What Turkey says to the world on the occasion of Hagia Sophia

As expected, the reopening of the Hagia Sophia for worship set many debates in motion at once, not only in Turkey but all over the world. Of course, it was expected that this step would stir certain feelings in certain quarters and that they would rage.

It is no surprise that those who try to raise an uproar as though the Hagia Sophia were a church yesterday and converted into a mosque today see, or try to present, this as an expression of Muslim bigotry and persecution of Christians. We have in any case grown used to the fact that in all the wars in the Middle East, while those slaughtered today with Western weapons, interventions and plots are all Muslims, those subjected to the label of "terrorist" and the label of "bigots lacking tolerance" are again Muslims. It could not be expected that Western propaganda, which with all its hypocrisy has accustomed us and the world to this contradiction, would at first perceive or receive the reality regarding the Hagia Sophia in any other way.

But there is also a Pandora's box whose lock has been opened by taking this step. As President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed in his speech at 20:53 on the very evening this decision was taken, the taking of this step, that is, "the resurrection of the Hagia Sophia is the expression that we, as the Turkish Nation, Muslims and all humanity, have new words to say to the world."

That whole speech was like a genuine Muslim manifesto of human rights, freedoms and resurrection. But among the answers that could be given to the question "What is the Hagia Sophia an expression of?", among answers each more meaningful than the last, this was, in my view, the most vital.

The debates that merely the taking of the Hagia Sophia step has caused in the world, and the historical data and facts that have begun to emerge on this occasion and been put before the eyes and attention of the world, explain very well what this statement means.

Over the Hagia Sophia decision, while the whole world was floating in its own ideological heedlessness, it suddenly began to learn how the Muslim world in history treated churches, synagogues, Buddhist and Hindu temples, and in the meantime the people who worshipped in those temples and believed in the religions to which those temples belong. As it knows and learns this, the Western world has had, has, or will have the chance to see how, in return, it has treated people of other religions throughout history. As debates on the Hagia Sophia intensify, this comparative history of civilization and belief is coming up on the agenda far more, with all its data, its striking examples, its history, its patterns of behavior, and the nature of the belief in which all these examples and data are rooted will begin to be questioned.

For example, granted that Muslims converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, but from what condition did they convert it into a church? What was done to the churches in Istanbul, won by war and conquered, other than the Hagia Sophia? What was done to the Christian peoples who wanted to continue at those churches, who wanted to perform their worship? The Hagia Sophia will have drawn attention precisely to this Muslim practice of conquest and will deliver the most striking universal messages to humanity about today.

The Hagia Sophia is not a matter of settling today an account that belongs to history and should stay there. It is a matter of reviving the values within it that will benefit the present day and all humanity and shed light in a positive sense.

It shows the possibility of binding to a law, while respecting human diversity without distinction of race, religion, language, color, world peace, pluralism and multiculturalism.

In essence, the Hagia Sophia was not converted into a mosque from a church that was active even at the time Istanbul was conquered. It is in any case a work that Fatih, having found it in a ruined state and deprived of its congregation, repaired and virtually rebuilt and made a mosque. The Hagia Sophia, which had earlier been devastated by Catholic raids, was almost on the point of collapse from neglect. Everyone needs to know that Fatih revived the Hagia Sophia and made it a mosque.

Despite this, of course, on this very occasion nearly everyone is learning by heart that the conversion of a church with an active congregation into a mosque is not an Islamic practice.

This is precisely a clear word that Turkey and all Muslims can say to the world today.

In Greece, which has taken to the role of victim because of this toward Turkey, there were hundreds of mosques until only a hundred years ago, not so long ago. Thanks to the Hagia Sophia step, everyone is obliged to ask: What is there now in the places of those mosques? Let us say: all of them were either burned, demolished or converted into churches, by force, with their congregations subjected to genocide or expelled. Thank God, such a practice cannot be found in the history of any Islamic society. The Hagia Sophia decision reveals the meaning carried by the fact that today there is not a single mosque in Athens.

Let it not be misunderstood; let it not be supposed that we are giving prize to a revanchist pleasure because of this revelation. On the contrary, we are speaking of a revelation that underlines the word we, as Muslims and Turkey, have to say to the world on this occasion.

On the occasion of the Hagia Sophia decision, the vast Muslim tolerance and justice displayed when Jerusalem was conquered first by Umar and then by Saladin Ayyubi come onto the agenda.

What took place in that same Jerusalem before the Muslims and during the Crusader occupations will inevitably be known by comparison. People, in today's merciless, compassionless world that is blind with racism yet equally seeks mercy, will read these examples with sparkling eyes and trembling hearts.

On the occasion of the Hagia Sophia decision, Turkey and Muslims have much to say to the world. There is a mercy and justice that Muslims will carry to today's merciless, unjust world. But part of what is to be said will be said precisely to the so-called Muslim world.

What the Hagia Sophia decision says to the Muslim world that today devours itself, let us say that in the next article.