www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Turkey turning Hagia Sophia into mosque

https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/06/...a-will-return-to-its-origin-as-a-mosque/

Turkey’s Justice Minister made bizarre claims that Hagia Sophia’s origins are as a mosque.

The Justice Minister then explained that in the first week of July, a court hearing will be heard on whether the Hagia Sophia, currently a museum, should be converted into a mosque.

He revealed that the courts decision will be rendered within 15 days, suggesting that it is virtually predetermined that the court will rule that Hagia Sophia should be converted into a mosque.

Christ is in our midst!!

More Muslim fantasy. The thing that inflames them is asking what religion Mohammad practiced BEFORE he received is "revelations." Even more so when one brings up the list of things that people have gathered about his notorious lifestyle.

Bob

The mosque-ing of Hagia Sophia seems to be coinciding with the masking of America.

This is serious. Think about it.

I've thought and I'm still thinking about this one. Hagia Sophia was "mosqued" long before America was settled by Europeans. The venerable structure received museum status in more recent times. Would you explain the connection you perceive between the threatened reversal and the national and international response to a pandemic? Though plagued by all kinds of assaults and conquests, Rome and the Vatican have been a little luckier than poor Constantinople. Even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Such is life.

NYT article [nytimes.com]

The deed is done. 😡

So yes, I will agree with Erdogan that it is their country and they can do whatever they like.

On the other hand, it is a sign, and not a good one. It is a sign of growing Islamization of Turkey, which was founded as a secular country by Kemal Ataturk after the break up of the old Ottoman Empire. Increasingly, I am told by secular Istanbulians, that they no longer have a voice. There is no more freedom of press, and some journalists who even westerners enjoyed reading in newspapers like Hurryiet are no longer writing, if not jailed.

It is also a sign, when you see Muslims in Turkey and around the world cheering this move, that the concepts of 'conquering' and 'triumph' have not left the Islamic psyche in respect to Christians and in respect to this church. The only difference is that this is no longer the middle ages when conquering and taking the 'spoils of war' were a thing !!

All this is especially worrisome for our Patriarch Bartholomew and other Christians who reside in Turkey...Our new American Archbishop, Elpidophoros, is a Turkish citizen and grew up there of a Lebanese/Greek parentage. He is openly upset about it. The Pope, Francis, also has expressed that he finds this 'painful'...

It is worrisome in that this is one more move on the part of the Turkish President to revive the Ottoman era mentality which he seems to long for...not to mention provocative moves and speeches of political nature towards Greece, and which have poor little Greece on edge.

All I can say is **sigh**....All happens according to God's will.

Christ is in our midst!!

This is another sign of the End Times when Christian symbols and property are desecrated openly and we have human beings celebrating. This morning I was sent a picture of a statute of the Mother of God that had been decapitated in a Catholic church by vandals. Statues of St. Junipero Serra have been toppled in CA and elsewhere. Holy Wisdom has become a mosque.

But these are "things," which can be replaced or abandoned. It is our faith in Christ that no one can take from us or desecrate in our heats.

Bob