Welcome to Turkey, Your Holiness

Dear Pope Francis,

As I as writing these lines, your plane was about to land in Ankara. As an ordinary Turk, and a Muslim, I just wanted to wish you welcome, and share some thoughts about Turkey, Islam, and, if you don't mind, even about your mission.

As we all know, the Muslim world is not going through the best of times. Rather, it is going through the worst of times. The underdevelopment of Muslim countries, in almost all areas of life, is made much worse by the zealots who kill or oppress people in the name of Islam. They threaten not just Christians or Westerners, but many of us as well.

Yet the world should understand why these zealots exist. The secular mind often has a hard time in grasping the nature of the challenge, therefore often concluding, "religion is the problem." Yet the very history of your own institution, the Holy See, is a correction to such simplistic views. There have been times when the Catholic Church, a bit like the militant Islamists of today, launched holy wars on "infidels" and punished "heretics" in brutal ways. But the same Catholic Church today opens soup kitchens for the poor and provides healthcare for children. The very history of your faith, in other words, proves that religion can be a force for both good and evil.

Therefore, the big question for Islam today is how we will defeat, or transform, the Muslim zealots, and re-establish Islam as power for peace, liberty and compassion. At this point, the experience of your faith, and the evolution of its doctrine, can be an eye-opener for my fellow Muslims. What was achieved in the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s was commendable, as your admirable efforts to extend the church's sympathy to formerly excluded groups such as gays and atheists. It...