The Hagia Sophia "mosque" was a Christian orthodox church that dates from Roman times and was a secular museum from the 1930s until 2020. That decision to reclassify as a mosque is widely condemned by historians and others.
Another tidbit: Hagia Sophia can be translated to english as Saint Sofia. It is pronounced in Turkish as Aya Sofia. Aya is from an arabic word that means "sign" like sign of god (similar to "aya"-tullah in Iran). The similarity between "Hagia" and "Aya" is so strong as though it follows the concept of changing the "j" sound to "h" or "y" sound. When applying that same rule to "Ayatollah", you could basically translate the word to "Saint of God". Every time I think of this, it gives me the jitters.
I have to say, I'm seeing this kind of "byzantine fake news" more and more on HN threads related to Islamic history.
My understanding is that: (a) the three big Abrahamic religions all place the most emphasis on worshiping as a congregation on different days and (b) among each group, a minority of people who identify with the label actually go to worship with a congregation regularly. Would it really be _so_ bad if you had one big fancy palace which switched from hosting Muslims on Friday, Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday and could be a museum / community space / charity space Mon-Thurs?
As for an interfaith building, it's an interesting thought. There might be issues with ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, and events. There is the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, but it's not a single building. I thought something like this might exist in Jerusalem, but I couldn't find any..
1. Muslims, Christians, and Jews view each other as disbelievers.
2. Mosques, and I assume churches and synagogues (I'm less familiar) do act as community and charity spaces.
3. Making a museum out of a place built for the worship and glorification of God is extremely offensive.
4. Mosques, and I assume churches and synagogues are not only used on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.
5. Your cariciature only makes sense if you view faith as a hobby to be set aside once you leave the mosque/church/synagogue gates, an ardently secular worldview at odds with faith.
The Visigoth Kingdom was completely wiped out by Muslim invaders.
It didn't happen by some committee decision, but mostly by killing everybody involved with the old version. That's an important detail.
The Hagia Sophia was indeed a church. The Hagia Sophia was also indeed a museum. The reconversion into a Mosque was also widely criticized.
>What exactly is "false" or "fake news" about the parent comment? All three sentences...to me. The...museum...was also widely criticized.
Lying by omission is still lying. Context matters.
Thank you!
What the article's author wrote is fine. The Hagia Sophia was a mosque for about five hundred years. It is a mosque today. The last time it was a church is the 15th century. It is perfectly fine to mention a famous mosque in an article about mosques without getting into its (literally) ancient history.
pirate787, on the other hand, deliberately hid its long history as a mosque in service of proving a point.
Last time I was there a few years ago I recall there's a small section near one of the lower galleries off to the side that has been reopened for use as a sort-of-mosque but it's the size of a couple double wide trailers and not really part of the main structure as people think of it. It might be a test of the waters to see how far they can go but I promise you, money will trump religion in this case no question about it.
https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/istanbul/istanbuls-reverte...
It's still aggressively available to the public, but you're not going to see much of the pre-Ottoman era inside.
Did they cover up the frescoes in the pendentives of the main dome that depict the (very much non-human looking) seraphim?
They converted it to a mosque in 2020.