Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left), Russian President Vladimir Putin (center), and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas attend the opening of the new Moscow Cathedral Mosque in Moscow on September 23.
Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas are in Russia for the opening of the new Moscow Cathedral Mosque.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft are also attending the opening ceremony.
Erdogan — who gave a speech during the ceremony — is due to meet with Putin during his visit to Moscow.
The new mosque was built on the site of the historical Moscow Cathedral Mosque, built in 1904 and controversially torn down in 2011.
The new, six-story mosque will be able to accommodate up to 10,000 worshippers and is the third-largest mosque in Russia after the Grand Mosque in Makhachkala and the Akhmed Kadyrov Mosque in Grozny.
The Moscow Cathedral Mosque’s opening ceremony will occur on the eve of the Eid al-Adha festival, known in Russia as Kurban Bairam.
Islam is the second-largest religion in Russia with an estimated 15 to 23 million followers.
Muslims are a majority in the Russian regions of Adygea, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Daghestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachai-Cherkessia.
Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
Suggested Reading
it has been reported as the largest mosque in Europe
Would there be a possibility of building the largest church anywhere in the muhammadan world? That makes the difference between sanity/maturity on the one hand and insanity/immaturity on the other.
I want to thank Putin for his openness and religious tolerance. If it was still cold war era Obama would need to open a mosque in Washington DC now.
Putin should visit Istanbul for a photo-op in Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. This will be great symbolism for bringing the Muslims and the Christians together.
Answer to Namelee’s question is yes. I will personally donate money for it.
Saudi Arabia’s royal family is a puppet of US; they have demonstrated it often.
So, if a Republican US government really wanted to have a big church in Arabia, they can.
Recently, I read a Hindu temple is being built in UAE.
If the Saudi Arabian government is a puppet of the US, why would it be only the Republican US government that should want to have a big church there? It is either a Democratic government sides with the Saudis to deny the building of churches in their country or it is against churches generally.
Putin’s photo-ops at the Hagia Sophia(does it still answer that name?) will be a befitting reminder of the culture of oppression and intolerance. It is only very recently that the Turkish authorities allowed churches, whose doors had been shut for decades, to reopen them.
Great gesture by Putin to bring the Muslims and the Christians closer into universal brotherhood. One would hope, Nobel Peace Prize committee is paying attention.
I will be very happy to exchange Hagia Sophia for Cordoba Mosque.
The Cordoba mosque was built on the grand Cathedral of that town with its façade and columns redesigned to give a muhammadan bent. The Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela was stripped of its large bells. In the true spirit of ‘muhammadan tolerance’, the vanquished people of that coastal town were made to physically carry the bells to Cordoba where they were used as torches to light the mosque which was once a cathedral.
The people of Cordoba, in another show of muhammadan tolerance, were banished from the town to the outskirt where they were to build their church.
The pattern is all too familiar. When you crave for the Cordoba mosque, just remember how it came to be yours.
What you say may be make belief, as Cordoba was a large metropolitan, during the Muslim era, with flourishing Christian and Jewish communities.
But, it is common knowledge that after 1492, the year Columbus sailed for Americas, no Muslim was left alive in Spain for centuries to come.
Suggested reading
How Islam Taught Medieval Christian Europe Religious and Political Tolerance
On the one end another so called ex-super power of the world.USSR
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas are in Russia for the opening of the new Moscow Cathedral Mosque.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft are also attending the opening ceremony.
The other so called Super Power USA is Welcoming:
Washington (CNN)Pope Francis landed on U.S. soil for the first time just before 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, launching a six-day visit that will highlight his love for the poor and his willingness to tackle the nation’s most significant political, social and economic controversies.
In an unprecedented welcome for a foreign dignitary, President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, along with Vice President Joe Biden and his family, traveled to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington to greet the pontiff, who arrived from Cuba.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/22/politics/pope-francis-us-visit-updates/index.html
A healthy political-Religious gestures!!
Zia,
Cordoba, along with such other Visigoth-Spanish towns like Toledo, Seville, Merida, among others, were thriving metropolis as far back as the 6th century AD, long before the invasion and destruction that followed.
