wonders seemed to date from the 1890s to the 1930s. It recalled to my mind memories of huge multi-headlighted cars with aerodynamic wings and fins, symbols of an empire confident in its universal superiority. Sure there were blips, such as when the Russians got the first human into space, but on the whole, American technology was ahead of the field, leading the way to a future of wealth, comfort and abundant leisure for all. The USS United States held the Blue Ribband for Atlantic crossing and the Empire State Building (note the name) was the world's tallest for forty years.

In retrospect, I think things began to change in the 1960s. The pill and the liberation of women, rock’n’roll and the rise of youth power, the divisive shame of Viet Nam, the oil crisis of the 70s, tales of CIA meddling in the affairs of sovereign states abroad, all contributed to a questioning of purpose and loss of confidence incompatible with continuing imperial hauteur.

Of course the US is still the world's largest economy, and will remain so for some years to come. However, it is also the world's largest debtor nation, the debt totalling $17 trillion (106 percent of GDP) in 2013, or $52,000 for every man, woman and child. Were it not for sales of military hardware to Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Egypt, Pakistan, Venezuela and other 'developing' nations, the figure would likely be a lot worse. The new World Trade Centre, rising from the ashes of the old in downtown Manhattan will be the tallest man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere. Western financiers were able to derail the Asian economic tiger in 1998, but you can't see them getting away with the same trick again.

Empires rise and fall. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Sympathy and Condolences for the People of Hatay

It's a shocking thing when extremists of whatever persuasion use bombs and other terror tactics to force us to accept their point of view.

Aftermath of the explosions in Hatay

I believe that the current government of Turkey has been working hard to address the country's problems - from economic hyper-inflation to human rights issues and nationalist separatism. Sad to say, there are those, within Turkey and outside its borders who wish to destabilise the country.

Is the ongoing civil war in Syria the fault of Turkey's government? Turkey is a beacon of democratic republican progress lighting a possible path to freedom and self-determination for other Muslim and Turkic states.

It's a tragedy that innocent people in Hatay and elsewhere have to suffer such anguish and horrors to advance the agenda of a lunatic minority who wish to gain or retain power.

Hıdrellez Festivities

To my Turkish friends and colleagues

May all your wishes come true in the year ahead!

For more information, click here.

Czechs and Chechens, Christians and Muslims

I read an article in a recent Time magazine by a gentleman who had apparently spent some time in Turkey and Israel. The gist of his thesis (as far as I could understand) was that he had found living in those countries strange because of the level of security evident in daily life. His main evidence for this in Turkey seemed to be a shortage of rubbish bins in public places.

Well, I will admit I have found this frustrating myself, but alongside the other difficulties one must surmount to live in a country without a tradition of British colonialism, it ranks as a relatively minor inconvenience. I have also got used to metal detectors and cursory security checks on entering the large modern shopping complexes mushrooming in every corner of the country. More surprising to me was the presence of a guard with an automatic weapon outside every police station, and small troops of armed uniformed soldiers jogging around the streets of my local neighbourhood. At least the latter phenomenon seems less in evidence these days since the justice system started calling top military brass to account for their roles in past military coups and planning of the next one.

I haven't been to Israel, so I can't speak for conditions there, but I suspect that, if anything, security will be more visible. Why wouldn't it be? This is a dangerous region. Grievances go back a long way in a part of the world where Turks, in Asia Minor for a thousand years, are regarded by many as Johnny-come-latelies, and Islam, which took hold in the 7th century, as an uninvited guest who has outstayed his welcome.

Getting back to Turkey, it's a question of give and take, don't you think? I accept a certain level of visible security in return for feeling relatively safe on the streets and in public places. And I do, I really do! I feel safer in Istanbul than in my own home town of Auckland, for example. I may have mentioned before that I am a keen cyclist. Turkish friends are surprised when I tell them I feel less threatened cycling in the frenetic traffic of megalopolitan Istanbul than in underpopulated New Zealand. My anecdotal evidence was supported recently by a news item suggesting that motorists in NZ deliberately target people on bicycles. I can't speak with authority about the United States, since my one brief visit doesn't entitle me to make generalisations. However, I can say I would prefer to see the automatic weapon in the hands of a uniformed accountable servant of the state than freely available to any adolescent with bipolar disorder and a grudge against society.

We have friends in Boston, so we have been following with interest and concern news about the bombing at the annual marathon race. It was mightily impressive to see how the general public and law enforcement agencies united to catch the perpetrators within a matter of days. Still, I can't help having some misgivings about the business. One question that comes to mind is how many security cameras operating 24/7 there must be in that city for authorities to see those two guys with their backpacks prior to what we must assume was a totally unexpected event. Do you prefer your security visible or invisible? Is it better to catch the lunatic fringe after the event or deter them beforehand? Of course, terrorist bombers are by definition dangerous characters, and you wouldn't expect police officers to mess around with kid gloves - but it is surely unfortunate that one of the supects was shot dead and the other is fighting for his life in hospital, the gunshot wound in his throat making it difficult for him to tell his side of the story.

European geography clarified

My major concern, however, is the xenophobia that clearly lurks very close to the surface in the psyche of many US citizens. Much of it stems from ignorance, and America certainly has no monopoly on that human failing. I read that diplomatic staff representing the Czech Republic found it necessary to expain to denizens of the social media netherworld that Chechnya is in fact an entirely separate country, about as far from their borders as Cheyenne, Wyoming is from the White House – though Cheyenne is at least still in mainland USA. Forty percent of Czechs are reportedly Christian, with most of the rest preferring not to label themselves, which, apart from geographic location, differentiates them from the people of Chechnya who are, according to my source, overwhelmingly Muslim. In fact it's a pity the bombing suspects weren't of Czech origin since in that case we would probably have heard less about their religious affiliations.

Sadly, however, the Muslim connection seems to have been established, no doubt further cementing hatred in the minds of US and West European citizens all too ready to blame followers of the Prophet Muhammed for most of the world's current problems. At least, then, we must be grateful that the two young men were not Iranian, otherwise Operation “Smash Iran Back to Paleolithic Oblivion” would probably already be under way. The Chechen connection is actually surprising. You might have expected the Moscow or St Petersburg marathon to be a preferred target, given that Russians have been suppressing, persecuting and displacing Muslim people of the Caucasus region for more than two centuries. But once guys get it into their minds to kill and maim ordinary citizens going about their lawful business, they've probably ceased thinking in ways that you and I can understand.

Another big question in my mind, though, is to what extent do these two sad Chechen lads represent the worldwide Islamic community of faith? And following from that, should we consider their Muslim affiliation the key rationale for their actions rather than their twisted personal psychological state? According to Wikipedia, approximately 1.6 billion people, or nearly twenty-five percent of the world's population is Muslim. They are  the majority demographic in fifty countries, and speak sixty native languages. In addition, there are 178 million Muslims in India (roughly equivalent to the population of Pakistan), and around twenty million each in China, Russia and Ethiopia. By the law of averages, you're going to expect a few nut cases amongst that lot.

Apparently it is less easy to get an accurate estimate of the number of Christians in the world. Most sources agree that Jesus leads the world's largest religious congregation with numbers ranging from 1.5 to 2.2 billion. The same source tells me there are 125 countries with majority Christian populations, although that total includes a good number of international minnows, Greenland, the British Virgin Islands and the Falklands, for example. Somewhat to my surprise, my own homeland, New Zealand, only just scraped into the list of Christian nations with 55.6 percent, not, as you might suspect, because of vast inflows of Taoists, Shintos and Buddhists, but because, like the Czechs, most of you guys claim to be atheists or just want the pollsters to bugger off and mind their own business.

Speaking of Christians, it was George Bush the Son and his Holy Spiritual offsider, Tony Blah, professed Believers both, who led that ‘coalition of the willing’ back in 2003 – convinced, against all the evidence, that Saddam Hussein was manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. But then, weight of evidence to the contrary tends not to be a major factor in the belief system of the more dedicated follower of Christ. The USA is the most 'Christian' nation on Earth, with almost 250 million faithful, and around half of them are apparently convinced that Jesus Christ will return to Earth and Rapture them some time before the year 2050, though there is disagreement about the exact date.

Nevertheless, both Bush and Blah would have dearly loved to see Muslim Turkey join their band of willing helpers when they invaded Iraq, if only to show the world that it wasn’t just a latter-day Christian Crusade. Maybe Turkey missed a good opportunity there to join the Christian club as an honorary member – but sometimes you just have to stand up for what you believe is right – or against what you believe is wrong, would perhaps be more accurate.

These days it seems that the tide of opinion, even amongst previously willing supporters, has turned against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The number of Iraqi deaths is open to considerable debate – estimates range from one hundred thousand to more than a million. Even if you look at the lower end figures, the Iraq Body Count Project, generally accepted to be conservatively reliable, gives the  total as over 170,000 including 120,000 civilians.  The number of US military personnel killed is more precise – 4,409, with other 'coalition' deaths bringing the total to 4,799.

I certainly don’t want to make light of that awful day in Boston last month, especially since we know that one of the three killed was an eight-year-old child – and many of the injured will be maimed for life. Perhaps the bright spot in an otherwise tragic event is that those weapons of mass destruction surfaced after all, having made their way across the Middle East, Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to east coast USA. 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will apparently be charged with using them, and if convicted will, quite rightly, face the death penalty. I have to confess, however, to some disappointment that the WMDs turn out to have been relatively small bombs made in his big brother's kitchen from domestic pressure cookers, rather than the more impressive chemical, biological and nuclear arsenal we were encouraged to believe in at the time.