I remember an interesting conversation while I was working at the BBC. It went something along the lines of me saying that I believed that should the world continue, most western houses would have a Quran in them in the future. A female colleague immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous, whereupon her line manager said that he did not see why it couldn't happen, after all their was a precedent, the bible...
Actually, despite people laughing at groups like Al Muhajiroon for wanting an Islamic state in the UK, the fact is they may be laughing many centuries after the fact.
Umberto Eco once said that you were sure to recognise a 'lunatic' by the fact that he invariably mentions the 'Knights Templar', I have often wondered whether he was utilising a clever linguistic/semiological tool, given the symbolism of the moon, which surely induces such lunacy. Given his subject being semiotics it is naive to think that this statement was uncontrolled stumbling.
So let us not only mention the Templar, but get down to the real knitty gritty, the stuff that real conspiracy theories are made of. They basically set of to defend the Holy Land from papal defined infidels, a case of the pot calling the kettle black if ever there was. Was their quest based on some deep understanding of the mystery of God? Begone...I would wager that many of them had a basic literacy, given that many clerics only had a limited grasp of Latin and Greek and thus the bible. Let us jump forward and consider some of the accusations put to the Temple at the time they were arrested;
- That they denied the divinity of Jesus.
- That they rejected the cross and crucifixion.
- That they rejected the sacrements.
now considering the time that the Templar had spent in the middle east, and some of the renuciations made by muslims as a result of the guidance recieved by their prophet, is it such a massive leap to infer that maybe the Templar had in fact been discussing the finer points of religion with their enemies/captors? Now here's a thought, returning to the image of 'la luna' if one was to add the reconciling pentagram (see previous post) to the image of the moon, we would have an interesting semiotic formula, one might even go so far as to say it could represent 'The widow and her son'...now where have I heard that phrase before...'The Widow's son.'
