There are reports that the Great Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is going to be turned into a mosque.
This has hit me rather like a sudden blow in the belly.
PF has great experience of the rituals of kissing Orthodox hierarchs and asking to be blessed by them. This is the time for him to show solidarity by speaking out. He did, in the early days of his pontificate, bravely speak out about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. He is, or once was, capable of it.
In our own Western lands, few things would do more to improve cultural relations than if the leaders of our own Islamic communities were to say, very loudly, NOT IN MY NAME.
Another eloquent gesture would be for those sponsoring an "Abrahamic House" in the Middle East to build the Christian component in that complex as a replica of Hagia Sophia.
Yes; PF did protest!! Good for him.
Next question: the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayyeb, with whom PF signed that syncretistic document last year: has he protested against the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque? I can't find any such protest in the Media ... has anybody else seem a relevant news item? Or, indeed, has anybody seen any reports of Islamic leaders anywhere rising in solidarity with their Christian 'partners in dialogue'?
Why so silent, brothers? Our ears are twitching with expectation.
Why do think it should not be returned to sacred use?
ReplyDeleteYou mean worshipping Jesus.
DeleteIt is being returned to the worship of a god who is not God. A baal. Such worship is sacrilegious, not sacred.
DeleteOur Pope and Our Cross has been silent as scores of thousands of his Flock have been slaughtered by they adepts of Islam.
ReplyDeleteABS expects he will show-up for the ceremonial change, speaking abut peace etc.
The west, especially our Catholic Hierarchy (see Firenze's approval of a mosque) never, ever, ever acts like the One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church by only agreeing to let foreign and phony religions build their houses of worship in Catholic lands until those lands approve construction and protection of a Catholic Church the same size in their lands
ReplyDeleteNotable silence from PF and Vatican in contrast to Greece, Russia and various Orthodox hierarchs.
Dear Mr Lash
ReplyDeleteI can only make sense of your comment on the hypothesis that something is missing. I do wish that people who desire to comment ... especially when their comments are terse one-liners ... would check through what they have written before pressing the button. I suggest that this counts as "Courtesy".
‘It’ refers to the former mosque (and former church), John.
ReplyDeleteDear Maureen Lash. I think Fr Hunwicke was referring to the missing subject of the question, the third, absent, word. A pronoun, which, whether I, you, or they, would render three quite differing questions.
DeleteDear Maureen Lash. I think Fr Hunwicke was referring to the missing subject of the question, the third, absent, word. A pronoun, which, whether I, you, or they, would render three quite differing questions.
DeleteI am afraid that we cannot take seriously the comments of somebody who attaches that photograph to their profile. Well, I, at least, an unable to do so.
ReplyDeleteMrs Lash what one opposes is not the return of Hagia Sohphia to sacred use. Alas, that is not happening. When Atatürk became Turkey's first president he had it turned into a museum. He sensibly created a secular state.
The current dubiously elected president of Turkey whilst not directly turning it into an Islamist state is most definitely stirring up the Islamists. To please this constituency he has turned Hagia Sophia from being a museum to being a mosque, that is, a place of worship for a false religion. It was originally the Church of the Holy Wisdom and the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch.
From the Islamic Society of North America...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.goarch.org/-/official-statement-isna
Dan I read the statement they issued and was pleasantly surprised. My question: what percentage of Muslims do they represent. and is this a relatively new movement in Islam ?
ReplyDeleteI think a thought experiment might be of value here. It grieves some Roman Catholics in this country that Canterbury Cathedral is now a Protestant church. Would turning it into a museum so that no one could pray in it assuage their grievance? If Notre Dame de Paris had remained a secular building from the time of the Revolution, would there not be considerable excitement and joy if it was announced that mass could once again be celebrated there?
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in Turkey there is someone very like John Hunwicke. Let’s call him Jahja Hunvik efendi. He is a retired Imam, who once was a school chaplain, then an Imam in rural Thrace, then more latterly the imam of a historic mosque in an ancient city like Konya. He writes an entertaining blog and has a devoted following in Turkey and the Balkans. Can you feel the frustration he must have felt that a great imperial mosque in Istanbul, with its Mihrab and Mimbar still in place and its great escutcheons bearing the holy nameS of God and His prophets is full of badly dressed and disrespectful tourists and that he is not allowed to bow down in prayer there? Can you feel his joy now, and the rapture with which he is writing his blog now, in anticipation that the call to prayer will once again sound forth from the minarets on Friday 24yh July?