Hagia Sophia is almost certain to be declared a mosque soon. As I explain below, this is an integral part of Erdogan’s desire to restore the Ottoman caliphate. European leaders seem neither to know or care about the significance and implications of that.
“Top Court Declares Hagia Sophia a Mosque,” by Jules Gomes, Church Militant, July 9, 2020:
ISTANBUL (ChurchMilitant.com) – In a historic verdict, Turkey’s top court has returned the world’s greatest Byzantine basilica to its previous status as a mosque after it abolished President Atatürk’s 1934 decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum.
Turkey’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, reached a unanimous verdict declaring that president Kemal Atatürk’s cabinet had no right to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum as part of his secularist reforms and has rendered the decision unlawful.
The court is expected to deliver its judgment Friday, but Turkish journalist Mehmet Ardıç, a close advisor of the current radical Islamic president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, broke the news Wednesday. “The countdown has begun,” he tweeted.
Numan Kurtulmuş, deputy chairman of Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), told Turkish media that on July 15, or even earlier, Hagia Sophia will be opened as a mosque “for prayer.” The ruling was also confirmed by the popular Turkish history Twitter channel Ottoman Records.
A Sign of Continued Jihad?
Emperor Justinian the Great dedicated the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople to the Wisdom of God in 537. Sultan Mohammed II conquered Constantinople and converted the basilica into a mosque in 1453.
Speaking to Church Militant, world-renowned Islamic historian Robert Spencer pointed out that under the radical Islamic rule of president Erdoğan, the ruling was not at all surprising.
“The Ottoman caliphate conquered and subjugated the Christian East, and waged jihad warfare against Christian Europe for centuries. Western Christians would be naïve to assume that Erdoğan doesn’t have jihad in mind as part of the agenda of his revived caliphate,” Spencer said.
The author of bestselling The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS slammed Pope Francis for his deafening silence on Turkey’s takeover of what was once a Catholic basilica: “Centuries ago, popes of Rome stood in the forefront of efforts to galvanize Europe into resistance to the Ottoman attempts at jihad conquest and Islamization.”
“By contrast, Pope Francis, who has said nothing about the impending re-Islamization of Hagia Sophia, will likely open the gates and welcome in the invaders, while shaming Christians who thought any opposition was warranted,” Spencer lamented.
The Islamic scholar also explained why the re-conquest of Hagia Sophia was inevitable as a consequence of Islamic theology of sacred space: “Islamic theology holds that once Islamic prayers have been said in a structure, it is a mosque.”
Spencer elaborated:
Most famously, when Mehmet the Conqueror entered Hagia Sophia on May 29, 1453, he brought with him a Muslim cleric who chanted the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, from the pulpit. That act made Hagia Sophia a mosque. Accordingly the Charter of Fatih of Sultan Mehmet cannot be altered, not only because it states that it cannot, but because in the Islamic understanding, no secular law can overrule the truths of Islam.
“If Hagia Sophia became a mosque, it is always a mosque,” Spencer stated.
Turkey’s Council of State began hearing the case on July 2 and announced that a decision would be made within 15 days, Church Militant earlier reported. Sources say the court reached its decision in 17 minutes….