[ichabod1]

That makes me sad for some reason.

[Stoat]

That makes me sad for some reason.

Another thing which may evoke a similar response is the text of the linked Times article itself, which culminates in this sentence:

The royal party then departed for Istanbul, deaf to the sounds of a beautiful call to prayer.

This rather breathtaking sentence begs numerous questions and comments, among them:

• How does the reporter deduce that the royal party was "deaf" to the sounds?  The fact that they didn't all instantly roll out prayer rugs, drop to their knees, and start banging their heads on the ground in dutiful supplication to and deification of Allah?
• Beautiful?  To a muslim, possibly.  Beauty is of course an entirely subjective term, and for the 'reporter' to unequivocally define a 'call to prayer' as being 'beautiful' in such a matter-of-fact, breezy manner illustrates many things, among them the evidence of decline in any remaining standards of objectivity that the once-great Times at least tried to hold itself to in decades past.

Speaking for myself at least, I have yet to hear a "call to prayer" that I would ever consider even remotely beautiful....they are much more like a reminder of the essential, legendary novel and film adaptation of H.G. Wells'  "The Time Machine" in which the remaining humans in a futuristic Earth are called to their doom by the monsters who have become their overlords.