Radical Islam
Christendom’s Greatest Cathedral to Become a Mosque
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 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.
Erdogan
and Turkey celebrate the Fall of Constantinople, and the West
congratulates them. “We are continuing to write history today,” says
Erdogan, and write it — or re-write it — they do, under the somnambulant
gaze of craven Western leaders too ignorant, or too fearful, to
challenge Islam’s 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’s stated goal of a new, global caliphate determined to conquer us, just as it conquered Constantinople 560 years ago. Every
Turkish celebration of 29 May 1453 is a gauntlet flung down in
challenge to the West. 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.
Indeed,
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. 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.
Meanwhile,
here are neighboring Turkey’s 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—which may not even require force, as Europe
actively sells its own soul.
Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians. He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Source: http://www.humanevents.com/?p=92941&preview=true
See the pattern, see the threat. Ignore at your peril.
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