News Update: The Hagia Sophia’s status as a museum has been revoked, and on Friday President Erdogan signed a decree ordering that Muslim prayers be resumed in the ancient place of worship.
Conservatives in Turkey have asserted that Turkey has too long been unnecessarily deferential toward the West and its values and that Turkey should reclaim the Hagia Sophia as part of its identity.
I hope you’ll check out the post I wrote in 2010, in which I noticed my own powerful — and mixed — feelings about the transformation of the Hagia Sophia from a Christian basilica to a Muslim mosque, way back in the 15th century.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I’m worried. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to turn the venerable Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.
Originally a Christian basilica, the famed architectural wonder has been a secular museum since 1935. But now, Erdogan and his supporters are pushing to turn Istanbul’s popular tourist attraction back into a functioning mosque.
Completed in 537, the Hagia Sophia was a Byzantine Christian basilica until 1453, when the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople and Sultan Mehmet II ordered the church transformed into a mosque.
From the Archives: Hagia Sophia. Where Christianity and Islam Meet — And Clash
Today, millions of visitors wait in line each year to visit the Hagia Sophia (HI-yah so-FEE-yah). Some come for its historical and architectural interest.
For others, it’s an important symbol of religious reconciliation for Christians and Muslims dating back to 1935, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the secular Republic of Turkey, converted the building into a museum and had many of its ancient Christian features restored to view.
Erdogan and his conservative Muslim allies want to reverse some of those 20th-century secular traditions, including the religion-neutral status of the Hagia Sophia.
And that worries me. If the Hagia Sophia becomes a functioning mosque again, what will become of its Christian artifacts? Will tourists and the Christian faithful be barred from entry? Will this this beautiful, soaring space become, once again, the scene of religious strife?
If Erdogan has his way, it might. I’m worried about the Hagia Sophia.
One more thought: I’m not so much opposed to Muslim prayers being held at the Hagia Sophia as I am concerned that, under Erdogan, its Christian history will be further repressed, and that further strife might ensue.
It might be most respectful of the place’s history to have both Muslim and Christian services take place there. The museum format actually felt and feels antiseptic to me. It sterilizes and secularizes the building instead of continuing it as a sacred space.
Reading your chapter on what religions can learn from each other where one conclusion was nothing… As a mosque it would go back to being a religious building rather than a museum. Would that please God? Can non-Muslim’s still visit a mosque?
An article in today’s New York Times is saying that, for now, it looks like non-Muslims will still be able to visit the Hagia Sophia. The building is really, really old (!) and is in need of constant maintenance. Money from visitors will be sorely needed, I suspect.
I wonder whether the powers-that-be in Turkey would permit Christian services to be held there — that would carry on the Hagia Sophia’s 20th-century interfaith character.
Conservatives in Turkey argue that Turkey has been too deferential toward the West and what they perceive as the West’s secularism. They feel Turkey should reassert its history, culture and identity. But I would say to that: Christianity was a powerful element in Turkey’s early (Byzantine) history, and perhaps today’s Orthodox Christians should be able to worship in a building originally conceived by their ancestors.
What does God think? I’m betting God thinks the Hagia Sophia is one of humanity’s nicest creations and that God likes spending time there as much the various humans do.
Meredith. Right — that’s religion scholar Huston Smith saying in my book, “Wrestling With God,” that each religion –“revelation” — is complete within itself. Islam does not need input from Christianity, nor Christianity from Buddhism, etc.
Smith practiced a number of different religions over the course of his life and studies, but at the end he concluded that most of us would be best off going deeper into our respective wisdom traditions and submitting to their particular disciplines — rather than slithering out from under the spiritual and moral accountability the various traditions all seem to ask of their adherents.
(Readers can find more about my book at https://WrestlingWithGodBook.com)