Father Frank's Rants - St John of the Cross and Crescent

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 423 5 January 2011

What led Ottoman Sultan Suleiman to order the conquest of Malta?

Dislike of the Crusader Knights of St John? Rivalry with his great antagonist, Philip II of Spain? Desire to extend the frontiers of Islam? Or perhaps...cherchez la femme? Not quite a Helena of Troy but still a distinguished dowager. According to Francesco Balbi di Correggio, the Knights had had the unhappy idea of capturing the nurse of Suleiman’s favourite wife, Roxellane. The angry Sultana pestered her consort to avenge the affront and...the rest is history.

In 1565 a Turkish armada landed 40.000 warriors in Malta. The besieged Knights of St John commanded 9.000. For six months they fought, amidst atrocious privations. Capitulation loomed until King Philip’s relieving force arrived, in the nick of time. The Turks re-embarked and Malta was saved.

Last week the priest was in Valletta, Malta’s picturesque little capital. The valiant Knights are long gone – not the Ottomans but Napoleon expelled them, as well as pillaging the local churches and palaces. Today’s hordes are not Turks but tourists. Mostly geriatric Brits from the North of England, it appeared. ‘Cheaper to winter a month in a crummy Malta hotel than to pay for central heating at home’, one of them told me. Well, at least the geriatrics queued up in the restaurant and weren’t too noisy, unlike their Maltese counterparts...but what do I say? Nobody is perfect.

‘Those Knights should come back and drive the Mozlems out’, an obese old codger from Bradford told me on the waterfront. Was he taking the mickey? Still, he seemed in earnest. The imp of the perverse was on me. I cleared my throat: ‘Actually, you are wrong, sir. Turks and Knights today might be fighting on the same side. Cross and Crescent – both are besieged by the new, godless barbarians...the battle lines have been redrawn’, I began haranguing him. No doubt he thought I was peculiar. He moved off, a little unsteady on his feet, and drifted away in the direction of the nearest bar.

Catholic Philip and Muslim Suleiman – I wonder what they would think today of their respective countries. Zapatero’s regime must be the most anti-tradition Spain had ever known. Half the government are mujeres. Abortion, contraceptives, gay unions, low birth rate, anti-smoking bans, rewriting of the civil war history, rampant political correctness – there are even rumours the ancestral, virile game of bull fighting might soon go the way of smoking. It seems Spaniards cannot do things by halves. If history really moved in cycles, the next round in Spain would be likely to bring back the Inquisition – the religious type, I mean, not the current, insidious secular one. Anyway, I am certain Philip II would have Zapatero strangled and his ministerial mujeres dispatched to a convent, to do penance and repent.

Nor would Suleiman be pleased with Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey, I am bold to say. Ataturk disestablished Islam, abolished the Caliphate and changed the national alphabet from the elegant Arabic script to the humdrum European one. (Just imagine: David Cameron announces tomorrow that English will henceforward be officially written in Chinese characters - you will feel the way Turks did back then.) Oh, yes, Ataturk also had Sufi leaders hanged and shariah made illegal. He even tried to change the call to prayer from Arabic to Turkish – it didn’t quite work – old habits die hard.

OK, I know the AKP party in power in Turkey is moderately Islamist. (Ataturk surely would not have stood for a PM’s wife wearing the hijab.) They are gradually trying to reconnect with their Islamic heritage, reaching out to Iran and to Arab countries, criticising (mildly) the state of Israel and so on. Well, the day they remove the ubiquitous Ataturk’s portraits from public offices the priest, a former chaplain to Turkey, will let you know what he opines of all that. But I still doubt Suleiman the Magnificent would think much of Erdogan. In fact, I suspect the great Sultan would judge the Turkish PM a bit of a wimp...

Whilst entertained to lunch in Valletta by a clever and charming Arab educationalist, I seized the opportunity to expound to him my subversive idea – that of a Cross and Crescent alliance for the saving of civilisation, no less. Something I have been advocating and propagating since 9/11, at least. Most of the time I have felt like that patron saint of the Order of the Maltese Knights, St John the Baptist – like a voice crying the wilderness. As if I was wasting my time. But my friendly Arab host thought the idea excellent. OK, maybe he was just being polite – a guest is sacred for an Arab – but I genuinely felt we were on the same wavelength. Maybe something good will come out of it, insh’allah.

My Muslim-Christian proposed pact only lacks a patron saint. Who might that be? A tough one. It won’t be easy...

No! As easy as pie! St John of course! The same patron of the godly Knights! It fits and figures, I tell you. John is venerated in Islam as Yahia, a Prophet of God. The Qur’an talks of his quasi-miraculous birth, of how God endowed him wisdom and judgment even as a youth. He was gentle and chaste. He was also compassionate and devout and obedient to his parents. And the Bible informs how St John – Jesus’ kinsman - boldly renounced the world to live ascetically in the desert, preached repentance, denounced sin, censured tyrants and witnessed to God paying the ultimate price, martyrdom. Indeed, in the Sacristy of the stupendous Pro-Cathedral of St John in Malta visitors can admire a stupendous, huge Caravaggio painting, showing the saint’s execution. Memorably, the artist signed it using the blood tricking out of St John’s own severed head: prophetic?

The Knights of St John of Malta and the Muslims – would they ever have dreamt of it? The next battle they will not be deadly enemies but, yes, allies!

And the enemy? Who will it be? Come on, dear reader, you must have a pretty shrewd idea.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli