Source: Los Angeles Times
As the time for afternoon prayers approaches, Onder Soy puts on a white robe and cap and switches on the microphone in a small 19th century room adjoining the Hagia Sophia.
Soon, Soy’s melodic call to prayer rings out over a square filled with tourists hurrying to visit some of Turkey’s most famous historical sights before they close for the day.
The room Soy is in — built as a resting place for the sultan and now officially called the Hagia Sophia mosque — fills up with around 40 worshipers, drawn not by the modestly decorated space itself, but by the ancient building it shares a wall with.
Built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in AD 537, the Hagia Sophia was originally a Greek Orthodox basilica and one of the most important churches in all of Christendom. It became a mosque in 1453 after the Ottoman Empire defeated the Byzantines and took over Constantinople.
Categories: Middle East, Mosque, The Muslim Times, Turkey
This is unfortunate. There are so many mosques in Istanbul. We need every thing we can have to promote secularism and interfaith tolerance in our divided world.
The building was used as a Masjid before the First World War. There is no harm in changing it into a Masjid. I would love to see that. Now Turkey is not a secular country but a Muslim country with Sharia Laws. Through out Europe, majority of Churches have been converted to Masajid.
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk