Hagia Sophia, the mirror of our world…

With the restoration of Hagia Sophia's status as a mosque by Presidential Decree, yet another very important one of the dark clouds that have hung over the Islamic world for 86 years has dispersed. Our Prophet (SAV), who gave the glad tidings of the conquest of Istanbul, said what a fine, what a good commander the commander who would make that conquest would be, and what a fine army the army under his command would be. Indeed, the feelings that our President's decree awakened in me made the words pour from my tongue at first: "What a fine leader is the leader who broke the chains upon Hagia Sophia, and what a fine nation is this nation that stood behind him with its patience, its prayers and its support."

The deprivation of Hagia Sophia of its status as a mosque was in fact a chain struck upon this nation. The treatment accorded to Hagia Sophia was not a treatment that anyone who carries even a little feeling of independence on behalf of this nation would accept.

Let us admit that this was a situation that must be assessed together with the conditions to which the country was subjected at the end of the First World War. The conspicuous feature of this situation is that Muslims were left leaderless and unrepresented in world politics. There was not a single state, or any political mechanism, left to represent the vast Islamic world.

None of the states established on Ottoman lands had any concern called Islam. In any case, all of these states were states designed and had established together with the occupiers so as not to leave room for any concern called Islam. Turkey, too, by abolishing the caliphate of its own will, withdrew from the claim of leading and representing the Islamic world. This decision itself, viewed in terms of the country's political and economic benefit, was a decision that could not be fitted into any rationality.

The question of what kind of necessity could have underlain resigning from the position that made Turkey the leader and center of a world, and consenting to shrink, if it was not a choice, need not be answered today. For the question itself contains its answer sufficiently.

And Hagia Sophia constitutes precisely the enigma contained within this question. It is a situation expressing the seizing up of the Turkish and Muslim mind, the locking of its will, the rising of the walls around it. I would say it was like a wailing wall for Muslims, but that would not fit very well. Truthfully, I do not find it healthy at all for Muslim consciousness to remain constantly stuck in the past, to constantly carry grievances from the events of history into the present, and to carry responsibilities or roles from these grievances onto the people of today. The Muslim's historical consciousness is oriented not to the past but to the future. It focuses not on blood feuds and feelings of revenge but on establishing the management of the future, in its most positive form, on a plane in which today's actors are held to account by their actions today. For no one bears anyone else's sin or reward.

From the greatness, loftiness and goodness of our ancestors, a share falls to us only if we, too, adopt the same values and display the same stance. Otherwise, our going on clinging to a rhetoric of "ancestors", though we are not at all worthy of it, does not cover our shortcomings of today, does not remove our faults, does not make up for our deficiencies. It is not our glorious ancestors but we, today, with our effort, who will cover the distances to be traveled.

Today we need to see that the Hagia Sophia decision is not merely a simple decree. What made this decision possible was a consciousness and a will that was not content with consolation by leaning only on a rhetoric of glorious ancestors. Behind this decision lies Turkey's having the power and resolve to assume responsibility for this matter before the whole world.

For that reason, in this decision there is not simply the conversion of a Hagia Sophia into a mosque; there is also a translation of the state of affairs of the Islamic world. The President, who had the honor of signing the decision, expresses this very well when he says, in the speech he made the same day, "The resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the harbinger of the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

We had earlier described Jerusalem as the mirror of our world. Whatever state the world is in, Jerusalem is in that state, or vice versa. In fact, the same can be said of Hagia Sophia. The condition of Hagia Sophia reflects the state of our world. Therefore the resurrection of Hagia Sophia today is, again as the President says, "the rekindling of the fire of hope not only of Muslims but, together with them, of all the oppressed, the aggrieved, the downtrodden and the exploited... It is an expression that we, as the Turkish nation, as Muslims and as all of humanity, have new words to say to the world."

That not only the AK Parti and MHP communities but all segments of Turkish society greeted the opening of Hagia Sophia with great enthusiasm in fact both made the President's task easier and showed how unifying an element this issue is for Turkey. Apart from the attitudes of some deputies or affiliated persons, the generally positive official stance of the CHP also reflects exactly the dimensions of the social response to the matter.

As for the enthusiasm with which this decision was received in the Islamic world, it must be described separately. In this regard, although the attitudes of the media subject to some Arab states were as expected, we can say that this step was received with very great enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, we can say that the debates opened over the conversion of Hagia Sophia from a church to a mosque and over its Islamic ruling are merely anachronistic.

Those debates were debates that had to be held in 1453, and were held and are past.

Today no decision was made converting it from a church into a mosque.

What is at stake now is the lifting of the chains struck upon it, which are an expression of our condition and have an effect on our condition. It is a matter of restoring a structure that has been a mosque for 567 years. Of course the other debate cannot be left unheld either. But let us also say that even that debate cannot be held without sinking into an anachronism.

In the end we must hold this debate by remaining within our history, and we must also know it.

"The resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the symbol of our resolve to protect the trusts of our martyrs and veterans, if necessary at the cost of our lives."

May it be blessed. Praise be to God.