as well as thousands of other churches<\/em>\u2014was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam surrounding it in triumph.<\/p>\nThen, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, as part of several reforms, secularist Ataturk transformed Hagia Sophia into a \u201cneutral\u201d museum in 1934\u2014a gesture of goodwill to a then triumphant West from a then crestfallen Turkey.<\/p>\n
Thus the fate of this ancient building is full of portents. And according to Hurriyet Daily News, \u201cA parliamentary commission is considering an application by citizens to turn the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Even lesser known is the fact that other historic churches are currently being transformed into mosques, such as\u00a0 a 13th century church building\u2014portentously also named Hagia Sophia\u2014in Trabzon<\/strong>. After the Islamic conquest, it was turned into a mosque.\u00a0 But because of its \u201cgreat historical and cultural significance\u201d for Christians, it too, during Turkey\u2019s 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\nSimilarly, the 5th century Studios Monastery<\/strong>, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is set to become an active mosque.\u00a0 And the existence of the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, 5th century Mor Gabriel Monastery<\/strong> is at risk. Inhabited today by only a few dozen Christians dedicated to learning the monastery\u2019s teachings, the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Jesus and the Orthodox Syriac tradition, neighboring Muslims filed a lawsuit accusing the monks of practicing \u201canti-Turkish activities\u201d and of illegally occupying land which belongs to Muslim villagers.<\/p>\nThe 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\u2014even though Muhammad was born 170 years after the monastery was built.<\/em><\/p>\nTurkey\u2019s Christian minority, including the Orthodox Patriarch, are naturally protesting this renewed Islamic onslaught against what remains of their cultural heritage\u2014to deaf ears.<\/p>\n
The Muslim populace\u2019s 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\u2019s government too \u201csecular.\u201d Their numbers are telling.\u00a0 In May 2012, Reuters reported that<\/p>\n
“Thousands of devout Muslims prayed outside Turkey\u2019s 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, \u201cBreak the chains, let Hagia Sophia Mosque open,\u201d and \u201cGod is great\u201d [the notorious \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d] before kneeling in prayer as tourists looked on. Turkey\u2019s secular laws prevent Muslims and Christians from formal worship within the 6th-century monument, the world\u2019s greatest cathedral for almost a millennium before invading Ottomans converted it into a mosque in the 15th century.”<\/p>\n
Calls to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque is not about Muslims wanting a place to pray\u2014as of 2010, there were 3,000 active mosques in Constantinople alone.<\/em> Rather, it\u2019s about their reveling, and trying to revivify, the glory days of Islamic jihad and conquest<\/strong>: Reuters added that Muslims \u201cstaged the prayers ahead of celebrations next week marking the 559th anniversary of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet\u2019s conquest of Byzantine Constantinople.\u201d<\/strong> According to Salih Turhan, a spokesman quoted by Reuters, \u201cAs the grandchildren of Mehmet the Conqueror, seeking the re-opening Hagia Sophia as a mosque is our legitimate right.\u201d<\/p>\nSultan 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 \u201cWe are proud of our ancestors who killed and stole the lands of European Christians.\u201d<\/strong> And yet, despite such militant overtones, Turhan, whose position is echoed by many Turks, still manages to blame the West: \u201cKeeping Hagia Sophia Mosque closed is an insult to our mostly Muslim population of 75 million. It symbolizes our ill-treatment by the West.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nSo keeping a historically Christian\/Western building\u2014that was stolen by Islamic jihad\u2014as a neutral museum is seen as \u201cill-treatment by the West,\u201d even as Turks continue destroying the nation\u2019s original Christian heritage.<\/strong><\/p>\nAnd the historical revisions continue.\u00a0 Last May 29th, when Turks celebrate the Fall of Constantinople, Erdogan himself declared that the jihadi invasion\u2014which saw countless Christians enslaved, raped, or slaughtered\u2014was the true \u201ctime of enlightenment.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> After showing how Erdogan got it upside down, Ralph Sidway, an Orthodox Christian author,\u00a0 wrote:<\/p>\n“Erdogan and Turkey celebrate the Fall of Constantinople, and the West congratulates them.\u00a0 \u201cWe are continuing to write history today,\u201d says Erdogan, and write it \u2014 or re-write it \u2014 they do, under the somnambulant gaze of craven Western leaders too ignorant, or too fearful, to challenge Islam\u2019s claim to moral superiority, historical righteousness and eventual world domination. By their policies, posture and pronouncements, Western European nations, and the United States, are conceding the future to a rapidly re-Islamicizing Turkey, and are aiding in Islam\u2019s stated goal of a new, global caliphate determined to conquer us, just as it conquered Constantinople 560 years ago.\u00a0 Every Turkish celebration of 29 May 1453 is a gauntlet flung down in challenge to the West.<\/strong> Each such event which goes unanswered and unchallenged by the West is another nail in the coffin of Christian culture, human rights, and free people everywhere.”<\/p>\nIndeed, at a time when Turkey is openly reclaiming its jihadi heritage, Europeans are actively erasing their Christian heritage which for centuries kept the Islamic jihad at bay.<\/p>\n
Among other capitulations, Europeans are currently betraying church buildings to Muslims to convert to mosques and scrubbing references of the historic Turkish jihads against Europe from classroom textbooks, lest Muslim students be offended.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, here are neighboring Turkey\u2019s Muslims openly praising the same jihadi warlords who brutally conquered a portion of Europe centuries ago, converting thousands of churches into mosques, even as they openly prepare to finish the job\u2014which may not even require force, as Europe actively sells its own soul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is an important article on events that show how Turkey returned to a muslim-jihadi past. What the author foresees, has now happened, Haghia Sophia became a mosque… Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam\u2019s New War on Christians. He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[3856,89,3852,220,2817,3855,3858,727,1047,3854,3860],"class_list":["post-1651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greek-history","category-islam","tag-christian-empire","tag-constantinople","tag-david-horowitz-freedom-center","tag-haghia-sophia","tag-holy-wisdom","tag-islamic-conquest","tag-middle-east-forum","tag-ottoman-empire","tag-ottoman-turks","tag-prime-minister-erdogan","tag-wisdom-of-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}