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Greatest Church Soon To Be Mega Mosque?
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Ostensibly dealing with a building, a recent
report demonstrates how Turkey's populace—once deemed the most secular and
liberal in the Muslim world—is reverting to its Islamic heritage, complete
with animosity for the infidel West and dreams of Islam's glory days of jihad
and conquest. According to Reuters:
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.
Hagia Sophia—Greek for "Holy
Wisdom"—was, in fact, Christendom's greatest cathedral for a thousand
years. Built 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,
Ataturk transformed Hagia Sophia into a "neutral" museum in 1934—a
gesture of goodwill to the then triumphant West from a then crestfallen Turkey.
Even though Hagia Sophia is a Christian
center under Islamic domination, several Christian authorities are content
seeing it remain a museum, including the Ecumenical Patriarchate, spiritual
leader of Orthodox Christians: "We want it to remain a museum in line with
the Republic of Turkey's principles," adding, "if it became a
church it would be chaos."
True enough; one need only recall how back in
2006, when Pope Benedict was scheduled to visit Hagia Sophia, Muslims were
outraged. Then, Turkey's independent paper Vatan wrote: "The risk
is that Benedict will send Turkey's Muslims and much of the Islamic world
into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the Pope is trying to
re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims." Before the
Pope's visit, a gang of Turks stormed and occupied Hagia Sophia, screaming
"Allahu Akbar!" and warning "Pope! Don't make a mistake; don't
wear out our patience." On the day of the Pope's visit, another throng
of Islamists waved banners saying "Pope get out of Turkey" while
chanting Hagia Sophia "is Turkish and will remain Turkish."
All this is yet another reminder of the
Islamic world's double standards: when Muslims conquer non-Muslim
territories, such as Constantinople and its churches—through fire and steel,
with all the attendant human suffering and misery—the descendents of those
conquered are not to expect any apologies or concessions. However, once the
same Muslims who would never concede one inch of Islam's conquests, including
buildings, are on the short end of the stick—Palestinians vis-à-vis Israel,
for example—then they resort to the United Nations and the court of public
opinion, demanding justice, restitutions, rights, and so forth. (See this
2006 LA
Times Op-Ed for more on this theme.)
Even in the brief Reuter's report, evidence
of such "passive-aggressive" behavior emerges. First, this is not
about Muslims wanting to pray; it's about Muslims wanting to revel in the
glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest: 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."
Sultan Mehmet was the scourge of European
Christendom, whose Islamic hordes seized and ravished Constantinople,
forcibly turning it Islamic. Openly idolizing him, as many Turks do, is
tantamount to their saying "We are proud of our ancestors who killed and
stole the lands of Christians." And yet, despite such militant
overtones, Turhan, whose position is echoed by many Turks, still manages to
blame the West: "Keeping Hagia Sophia Mosque closed is an insult to our
mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolizes our ill-treatment by
the West."
If merely keeping a historically
Christian/Western building—that was stolen by Islamic jihad—as a neutral
museum is seen as "ill-treatment by the West," on what basis can
Muslims and non-Muslims ever "dialogue"?
Raymond Ibrahim
is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate
Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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