Reflections on President Obama’s Visit to Turkey

President Obama recently visited Ankara Turkey where I spent some time when I was in my 20s. Obama is trying to restore our one time great relationship with the Turks and all Muslims. It’s been 50 years since I lived there. What a great relationship I and the US had with the Turkish Muslims. I will never forget as a 15-year-old seeing President Eisenhower as his motorcade drove up Attaturk Blvd.

It was recently my 65th birthday. On that day two American friends that I went to high school with there in Ankara visited me. It brings back so many memories. Oh what great memories of that country with the beautiful singing sounds of the Mulluahs high in the minarets of the Mosques calling the people to prayer 5 times a day.

It seems so crazy to me how so many Christians think so poorly of Muslims and also think that the terrorists are representative of most Muslims. That’s like saying the KKK is representative of most Christians. It was shock to me when I visited Ankara 2 years ago to suddenly feel a spiritual and emotion feeling come over me (and I am not Muslim) when I heard the “call to prayer” from the mosques. Wow, what was that all about. I think I know.

So much of what we believe is more tied up in where we grow up, what we’re taught and who we hang with. The problem is we think that those special spiritual and emotional feelings prove that our own band of religion or belief is the “one true path.” If more Christians and Muslims could see and understand that we are all pretty much the same, then I think the world would be a much much better place.

At least that is what one “local boy” thinks from living and experiencing a Muslim country and culture so many years ago.