Damascus

The Caliph, Rome and Christendom

When is a prophet not a prophet? Let’s come back to that question in a moment.

If Rome is the place where Christianity and Imperialism joined hands then Damascus is the place where Islam did likewise, roughly three hundred years separating these two events. The first came about through the supposed conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. The more cynical would say that he had sight of a religious glue that could help salvage the straining cause of the empire. Almost at once, being a Christian became legitimate, persecution ceased, but the New Testament church stopped growing; you can chart its decline form that point.

As for Damascus just 23 yrs after Mohamed starting preaching several hundred miles to the south in Arabia, Islam came to this city. Within just a few decades Damascus became the home of the first caliph as Imperialism and religion once again found a partnering together. Contrary to Christianity it seemed these two made good bedfellows and within a very short period of time Islam had spread deeply into North Africa and indeed Spain.

Interestingly and perversely, it is in Damascus that the Apostle Paul shed his imperialistic wineskin of Judaism and encountered the new wineskin of the Holy Spirit. From that moment on he began his missionary journeys east, possibly ending his life in, yes you guessed it, Rome.

If you ever find yourself in Istanbul then you will no doubt go to stand and gaze upon St Sophia, a relic to a “Christian” Byzantium Empire long gone. However if you turn around you will see the Blue Mosque standing opposite. Like two overweight twins they squat opposite each other, a testimony to the struggle that ensnares religion and empire, causing untold damage in its wake and still being worked out in a variety of global guises.

You might not know that it was in Turkey in 1922 at the overthrowing of the Ottoman Empire that the caliph came to an end. Indeed Osama bin Laden is supposed to have referred to this momentous moment in calling for what Damascus held so many centuries ago, the re-establishment of a global Islamic Kingdom and state.

So when is a prophet not a prophet, of whatever religion you care to name? Can I suggest when they make a play for the power of the centre and forsake the wild untamed pathways of the margins. It is there I would suggest that a prophetic voice can sound, free from the compromises that power inevitably involves and the Machiavellian ways of politics.

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