Miranshaway, I have to ask you whether you have bothered reading a history book of any kind?

The Ottoman history is full of conflicts and riots involving Kurds. In other words, these two communities have hardly ever trusted each other for long periods.

True, there has never been a peaceful Middle East. The Middle East has never been able to make their own decisions. All of their crucial decisions were made by the caring British and French protector angels who drew their borders for them, determined who would control the oil hence the money and pay tribute to them in exchange of their self-proclaimed police work.

There can be no peace in a region whose streets are either besieged or invaded periodically. Just ask yourself if there secret agents and provocators in your streets? Are your temples getting bombed routinely? Are you beaten or humiliated by invading soldiers day in day out who take pictures with your uncle´s corpse?

The Middle is a de facto vassal state of the US.

This is an English language forum ikicihan.

As for the dome and the "mouth water smeared on a stone that renders the dome of Hagia Sophia earthquake proof."; Muhammad was not a wizard, nor did he have supernatural talents. In fact, this point is clearly made in Islam and it is often used as a defensive argument against certain sects of the Christian religion that consider Jesus as the son of God.

Islam orders you to use your mind to testify whether a story is true or not. Whoever quoted this, quoted it in vain because it contradicts with the basic teachings of Islam. By pointing out to "mind" as the measure of "truth", the Quran invalidates any superstitious beliefs.

If an earthquake happens, Hagia Sophia´s dome will collapse and the building can be shattered into pieces if the forces applied to it exceeds it structural limits. Hagia Sophia is not the oldest building in the world. Collesium is much older and pyramids are several times as old as Hagia Sophia. The only reason they stood the test of time is because they were built to last using proper techniques.

I wish that Hagia Sophia can survive in the first place. If the expected major earthquake hits Istanbul, the old and weary building may not survive it. Imagine for a moment, that this magnificient temple is lost forever. Would Istanbul be the same?

When you enter the building and check out the things people wrote on its pillars hundreds of years ago, you realize that it is the mere moment that belongs to you and not the temple.

One must familiarize himself with the ways of religious thinking, they believe they follow God´s way which leads them to what is good. They think there is nothing better than doing what they are already doing. They are claiming this temple in the name of God. This is exactly the same notion that destroyed all the mosques in Athens. None of the Athenians must be believing they have actually lost anything by not having any mosques left in their city; none of the persons praying for the buildings conversion into a mosque believe they will lose anything either.

These thoughts must have been running in Atatürk´s mind back in 1934 when he decided to turn it into a museum. The decision came at a time when there was mounting pressure on Ankara to turn Hagia Sophia into a church again.

The building is 1500 years old, older than Islam itself. They dedicated it to Jesus; I wonder he would be pleased as a proponent of selflessness and humility. It has served as a temple, saw pillages and has gradually ran down, leave the building alone... It has already done its job in one and a half millenia.

This was a favourite subject of mine about a couple of decades ago. Here is something that I remember from those days:

In the ancient times, people used to believe in the existence of a proto-language - a language shared by the human race. The "ancient" here refers to nearly 3 millenia ago. They believed this proto-language served the basis for other languages.

A pharoh named Psammetichus I decided to conduct an experiment. He originally sought to prove that Egypt was the oldest human civilization in the world. Nonetheless, he remained faithful to the scientific reality even after the experiment pointed out to another culture as a possible candidate for being the most profound civilization.

The same motive was shared by the linguists of the Hitler era who claimed that German is the original language spoken by Adam the difference here being, the Germans did not care about the scientific truth.

I found a paragraph that repeats what I learned in those days:

quote Wikipedia

The Greek historian Herodotus conveyed an anecdote about Psamtik in the second volume of his Histories (2.2). During his travel to Egypt, Herodotus heard that Psammetichus ("Psamṯik") sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried "bekos" with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of the Phrygian word for "bread." Thus, they concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians, and that Phrygian was the original language of men. There are no other extant sources to verify this story.

unquote Wikipedia.

I respect both Bible and Quran

Lemon we are good people. Everything we do is right. We are bound by our own wisdom. If we thought we sucked, we would do something to change ourselves. You are that way too. There is no need for a referee in the presence of so many faulty people. We are all excellent, and equally incomplete. Truth be told, there is a tug of war among nations and the best way to survive in this to pull harder. Think of your shortcomings and you´ll lose without putting up any fight.

As for what would happen if they sold the Bible in the marketplaces freely in Turkey? There is no need to wonder, I have seen quite a few places where they give away Bible copies. Is it complete safe to do so? No, every five or ten years we hear of a major incident but this is kind of expected in any country.

Unless you want us to fall on our knees and repent or confess, this will go on like this forever. With all its flavours, ours is a unique culture, it may appeal to some people and some may detest it. Whatevert the case, there is no magical button that changes such profound things like culture, religion, hatred etc.

I agree with Elizabeth. As long as the audience is grown ups who can make their own decisions there must be no legal burden keeping people from publicizing their opinion or selling/distributing any legal book.

There is an old saying that goes like "most thefts occur in the vicinity of a police station." There are so many cliches firmly establishing Europe as the cradle of civilization that we don´t expect what is considered the "norm" for others to be so flawed and so unjust. I wrote in an earlier post that Europe is not at good hands. All the major nations are run by people lacking qualities to open up new paths in all aspects of life for people. Instead, they do their best to create a monocultural Europe disregarding the need for becoming more versatile and more dynamic both economically and culturally.

Unless their voters wake up to the reality, it will soon be too late for Europe...

Well, as far as I know, barbers are divided into two categories in Turkey: those who make bombastic looking unbelievably big hair for ladies preparing for wedding parties, and those who turn your wife into an alien when there is apparently no reason. 

I have never heard of white or black hair salons. We don´t have a sizeable black community in Turkey. If you are talking about afro models, I am sure you can find many salons offering that type of  hair do. 

There must be salons offering Jamaican style hair braids because I occasionally see people with that style.

I hope you´ll enjoy your stay in Turkey no matter what happens to your hair. 

Religion is not something we can judge, restrict or even question. Even in secular regimes, religion is sponsored by governments this way or another. Let alone questioning the belief of the masses, even a minute criticism directed at the religious belief of a minority group causes tension and this tension sometimes turns into hatred in the long run.

There are a number of assumptions, although we are born naked, it is inconceivable that we go naked in the streets. Targeting a religious group is comparable to the previous act in terms of the shock it causes.

As for the main question: is religion deadlier than smoking? I would say no, we live the lives of humans and die the deaths of humans. Religion is a part of our societies and therefore it is an essential part of our personalities. It is not one religion written in a certain holy book I am talking about, instead, myriad of ancient religions still manifest themselves in our languages and folklore, in other words, it is one of the main ingredients of our cultural foundation.

One would conclude, smoking can be avoided, it was not a part of our lives until a couple of centuries ago. Smoking habit has gradually become rampant and it has turned into an oddity where the number of smokers constitue a sizeable portion of entire population. This is a new experience. We can predict an enourmous increase in the number of smoking related ailments. Will scientist come up with a cure? I think it is very unlikely. As a results, millions of people will have to die of lung, bladder or similar cancer types directly linked to smoking habit.

Things like this remind me of Leonard Cohen and his song :

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
....
There´s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn´t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah