It is amazing that this website for a simple novel is still being blocked in Turkey. It is also hard for my friends in the US to understand why because they haven't lived there and don't fully comprehend the mindset or the political sensitivities in that country. The obsession some governments have with controlling information they don't approve of is mind-boggling, especially given the fact that in the end, this is doomed to fail. The penetrating power of ideas is far greater than that of water and air. You can water-proof something, but idea-proofing a society is much more difficult. Ideas are pesky, pernicious little things, you know. 

After yesterday's post about the Gospel of Barnabas, I was informed today that this website is not accessible from the country of Turkey! This is fascinating. Less than a week after Turkish newspapers report that the Vatican has requested permission to view what the Turkish government claims is an ancient Aramaic manuscript about the life of Christ, this website you are reading now is blocked by Turkey! I suppose it should be taken as a compliment. Obviously, somebody somewhere thinks this is important. Unfortunately, it is also a sign of paranoia and a lack of commitment to individual liberties.

Dozens of Turkish journalists now languish in Turkish prisons because of this government's desire to control the press and the flow of information. For example, Ahmet Şık, a journalist who wrote a book entitled Imamın Ordusu (The Imam's Army), has been in prison for over a year. He was arrested before the book was even published.

Dan Brown, the author of the Da Vinci Code, is extremely popular in Turkey as many people there believe that the Vatican is the nexus of all evil, and are happy to see Christian values undermined. This says a lot about the predominant paradigm, doesn't it? Still, as a person who loves Turkey and the Turkish people, it is difficult to imagine why a work of fiction would be perceived as a threat, especially when the novel says so many good things about the country and their culture. 

As many of you may have heard the Vatican has officially asked for permission to examine a copy of the Gospel which the Turkish government has had for 12 years. Star newspaper is claiming that this may be an ancient copy of the Gospel of Barnabas, and the whole country is abuzz. I have seen hundreds of comments from Turks and Muslims across the world commenting on this story.

These claims are another example of how history repeats itself. In 1986, the Turkish military said it had found a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas. In the end, it turned out to be the canonical New Testament, and so it retracted its claim, but the retraction never received the press coverage that the initial discovery did, so even today many Turks will claim that the Army found the Gospel of Barnabas in 1986, but is being pressured by the Vatican to keep a lid on it.

Now, we have another one. What is the Turkish obsession with the Gospel of Barnabas?

The Turks have a proverb, Dilin kemiği yoktur, which translated means, 'the tongue has no bone.' In other words, people can SAY anything; there are absolutely no limits. Another Turkish proverb says, Çamuru at, yapışmasa da izi kalır.  This means "sling the mud; even if it doesn't stick, the stain will remain." The "discovery" in 1986 was, in fact, just that - mud slinging, propaganda, manipulation of religious sentiment to control the people. Having lived there for over a decade, I saw first-hand just how crucial religion is to political control.

This new "discovery" is being received with much jubilation in the Islamic world and has been carried by major news networks. For example, http://www.emirates247.com/news/world/jesus-predicted-advent-of-prophet-mohammed-pbuh-in-bible-found-in-turkey-2012-02-27-1.445391

Is any of this related to my book?  Yes! But, I can't ruin the plot by going into detail. I will only say that the news this week proves that the more-than-400-year-old conspiracy is alive and well. However, the novel contains more factual information about what is really happening than anything you're likely to read in the politically correct press... 

It is amazing that a story like this is breaking on the eve of the novel's publication...  The Kindle version will be available this week.

Hard. It is soooooo darned hard. That single word captures the whole essence of the problem. Intransigent, stubborn, obstinate, intractable, unyielding... I know, you got the point three adjectives back. I'm venting and there is plenty of white space on my computer screen, so you'll have to indulge me. The obdurate problem I'm referring to is communication, or more precisely how certain people perceive certain statements in a certain way even though there is no empirical evidence to support their perception. How can people read between the lines when your proposition consists of a single line!!!!!

The fact that I'm a writer makes this whole issue all the more frustrating. Our JOB is to take amorphous ideas and give them shape in a way that communicates meaning to all of the interlocutors involved. We are tasked with the dirty work of gathering various 'memes' and putting them together with syntactical cement in a way that creates a mental picture. Somehow, the fact that communication is at the heart of my job description hasn't made it any easier. I guess if it were easy everyone would be doing it. And that is no consolation either. Maybe all I'm really saying here is that writing is work. HARD, HARD work....

It has become a cliche - the truth is stranger than fiction. The reason, of course, is simple. This statement has resonated with so many people over the years that it has become a formula, and formulas are often an expression of truth. And, truth can be strange indeed.

The most common question I've heard since pre-publication reading began is, "How much of this is really true?" Without giving you the boilerplate legalese that will be on the inside cover, let me just say that all of the references to the past are historical fact whether it was 5 years ago or 500 years ago. The germinal idea, the conspiracy that drives the plot is genuine, which is more than can be said for other novelists who write in the religious thriller genre. More importantly, however, the book raises cultural issues that we as a nation are grappling with. How we address them will define us as a people and shape our own history.  I look forward to interacting with readers about these issues on this blog. 

Keep Reading! Only two things will change you - the books you read and the people you meet.