‘Hagia Sophia’ (Holy Wisdom) is the name of a magnificent Church built by Roman Emperor Justinian I (r. 527 – 565 CE) some 1500 years ago in Constantinople, his capital city (now Istanbul). This epitome of Byzantine architecture has been grabbing media attention after Turkey’s highest court issued an order on 10.07.2020 enabling the conversion of this 65,000 square feet architectural marvel into an Islamic place of worship (mosque)How did this great Byzantine structure become a mosque?
Category: General
“There were 5 exabytes* of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days.” (Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (2001 to 2011)). The other day, I happened to come across this imaginary conversation between a person trying to order a pizza and, presumably, the Google […]
The Roman practice of deifying living and dead rulers appeared quite attractive to the church leadership. It apparently thought that if a temporal ruler or the Roman Senate could confer the status of god upon people, there was no reason why the true representatives of Jesus Christ reigning over the ecclesiastic realm should be denied such a prerogative!
Evolutionary psychology argues that many of the social and psychological characteristics of modern humans were shaped by the hunter-gatherer world that we subconsciously inhabit to this day. Our brains and minds are adapted to a life of hunting and gathering.
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”Sun Tzu On February 14, 2019, a 22-year old vehicle-borne suicide bomber rammed his explosive laden vehicle into a convoy transporting Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel at Lethpora in the Pulwama district of Jammu & Kashmir. The explosion killed 40 CRPF personnel. After […]
“Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…” (The Bible, The Book of Revelation 21:1) It is true that Karl Marx (1818-1883) was very anti-religion. Marx was ethnically Jewish. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch Rabbi, while his paternal line had […]
“പുറമെ നിങ്ങൾ നീതിമാന്മാർ എന്നു മനുഷ്യർക്കു തോന്നുന്നു; അകമെയോ കപടഭക്തിയും അധർമ്മവും നിറഞ്ഞവരത്രേ.?” (മത്തായി 23:28) തൊണ്ണൂറ്റിനാലു വയസ്സുള്ള ഒരു ക്രിസ്തീയ വിശ്വാസിയുടെ മൃതദേഹം കഴിഞ്ഞ പത്തോ പതിനൊന്നോ ദിവസമായി സംസ്കരിക്കാന്‍ കഴിയാതെ അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്‍റെ ഭവനത്തില്‍ ഒരു മൊബൈല്‍ മോര്‍ച്ചറിയില്‍ സൂക്ഷിച്ചിരിക്കയായിരുന്നു. കായംകുളത്തിനടുത്തു കട്ടച്ചിറ എന്ന സ്ഥലത്തെ ഒരു ക്രസ്തീയ ദേവാലയത്തിലെ രണ്ടു ക്രിസ്തീയ വിഭാഗങ്ങള്‍ (ഓര്‍ത്തഡോക്‌സ് – യാക്കോബായ) തമ്മിലുള്ള തര്‍ക്കമായിരുന്നു ആ ശവ സംസ്കാരം സമയത്തു നടക്കാതെ പോയതിനു കാരണം. ഒടുവില്‍ ദേശീയ മനുഷ്യാവകാശക്കമ്മീഷന്‍റെ നിര്‍ദേശപ്രകാരം […]
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln There is this joke about a Christian priest. In the course of worship services, collection plates (or offertory bags) […]
“Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.” – (Bible, Philippians 3:19) Jesus had commanded, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal”, (Matthew 6:19). But the Catholic […]
“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” (Denis Diderot, French philosopher, art critic, and writer) When Apostle Paul started establishing the first churches, many people saw it as an opportunity to exploit it for personal aggrandizement. As the church evolved into a politically and […]