The traitor, Count Julian, who invited the muhammadans to invade Spain and help in the overthrow of King Rodrigo, described it as a land “FILLED WITH TREASURES OF ALL KINDS, WHOSE INHABITANTS WOULD MAKE HERY HANDSOME SLAVES, A COUNTRY ABOUNDING IN SPRINGS, GARDENS, RIVERS, AND A LAND YIELDING EVERY DESCRIPTION OF FRUITS AND PLANTS”. Those are the words ascribed to the muhammadan chronicler Abu Jaafar al-Kortobi.
Ahmed ibn Mohammed al-Makari also tells the story in his ‘THE HISTORY OF THE MUHAMMADAN DYNASTY IN SPAIN’ as translated by Pascal de Gayangos.
There were Christians and Jews in moorissh Spain who knew their place as dhimmis. Such status characterized every muhammadan invasion.
When the Spaniards took back their country after almost 800 years, it had been plundered to no end.
In the past there are accusations of atrocities on both sides. It depends which side you are on.
Grinding grudges in what happened hundreds of years ago is not really of any benefit to us today.
Today the dilemma is how to get different religions live together peacefully. I suggest that all religions act on their own teachings. For Christians, this would be compassion and care for others regardless of their race or religion and for the Muslims it would be compassion and care for others regardless of their race and religion. I believe other religions teach the same.
It is surprising how much common ground exists among all the religions of this world. The problem is those who want to highlight divisions and strife.
Namelee
Ground reality is a little different. I was in Spain a couple of years ago. Cordoba Mosque is called Cathedral and Seville Cathedral’s tower is the minaret of a mosque from a few years ago.
Despite the tragedies of inquisitions, my vision for the Muslims and the Christians is coexistence and brotherhood; but you are always hate mongering.
I have frequently publicized and promoted a Nobel Prize for Karen Armstrong, in our twitter account with 36,000 followers, who has much balanced reading of history, then your distorted hateful understanding, of all things Islam or Muslims.
Now let me talk to open minded Christian brothers and sisters.
Allow me to make the lion’s share of my case by quoting a classic book History of the Moorish Empire in Europe published in 1904 in three volumes and extending over more than 2000 pages. The insightful writer, Samuel Parsons Scott, a lawyer from Hillsboro Ohio writes, as he attributes all the success of Europe to the Prophet Muhammad:
I have a detailed article on the theme of the Muslim Heritage in Europe:
Muhammad: the Light for the Dark Ages of Europe!
“GRINDING GRUDGES IN WHAT HAPPENED HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO IS NOT REALLY OF ANY BENEFIT FOR US TODAY”.
That would have been so except we keep on hearing about how ‘brutal’ the Crusades were without any mention of all the evil that led to them.
The Muslim Times was specifically set up not only to emphasis how superior muhammadnism is, but to portray Christianity as being fraudulent, unscientific and most ungodly.
It is then obvious who wants to “highlight division and strife”.
Christianity has no difficulty living with others. Rather, others have difficulties accommodating Christianity. While muhammadans are flocking into Europe and the Americas daily, Christians are being hunted to extinction even in the birth place of the religion.
Think of it, there were five Christian Sees of Jerusalem, Aleppo, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome. At the same time, there were two muhammadan Sees of Mecca and Medina. Today, while the two muhammadan Sees remain muhammadan, only Rome is Christian. Jerusalem, until recently was in muhammadan hands. The other three still are. Who would be identified as the warmonger and aggressor here?
Every time there is an attempt at peaceful coexistence it always turns into a blame game where the Crusades are brought back with imaginary persecution of muhammadans over the millennia. Modern day persecution of Christians is never on the table even when it happens under everyone’s nose.
If Christians were to consider what others do, there would be no talk of muhammadans constituting 3-7% of Western ccountries whose rights are fiercely protected. Zia, who cannot live in any muhammadan country, is an example of how ungrateful and unaccommodating of Christians a muhammadan can be.
Zia,
It is not what you found a few years ago, when on a visit to Spain, that matters because that is not the full history. But what happened in the 8th century. Everywhere the muhammadans went, Church property was always on the top of their lists of places to acquire or plunder before being razed to the ground, if they found no need for it.
The cathedrals in Visigoth-Spain were either converted to grand mosques or and stripped of anything valuable before the destruction that followed. You had earlier on mentioned the Haga Sophia. The same fate that met that edifice was what was dished out to its counterparts in Spain and elsewhere. If, as you say, the Cathedrals in Cordoba and Seville are converted mosques, then they have been restored to their original status. Why should that be a problem?
