The Hagia Sophia is a museum now, although it does host some Islamic prayer. It was originally a cathedral, then was turned into a mosque when Constantinople fell to the warriors of jihad on May 29, 1453. In The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, I detail what happened on that day. The Byzantine scholar Bessarion wrote to the Doge of Venice two months after the conquest, in July 1453, saying that Constantinople had been
…sacked by the most inhuman barbarians and the most savage enemies of the Christian faith, by the fiercest of wild beasts. The public treasure has been consumed, private wealth has been destroyed, the temples have been stripped of gold, silver, jewels, the relics of the saints, and other most precious ornaments. Men have been butchered like cattle, women abducted, virgins ravished, and children snatched from the arms of their parents.
So much for the much-vaunted Islamic “tolerance” in Europe.
“Hagia Sophia might be reverted to a mosque, Erdoğan says,” Daily Sabah, March 24, 2019:
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday voiced the possibility of reverting the Hagia Sophia, which has been used as a museum since 1935 and is considered one of the world’s wonders, to a mosque.
“This is not unlikely. We might even change its name to Ayasofya Mosque,” Erdoğan said during a live interview with Turkish broadcaster TGRT.
“This is not a strange proposal,” he said regarding the calls to convert the historical building to serve the purpose it did for half a millennium.
“As you know, the mosque was converted to a museum in 1935, as a reflection of the (Republican People’s Party) CHP mentality. We may as well take a step and change that,” he concluded, pointing to the harshly secularist policies of the 1930s CHP, which is the main opposition today….
In 2015, a cleric recited the Quran inside the building, a UNESCO World Heritage site, for the first time in 85 years. The following year, Turkey’s religious authority began hosting and broadcasting religious readings during the holy month of Ramadan and the call to prayer was recited inside on the anniversary of the first revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him).