Besiktas Istanbul, though, is a different story...
Posted on 12/12/2007 12:23:32 AM PST by lizol
Muslim lawyer sues over Inter Milan 'Crusaders' kit
Richard Owen in Rome
A Turkish lawyer is taking legal action against Inter Milan, the Italian football team, for wearing a strip with “Crusader-style” red crosses that he alleges is ”offensive to Muslim sensibilities”.
Baris Kaska, a lawyer in Izmir who specialises in European law, said that he had lodged a complaint in a local court against Inter Milan, which last month played the Istanbul team Fenerbahce in a Champions League match at the San Siro stadium in Milan. The Inter players wore a new strip - a white shirt with a giant red cross on it - marking the club's centenary.
Mr Kaska said he was not only seeking damages but was also appealing to Uefa to annul the match, which Inter won 3-0. “That cross only brings one thing to mind - the symbol of the Templar Knights,” he said. “It made me think immediately of the bloody days of the past. While I was watching the game I felt profound grief in my soul.” Mr Kaska told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia that the cross symbolised “Western racist superiority over Islam”.
He said that Inter had “manifested in the most explicit manner the superiority of one religion over another”. He said the court had contacted both Uefa and Fifa to convey his demand that Inter should be “heavily fined for displaying an offensive symbol”. “How could Uefa allow this?“demanded the Turkish paper Radikal.
Inter Milan officials said that they were “astounded”. They said that in the first match between the two teams in September at Istanbul - which Fenerbahce won 1-0 - Inter had deliberately refrained from wearing the strip with the red cross but had felt entitled to use it on its home ground.
Inter officials also pointed out that a red cross on a white background is the symbol of the city of Milan. Many Italian football clubs incorporated the cross on their shirts, including Inter, founded in Milan in 1908. “The red cross has become an international political football,” Corriere della Sera commented.
Uefa's mission is to “promote the principles of unity and solidarity” in Europe through football, “without discrimination on grounds of gender, religion or race.” However, Inter officials said Uefa had approved the new Inter strip at the start of the season, and the Turkish club had also accepted it before last month’s game.
La Repubblica said it was unclear whether Mr Kaska was “more wounded by the supposed offence or by the goals Inter scored”. Fenerbahce, one of Turkey’s top teams and the main rival in Istanbul of Galatasaray, was also founded 100 years ago. Its players wear a yellow-blue strip and are known as "The Yellow Canaries”.
The row comes at a sensitive moment in Turkey's ambitions to join the European Union. This week France won a symbolic victory at a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers when it prevented the EU using the word “accession” or “membership” in connection with Turkey, which is a secular state but has a majority Muslim population and a government led by Islamist politicians.
Ankara opened negotiations for EU membership two years ago, but Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, has repeatedly said that Turkey has no place in Europe and should be offered instead a “privileged partnership”.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “We think it’s important that the European Union fulfil its responsibilities towards Turkey, but also that Turkey continues the reform process that is an important part of its passage to the European Union."
The EU statement welcomed the strengthening of democracy in Turkey but said “significant further efforts are needed in other areas such as judicial reform, the fight against corruption, minority rights and strengthening of cultural rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, trade union rights and civilian control of the military”.
Besiktas Istanbul, though, is a different story...
“Leave it to the muslims to be offended when they see ANY cross.”
Hell, moslems are offended by telephone poles, by “plus” signs, by the letter “t”, and the button line on a shirt where it meets the belt.
Filthy disgusting hypocrites. They are offended by a symbol on a shirt, by a cartoon, by true words spoken by the Pope, by a name given to a teddy bear.
And I’m offended by the murder of Daniel Pearl, carried on with religious chants and videotaping, by the imprisonment and murder of school children in Beslan, by the murder of 3000 innocents in September 2001.
Or, as many point out, they only went to Law School so they could be the larval form of a politician.
“Leave it to the muslims to be offended when they see ANY cross.”
Just immagine what they would do if you waved cloves of garlic at them. Can muslims see themselves in a mirror?
In Europe there are "other" professions doing what lawyers do here ~ for example, there are these guys who carry around machineguns ~ Italy uses them instead of Certified Public Accountants to help people decide what taxes to pay (and that also leaves one lawyer unemployed for each CPO saved, proving that a machinegun is definitely worth two professional thieves every single time).
I’d like to buy one in support of the team!
Daniel Pearl was unavailable for comment.
Jumbo shrimp. Pardon my Jane Austen, but one must have sense to have sensibilities.
OOOPS, I meant Istanbul.
Unfortunately, we have travelled far down that same path. Look at the teams that have changed their names from (insert un PC name here)to something innocuous, like Stanford did.
I want one!
Hey, Mrs. Gridlock! Christmas is coming!!!
Well, I am a billing machine ;-) (I walk with angels, I defend businesses from guys like Edwards)
As for the Templar cross worn by the guys plaing kickball, maybe it's me, but I think we are way overdue for another Crusade. I hope it does offend them.
Three words: “SUCK IT UP”
BUMP!
Muslims don’t use the plus ( + ) sign because it resembles a cross — they’re crazier than liberals.
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