[sergeantdave]

I saw your tagline: “Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.”

Your part about minerats and bayonets leads me to this short story:

I picked up a great knife from Pakistan a few weeks ago, and I was surprised by the workmanship. The edge was honed well, the steel was annealed properly and the weight was great. I consider it close in workmanship and quality to the Texas Bowie knife.

There’s a few pits in the steel toward the hilt, but I figure the blacksmith was in a hurry to avoid detection.(He’s probably firing gun barrels, too.) Nonetheless, I’m noticing some great quality knives coming out of Pakistan. These boys know what they’re doing.

[rmlew]

“Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers” is a quote from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the AKP. We aren't taking Pakistan, but a NATO country trying to enter Europe. And it is the EU push that has been the problem. The quote is from a poem, for which Erdogan was jailed in the past. However, the EU and the US pushed for democratizing reforms in Turkey, suppressing the power of the military and of the courts to militantly defend the secular regime.

I hope you enjoy your knife, but I don't find the martial skills of the increasingly Islamist and nuclear armed Pakistan reassuring.