In your typical blame game, you have lamented the ‘tragedies of the inquisition’ which led to the execution of between 3,000 to 5,000 processed individuals, not all of them muhammadan, over a period of 300 years. Not a word was uttered about the thousands who were killed in one day, some of who were boiled in cauldrons. Neither did you remember that 24,000 severed heads of Spanish notables and surrendered soldiers were sent to places as far away as North Africa to let others know the meaning of conquest and total submission.
Your choice of Karen Armstrong for the Nobel Prize says a lot about your perception of who your Christian should be based on her effort to promote understanding which in effect, is to distort facts. No body with half a brain would consider Karen Armstrong for anything other than common greetings if true scholarship is the basis of appraisal. But the Nobel Committee has a way of doing the unthinkable.
Lewis in ‘The Golden Age of Islam and Dhimmitude’ at page 747 writes: “THE SIMPLE VERIFIABLE TRUTH IS THAT MOORISH SPAIN WAS MORE OFTEN A LAND OF TURMOIL THAN IT WAS A LAND OF TRANQUILITY.
“ASK THE JEWS OF GRANADA WHO WERE MASSACRED IN 1066, OR THE CHRISTIANS WHO WERE DEPORTED BY THE ALMORAVIDS TO MOROCCO IN 1216(LIKE THE MORISCOES FIVE CENTURIES LATER).
“–IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY A NEW AGENT OF OBFUSCATION MAKES ITS APPEARANCE: THE GUILT OF THE LIBERAL CONSCIENCE, WHICH SEES THE EVILS OF COLONIALISM-ASSUMED RATHER THAN DEMONSTRATED-FORESHADOWED IN THE CHRISTIAN CONQUEST OF AL-ANDALUSIA AND THE PERSECUTION OF THE MORISCOES(BUT NOT ODDLY, IN THE MOORISH CONQUEST AND COLONIZATION.)STIR THE MIX WELL TOGETHER AND ISSUE IT FREE TO CREDULOUS ACADEMICS AND MEDIA PERSONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. THEN POUR IT GENEROUSLY OVER THE TRUTH— BUT MOORISH SPAIN WAS NOT A TOLERANT AND ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY EVEN IN ITS MOST CULTIVATED EPOCH.
“THE NOTION OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF MOORISH SPAIN WAS PERPETRATED IN THE 19TH CENTURY BY ‘NEWLY AND STILL IMPERFECTLY EMANCIPATED’ WESTERN EUROPEAN JEWS AS A MEANS TO CHASTISE WESTERN FEELINGS. INEVITABLY, THERE WAS A TENDENCY TO IDOLIZE ISLAM, TO BETTER CONTRAST THE SITUATION OF THE JEWS IN EUROPE AND ‘TO SERVE AT ONCE AS A REPROACH AND AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO THEIR SOMEWHAT DILATORY CHRISTIAN EMANCIPATORS'”.
Summing up the position of the dhimmis, A. S. Tritton in ‘The Caliphs and Their Non Muslim Subjects’ says “–IF A MUSLIM GAVE ANY HELP TO THE RELIGION OF A DHIMMI, HE WAS TO BE SUMMONED THRICE TO REPENTANCE, AND THEN, IF OBDURATE, HE WAS TO BE PUT TO DEATH. INDEED, THE GENERAL FEELING WAS THAT THE LEAVINGS OF THE MUSLIM WERE GOOD ENOUGH TO THE DHIMMI”.
When Spain was invaded, it already boasted of an advanceD civilization which was drawn from centuries of association with the Romans and the Greeks. The same civilization that built the world’s best library in Ptolemy. It built roads still found in England today, the irrigation projects in Rome, the recreational facilities and a representative political system.
My ‘distorted hateful understanding, of all things Islam’ stems from my personal knowledge that everything muhammadan is hateful. Remember that I come from a country that has been ravaged by the scorch of muhammadanism for years. Hardly would a decade pass without these animals stirring up bloodletting. Ahmadu Bello, the first and last Premier of Northern Nigeria, boasted that once the British left the muhammadans would “continue their interrupted conquest until the quran is dipped in the sea”. That message was heard loud and clear. It is the root of the crises my unfortunate country faces from time to time.
Let me tell you that, sadly for me, I know some of the parents of the abducted girls from the Chibok school who have not been found for about two years now. It cannot be guessed in what state those children will be found, if that will ever happen. Imagine that happening to your daughter.
