14/07/2020
HAGIA SOPHIA and ISLAMOPHOBIA
It is hilarious that people in Pakistan, celebrity turned saints, influencers, rights activists are howling over the Turkish court verdict to turn back Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque. Questions are being raised such as Abu Bakar (RA), Umar bin Al Khatab (RA) and other Sahaba did not convert churches into mosques but rather they protected the sanctity of the places of worship of other faiths. Irony being that a mosque was illegally converted into a museum by Mustafa Kamal Ata Turk, even though Sultan Mehmet the conqueror of Constantinople legally converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque, buying it for a specific price as proven in historical documents. There were numerous churches in the Ottoman empire, the state protected them and did not convert s single church into a mosque.
Does not Turkish sovereignty, independence of state and judiciary matter ? If the Turkish people and media support this, celebrate it as their victory, all of it in the environs of a democratic system, who are we to condemn it ? Turkey did not sn**ch away the relgious freedom of any community, people of other faiths can worship freely in their churches, temples or synagogues. People of all faiths are allowed to continue visiting Hagia Sophia without any charges.
It was not even a church when Turkish courts took this decision or even when Erdogan promised to convert it back into a mosque. Had the building been a church, temple or synagogue there would have been room for outcry but it seems that it is important for a segment of the society to give this decision a religious-extremist color. Some are even giving it sectarian colors claiming Turkey to be fundamentalist Sunni state and that Shia’s would have not done this .
When Jerusalem is declared as Israil’s capital there is no such unwarranted international and local outcry. Spain, where Muslims ruled for around 800 years converted most of the mosques into churches and something similar also happened in Greece too but there was no outcry or hue against that, instead we buy tickets to visit these places, cheerfully to remember our golden past and eminent position. (That does not mean at all that one should convert churches to mosques to avenge anything)
The society is being radicalized and polarized by these propagandists . At the same time the policies of our democratically elected governments such as poor education institutions , no uniform syllabus and gross inequality has allowed this section of the society to exploit us and create divisions. It is sad to see the dismal state of our society.
NOTE: Sahaba did not use internet, nor they did write tweets or statuses. There was no mic or speaker in the mosques in Sahaba’s time, yet we use them today in our mosques. It is hightime we stop using, abusing religion only to serve our purpose.