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Iranian official defends Hagia Sophia change, says Christians ‘turned all the museums in the world into churches’

Aug 3, 2020 8:00 am By Robert Spencer

When the historical facts don’t fit your narrative, change the historical facts. After all, Muhammad said “War is deceit.” So why not?

“Christians’ ancestors converted all museums to churches,” Mehr News Agency, August 2, 2020:

TEHRAN, Aug. 02 (MNA) – Top Adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution for International Affairs said westerners criticize the reconversion of Turkey’s Hagia Sophia to a mosque, while their ancestors had turned all world museums to churches.

Following a court verdict by a top Turkish court in July, President Erdogan immediately reconverted Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museum to a mosque. The building had served as a mosque until 1934.

Speaking in a TV program on Saturday night, Ali Akbar Velayati reacted to the recent comments by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who claimed that Hagia Sophia should be turned into a museum again.

Velayati said, “Doesn’t he have another order?! Their ancestors turned all the museums in the world into churches and built everything they could since Andalusia battle.”

“The mosque, which is 500 years old, will remain a mosque until the Day of Judgment, and the Turkish people are indebted to Erdogan’s move,” he stressed.

“I traveled to Turkey for a while, prayed in one of the mosques of this country and saw that, despite all the propaganda by the laics, the mosques were filled during prayers and even people lined up in the streets.”

“The Turkish people adhere to the true Islam and respect the Shia scholars,” Velayati added.

He further said, “Hagia Sophia is one of the most important mosques in Turkey and its history dates back to 857 AH when it was conquered by Mehmed II.”

Velayati said, “After Erdogan’s move, the whole Christian world erupted, criticizing the conversion of the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque and said that if this is the case, all museums should be turned into mosques and churches before 1942.”

“In an article published a few days ago, it was also said that Mehmed II bought this place from a priest and turned it into a mosque,” he said.

This is while, he stressed, “Many of the architectures inside the mosque show that it is Islamic rather than Christian.”

Velayati said, “The first violent treatment of Muslims by Europeans took place during the Crusades.

“Once Erdogan gave a speech in Turkey on the occasion of Ashura [martyrdom of Imam Hossein] and recited a famous hadith from Imam Hassan and Hussein [grandsons of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)]; This shows the interest of the Turkish people in Islam as well as the Shia,” Velayati said.

He added, “Until 1914, Turkey was the center of the Sunnis in the Islamic world, and after that, with the conspiracy of the British and the French, they tried to dismantle this important country.”

“However, the Shia’s refused to turn away from Islam in Turkey, and after the Hagia Sophia became a mosque, all the mosques and even the surrounding streets were filled.”…

“The Turkish people sought such an action, and we congratulate the Turkish nation on this important Islamic achievement,” he concluded.

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Filed Under: Iran Tagged With: Ali Akbar Velayati, Top Adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution for International Affairs


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Comments

  1. Ramez says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 8:05 am

    Over the course of nearly 1400 years, Koranimals have destroyed hundreds of thousands of churches, among other non-Mohammedan pieces of art and architecture, of which many have been ‘reverted’ to mosques.

    What a banal religion whose followers couldn’t build anything of value of their own accord.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 3, 2020 at 7:21 pm

      All very true.

      • Ramez says

        Aug 3, 2020 at 7:24 pm

        😊

  2. Mike says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 8:32 am

    ha Islam where’s your proof

  3. mortimer says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 10:38 am

    Velayati cannot use facts and logic to defend the Hagia Sophia conversion, so he makes things up. Velayati is not an historian. His propaganda depends on spontaneous claims that are flippant and self-serving. History is not so unnuanced.

    Shi’ites have a well-earned reputation for taqiyya, but Velayti’s taqiyya is so threadbare that he will be condemned even by his friends.

    When all is said and done, will Turkey benefit from offending 260 million Orthodox Christians and their friends?

    The Turks have shown once again that Islam is intolerant, arrogant and supremacist.

    • Ramez says

      Aug 3, 2020 at 10:45 am

      Most Orthodox Christians, like the vast majority of non-Orthodox Christians, are so lukewarm in their faith that they are more like Atheists than Christians.

      There are most likely no more than 40 million devout Orthdox Christians, most of whom are Ethiopian and Arabic-speaking Christians.

      • Vladimir says

        Aug 3, 2020 at 10:19 pm

        The Ethiopians are sincere anyway, as are the Coptic Christians, of whom I’ve actually had a few as friends over the years. Of the Orthodox in Russia and Eastern Europe, I’d say they’re starting to come back, after a long time of persecution. Of the Orthodox Christians worldwide, I’d say two stand out as being particularly faithful to the Apostolic teaching; the ”Old Calendarists” and the ”Old Believers” of Russia and the Russian diaspora, again having known a few personally.

