Christendom’s Greatest Cathedral to Become a Mosque

The Hagia Sophia at night.
While unrest in Turkey continues to capture attention, more subtle and more telling events concerning the Islamification of Turkey — and not just at the hands of Prime Minister Erdogan but majorities of Turks — are quietly transpiring. These include the fact that Turkey’s Hagia Sophia museum is on its way to becoming a mosque.
Why does the fate of an old building matter?
Because Hagia Sophia — Greek for “Holy Wisdom” — was for some thousand years Christianity’s greatest cathedral. Built in 537 A.D. in Constantinople, the heart of the Christian empire, it was also a stalwart symbol of defiance against an ever encroaching Islam from the east.
After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts, Constantinople was finally sacked by Ottoman Turks in 1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, Hagia Sophia — as well as thousands of other churches — was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph.
Then, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as part of several reforms, secularist Ataturk transformed Hagia Sophia into a “neutral” museum in 1934 — a gesture of goodwill to a then-triumphant West from a then-crestfallen Turkey.
Thus the fate of this ancient building is full of portents. And according to Hurriyet Daily News, “A parliamentary commission is considering an application by citizens to turn the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque…. A survey conducted with 401 people was attached to the application, in which more than 97 percent of interviewees requested the transformation of the ancient building into a mosque and afterwards for it to be reopened for Muslim worship.”
Even lesser known is the fact that other historic churches are currently being transformed into mosques, such as a 13th century church building — portentously also named Hagia Sophia — in Trabzon. After the Islamic conquest, it was turned into a mosque. But because of its “great historical and cultural significance” for Christians, it too, during Turkey’s secular age, was turned into a museum and its frescoes restored. Yet local authorities recently decreed that its Christian frescoes would again be covered and the church/museum turned into a mosque.
Similarly, the 5th century Studios Monastery, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is set to become an active mosque. And the existence of the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, 5th century Mor Gabriel Monastery, is at risk. Inhabited today by only a few dozen Christians dedicated to learning the monastery’s teachings, the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Jesus, and the Orthodox Syriac tradition, neighboring Muslims filed a lawsuit accusing the monks of practicing “anti-Turkish activities” and of illegally occupying land which belongs to Muslim villagers. The highest appeals court in Ankara ruled in favor of the Muslim villagers, saying the land that had been part of the monastery for 1,600 years is not its property, absurdly claiming that the monastery was built over the ruins of a mosque — even though Muhammad was born 170 years after the monastery was built.
Turkey’s Christian minority, including the Orthodox Patriarch, are naturally protesting this renewed Islamic onslaught against what remains of their cultural heritage — to deaf ears.
The Muslim populace’s role in transforming once Christian sites into mosques is a reminder of all those other Turks not protesting the Islamization of Turkey, and who if anything consider Erdogan’s government too “secular.”
Their numbers are telling. In May 2012, Reuters reported that:
Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey’s historic Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday [May 23] to protest a 1934 law that bars religious services at the former church and mosque. Worshippers shouted, “Break the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open,” and “God is great” [the notorious “Allahu Akbar”] before kneeling in prayer as tourists looked on. Turkey’s secular laws prevent Muslims and Christians from formal worship within the 6th-century monument, the world’s greatest cathedral for almost a millennium before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century.
The desire to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque is not about Muslims wanting a place to pray — as of 2010, there were 3,000 active mosques in Istanbul alone. Rather, it’s about their reveling, and trying to revivify, the glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest: Reuters added that Muslims “staged the prayers ahead of celebrations next week marking the 559th anniversary of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet’s conquest of Byzantine Constantinople.” According to Salih Turhan, a spokesman quoted by Reuters, “As the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right.”








Of far more concern should be the Cordoba Cathedral. Originally built as a Christian church, Spain conquering Muslims transformed it into a mosque for about 800 yrs. Spanish Christians took it back and returned the church to the cathedra. Recently, Muslims once again have asked/demanded to share the worship space to which the Bishopric has refused again.
Bin Laden spoke of the Tragedy of Iberia, in which after seven centuries the people of Spain took their country back from the invaders. So, isn't it time we start speaking of the Tragedy of Anatolia, and take back Constantinople and all Anatolia from the conquerors?
Forget aspiring to always be on the defense: Defense is for those who wish to be conquered. Go on the offense.
Re-Conquer Constantinople and all Anatolia. Then let those who started this war go on the defense.
http://www.meforum.org/3531/syria-iran-stalingrad
"Crusading" Franks sacked Constantinople including Hagia Sophia in 1204 in what turned out to be a blow from which the Byzantine Empire never recoverd. The originals of the bronze horses that adorn St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice once adorned the Hippodrome in Constantinople. There's a good argument that the wealth and talent spirited out of Constantinople and the remains of the Byzantine Empire is what spawned The Renaissance. Certainly it made the Venetians and others wealthy and powerful enough to resist Muslim piracy and most raiding in the Mediterranean and restore trade to a level that built a mercantile class in Europe that had been largely absent since Roman times.
Granted it hasn't been a Christian cathedral since 1453 and was a mosque for most of the time since then, but it is a powerful symbol and in today's "spring-like" climate, I would not be at all surprised if the Muslims destroyed the art if not the structure itself; they have been threatening to tear down the Pyramids of Egypt. And if you think they wouldn't like to turn St. Peter's and the Baptist Church down your street into mosques, you really don't understand Islam.
Europe will succumb to Islam because it has abandoned the Christian faith. Take something away, and something else will come along to replace it. The Marxist schemers who manipulated the abandonment of Christianity had hoped that it would be their malignant ideology that would replace Christianity. Problem is, envy and nihilism don't inspire normal human beings. Religious faith does. So as Christianity has been chased away, another faith has come to take its place.
Try as I might, I can't quite get upset about this, because I know that the Muslims will quite literally exterminate the malignant leftists.
I wish. The Muslim factions are full of Marxists.
Please do keep up with the news, honey.
Really? That's what's getting you worked up?