There’s no shortage of ridiculous claims the world over. Here’s a recent one from Turkey, as reported by Pinar Tremblay inAL Monitor:
Al-Monitor reported in June that Islamist groups in Turkey have intensified their efforts around the Hagia Sophia. Today, the urging to open it as a mosque and for Erdogan to lead Friday prayers there has reached fever pitch. For proponents of the change, the Hagia Sophia as a museum symbolizes Turkey in chains; for independence to be complete, it must become a functioning mosque. A group called “Free Hagia Sophia” tweeted after the July 15 coup attempt, quoting a prominent religious scholar, “If we turn Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, all Turkey’s hard times and troubles will end.”
The Hagia Sophia is a former Greek Orthodox Church and Imperial Mosque, but now a museum. Precisely how returning it to its former status as a imperial mosque will end the hard times of Turkey is not entirely clear; it might be better understood that, rather than Turkey, the hard times for Muslims in Turkey will end. In other words, if Islam is not the pinnacle of political power in Turkey, if Turkey is still perceived as a secular nation, then Islam is suffering.
Thus religion as a vehicle for political ambition. And, by shifting away from the secular ladder of power to the religious ladder of power, the person whose qualifications are in the religious realm gains over those with secular qualifications. Not that I’m deluded to believe the latter is always more appropriate – politics can do strange things – but a religious qualification is, strictly speaking, never useful except for evaluating candidates for loyalty. I do not care if someone worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster when he’s flying a fighter jet – they’d better have the technical qualifications or that jet’s going to end up as a smoking heap of junk.
And the Hagia Sophia was an imperial mosque, denoting not only its official governmental function, but a certain military aggressiveness. So much for Turkey’s NATO ambitions…
