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DC Edit | Monumental bigotry

Hagia Sophia is the fourth Byzantine church museum in Turkey to be thrown open for prayers again

It was predictable that Recep Tayyip Erdogan would promptly sign a decree to order the opening of Hagia Sophia for Muslim prayers (on July 24) the moment a court revoked its status from 1934 as a museum. In his attempt to counter his waning popularity after 18 years,

Turkey’s President may only be pandering to his nationalist and religious base.

What damage he has done to destroy a priceless symbol of Muslim-Christian amity and secularism is immeasurable even as it triggers the rhetorical question of what is happening to the modern world, swathes of which are being ruled by these so-called ‘strongmen’.

To place it in perspective, the many centuries of history of the structure - built in the sixth century CE as a church that stood for a millennium before it became a mosque on the Muslim conquest of Constantinople - were reflective of a long period of inter-religious strife and territorial conquests.

Hagia Sophia is the fourth Byzantine church museum in Turkey to be thrown open for prayers again.

As a museum, this peerless piece of Byzantine architecture, with its precious medieval Christian mosaics and historical iconography, lent pride to modern Turkey as a bridge between the East and the West with religious harmony as one of its founding principles.

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