I guess the UN wouldn't be interested...
Posted on 05/17/2012 7:42:13 PM PDT by marshmallow
A group calling itself the Anatolian Youth has announced that it is planning to hold Friday prayers in the square outside the Hagia Sophia, and is awaiting the day when prayers will be held inside the museum, Doğan news agency has reported.
The group's members gathered at Hagia Sophia Square today to hold a press conference, saying the event was planned in accordance with the 559th anniversary of the Ottoman capture of Istanbul.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaticaninsider.lastampa.it ...
I guess the UN wouldn't be interested...
So this is a Muslim group praying that they’ll be able to pray inside the Hagia Sophia, which apparently is now a museum, rather than in the square?
What’s strange about this for me is that I thought it had been used as a mosque for quite some time, like since the 15th century when the Ottomans took it over. They must have turned it into a museum only fairly recently.
If you watch From Russia with Love a scene is shot there with a tour guide talking about it’s history. So at least since 1963 when the movie was released.
As you, I thought this church had been turned into a mosque hundreds of years ago!
Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern, secular Turkish Republic, in 1935.
According to wiki it stopped being a mosque in 1935 and became a museum in 1943.
Okay, so this is about undoing Ataturk’s secularism.
The Ottoman capture of Istanbul?
you’d almost think they are trying to resurrect the ottoman empire
otherwise known as a caliphate
hmmm... just another piece of crazy conspiracy stuff i heard last year... around 5pm...
nothing to see here... move along...
There is an enormous mosque very close to Hagia Sofia known as the Blue Mosque.
In other words they have no need of a mosque there, the purpose is only to symbolically crush Christianity.
You got that absolutely right.
Turkey is being sucked down into the sewer of Islamism. Too bad, the Turks I knew were pro-Western, cosmopolitan, skeptical about Islam, and anxious to be accepted as European. And did they ever hate the Arabs!
Fat chance now. It’s 1453 A.D. all over again. Arm yourselves, my fellow “infidels”.
This is a real treasure from the good old days.
On the other hand it's been hit by earthquakes pretty seriously more than once and portions have had to be rebuilt. Once they more or less knocked the rest of it down and rebuilt it a little bit better than before ~ put in some features that allow it to sway or move around.
Still, no sane person would sleep overnight in the place!
There are BOOKS about the building.
Today there are groups who imagine it can be rehabilitated into an Orthodox Christian Church and others who imagine it can be rehabilitated into a serious Mosque.
Then there are folks who look at its age, its condition, the risk factors, and recognize that the best use for the time being is as a government financed museum!
The modern Orthodox church doesn't have the power it had back in the days of the Byzantine Empire where they can simply command the resources to keep the place pretty and functional as a church. Some time back a Freeper went through the anticipated costs of working this building as a church and it would pretty much bankrupt the Orthodox community, and not just in Turkey but in Greece and Baltimore!
That small group of Moslems aren't fooling anybody either. Operating the building as a mosque would bankrupt most of your more conservative sorts of Islamic sects in Turkey, and probably take down a couple of Arabian oil sheikhdoms as well.
I doubt the Russians are interested in contributing to keeping this up as a church. They have their own rebuilding program underway.
It WAS a mosque for many years, before it was turned into a museum.
“Okay, so this is about undoing Ataturk’s secularism.”
I thought that keeping this as a museum was pretty decent of them, actually. It was the only way to prevent trouble. It’s amazing that the peace has lasted this long.
From what I do remember, it is a big NO-NO for any Christian or Muslim to pray in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
Yep, and I remember reading that it is now a museum and all forms of prayer is forbidden in it.
Yet they know the Christian faith CAN NEVER be crushed, as a matter of fact, in the global south it is growing.
Stuff like this could push the remaining Easten Christians towards looking at full reunion with Rome. The RC Church has Eastern rites branches in its family tree.
Maybe, but the Russian branch probably isn’t going to want to do that. They are a major chunk of Orthodoxy.
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