I HAVE REASONS TO BE VERY ANGRY WITH ANYTHING THAT GAVE BIRTH TO SUCH INHUMANITY.
We are also angry at Boko Haram and Al Shabab and constantly say that in the Muslim Times. But, you want to have black and white thinking, when it comes to Islam and make no distinctions.
When you say:
“Everywhere the muhammadans went, Church property was always on the top of their lists of places to acquire or plunder before being razed to the ground, if they found no need for it.”
Only your imagination.
The Prophet Muhammad and the Christian priests of Mount Sinai
Craig Considine, A Catholic: Why I Admire Muhammad: A Response to Islamophobes
Neither with the Islamophobes, Nor with the Islamists or the Islamomaniacs
We love all our Christian brothers and sisters and never want to hurt them in any way and we fight for their rights, to the best of our ability in the so called Muslim countries.
We do argue against some of the Christian dogma, which are irrational, for example a loving God will not punish anyone with eternal hell.
Namelee does not want to keep this distinction and wants a war between the civilizations and not recognize any good in Islam or the Muslims.
Zia,
Censorship is back full scale. I quoted authorities to proof that it is not my imagination that churches were converted to mosques or burnt. As usual, the truth hurts and must not be allowed to come out.
My satisfaction is that you now know (if you didn’t), what the true position is.
Churches converted to Mosques or burned? Yes, there might have been some. Fact remains that in Arab countries and in the Ottoman Empire plenty of churches survived while in Christian Spain not a single mosque survived as a Mosque. Yes, the Mosque in Cordoba survived as a building, but not as a Mosque as such.
Hopefully now it can be converted back into a Mosque, Inshallah. (Not sure why the hurtful comments of Namelee are still finding ways into The Muslim Times. He seems to me to be one of the most biased species. May be just to teach us that ‘such guys are out there’ ?)
Zia,
Yes, you claim to love all your Christian brothers and sister without wanting to hurt them. You also claim to condemn Boko Haram, but why don’t you show that by doing something more concrete as you have done for Karen Armstrong?
In what way is the Christian position on hell different from that of the muhammadan for it to qualify for your assessment as ‘irrational’ when that of muhammdanism is not?
Such distinction provides the ideological/intellectual platform for terrorists. That enablement is as evil as the actual perpetrator(s).
Everything is being printed, posted. All kinds of lies are being given enough space in TMT. To say that early Muslims demolished any place of worship to build mosque, is a white Lie(means 100% false report).
Christian power of Rome got the result of their bad deeds i.e. attack on a weak and newly rising Muslim state. Christian Rome was predominant (winner) against the Persian kingdom in 628 A.D.
There was no need for Romans to attack Madinah.
That was a bad defeat for the Christians because of their bad teachings and bad deeds.
Same thing is now going on for the bad deeds of non-Ahmadi Muslims and their states. The Muslims seems to be on retreat, on the receiving end now. Christians are predominant and winners.
That does not mean the Church dogmas are correct. The Church has gone far astray from the real teachings of Jesus a.s. Same has happened to the Islamic teachings, have been much corrupted.
Ghulam Sarwar,
I know that this comment is not going to be posted. I will go ahead and make it anyway.
“SAME HAS HAPPENED TO THE ISLAMIC TEACHINGSS, HAVE BEEN MUCH CURRUPTED”.
The fact is that the quran itself is corrupted for which Uthman was killed. That does not mean the teachings of Jesus have been corrupted in any way. If you assert otherwise, then show proof.
You are very ignorant of history. To start with, what took the muhammadans out of Arabia?
Muhammad heard a rumour that the Romans had amassed a large army to attack him. He mobilized 30,000 men and 10,000 horses only to discover that there was no truth in what he heard. He then turned his attention to conquer the surrounding Christian communities.
The Romans and Persians had ignored Muhammad as a non starter. Instead of fighting him, they were busy fighting each other and lived to regret their stupidity.
A. S. Tritton, quotes a muhammadan historian as reporting that more than 30,000 churches were destroyed by the muhammadans in Egypt, Syria and other places.
In 1915, after vast majority of the churches had been destroyed, there were still 2,300 left in the Istanbul Patriarchate alone but by 2011, only 32 still remained.
Do you remember that the Hagia Sophia was a Christian Cathedral in what was then called Constantinople, but now Istanbul, where it exists as a mosque?
Where are the muhammadans retreating to?