Who Knew that Islam would be in the News for Years on End at the Beginning of the 21st Century?

Well, Hilaire Belloc for a start. But not I nor anyone else that I knew or read 20 years ago. And yet here we are. All the "Timeses" have much on it today as, it seems they do every day now.

A sampling:

This morning's New York Times comments here on the volatile situation in officially secular but realistically thoroughly Islamic Turkey as it awaits the Pope's visit.

The Times of London reports here on a plane hijacking protesting the Holy Father's visit to Turkey.

And our beloved Mother Times* of Los Angeles reports here that villages and towns all over Spain are toning down their annual liberation celebrations. The "liberation" in question was from the yoke of the M-h-mm-d-ns and Somebody might be offended.


*ADDENDUM: "Mother Times"? What does he mean by that? I hear you ask. Simply explained: Very old private joke now revealed to the public for the first time. Many, many years ago a friend and I (which friend, like your servant, was also in danger of falling off the right edge of the earth) happened by chance to notice a remakable, but no doubt co-incidental, convergence of topics and treatments in that day's Los Angeles Times' stories and those in the old socialist magazine Mother Jones. For a few of us, the daily rag has been "Mother Times" ever since. No corporate or other connection that I know of, but my they do (still!) think the same thoughts. MJ has a website now. It's here. It still reads like The Times to me.