        • Ramez says

          Aug 4, 2020 at 3:26 am

          True.

  4. Antiislamicman says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 10:50 am

    Islam puts its so called into a building, a bit like the black stone. Pagans!

  5. CogitoErgoSum says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 11:00 am

    It seems that to be a Muslim a person has to be either of below average IQ or intellectually dishonest.

    • James Lincoln says

      Aug 3, 2020 at 3:20 pm

      CogitoErgoSum,

      Perhaps there is the rare third option.

      I’m thinking specifically of Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. He is highly intelligent, states that he is a devout muslim, but constantly criticizes it and feels that it is in need of reform.

      I can’t understand why he just doesn’t leave islam.

      I don’t know what to make of him…

      • CogitoErgoSum says

        Aug 3, 2020 at 3:25 pm

        I don’t know what to make of someone who feels Islam can be reformed when it claims itself to be perfect. Perfect is perfect and will not be perfect if is changed in any way. How can a person who misses that be considered highly intelligent?

        • James Lincoln says

          Aug 3, 2020 at 6:30 pm

          CogitoErgoSum says,

          “How can a person who misses that be considered highly intelligent?”

          By highly intelligent, I meant high IQ – more the Merriam-Webster definition of intelligence. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a specialist in internal medicine.

          But, I agree, he is not “intelligent” regarding islam…

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 3, 2020 at 8:03 pm

          I’ve never been sure with Jasser how much of this is wishful thinking, and how much of it is whitewashing Islam. I suppose in the end it scarcely matters.

        • GreekEmpress says

          Aug 3, 2020 at 10:17 pm

          Jasser is an enigma to me also. He lives and practices in the Scottsdale area and was quick to come out in defense of Professor Nick Damask who was being thrown under the bus by his college and sued by CAIR for a quiz he gave on the terrorist element of Islam.

          Maybe his version of Islam is indeed wishful thinking.

  6. mortimer says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 11:03 am

    Encyclopaedia Britannica says that ‘museum’ did not apply to a building before the construction of the Ashomolean Museum in 1683. The original Thomas Wood building is still a museum. It has become the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford.

    Velayati’s claim that museums were generally made into churches is groundless.

  7. mortimer says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 11:12 am

    Velayati’s comments go far beyond mere pettifoggery or humbuggery. He uses taqiyya even when it is not necessary.

    Professor Harold Frankfurt wrote of this process in his précis ‘On Bullshit’:

    “However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to get away with something. There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some kind of laxity which resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline. The pertinent mode of laxity cannot be equated, evidently, with simple carelessness or inattention to detail.”

    According to Prof. Frankfurt, bullshit is a problem focussed on intentions. Bullshitting, as he notes, is not exactly lying, and bullshit remains bullshit whether it’s true or false. The difference lies in the bullshitter’s complete disregard for whether what he’s saying corresponds to facts in the physical world: he “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

    Muslims like Velayati bring Islam into total disrepute. The religion of taqiyya.

    • Lt Mason says

      Aug 3, 2020 at 11:26 pm

      Good one.

  8. gravenimage says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 7:21 pm

    TEHRAN, Aug. 02 (MNA) – Top Adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution for International Affairs said westerners criticize the reconversion of Turkey’s Hagia Sophia to a mosque, while their ancestors had turned all world museums to churches.
    ……………………….

    What is this tool babbling about? Where did Christians *ever* turn museums into Churches?

    Besides, museums in the modern sense of the word–that is, more than just collections held by monarchs or wealthy individuals–are an invention of the Christian West. In fact, what are acknowledged as the two oldest museums in the world have strong links to Christianity–the Capitoline Museum, founded in 1471, and the Vatican Museum, also in Rome. In fact, all of the earliest museums were in the West.

    In fact, it wasn’t until the founding of the Indian Museum in 1814 in Kolkata that you have a major museum outside the West–and this was, unsurprisingly, founded by Westerners–the British, in this case.

    None of these museums have been turned into Churches–and the implication that there were museums in non-Christian nations turned into Churches is entirely baseless.

    Ali Akbar Velayati is supposed to be a “distinguished professor”–but this just shows how pathetic these supposed scholars are.

    More:

    Velayati said, “Doesn’t he have another order?! Their ancestors turned all the museums in the world into churches and built everything they could since Andalusia battle.”
    ……………………….

    Presumably this is a reference to the Muslim invasion of Spain in 711 AD. Firstly, this was a *Muslim*, not Christian invasion, and there were no museums anywhere there in the modern sense. Muslims were turning Christian Churches into Mosques there–so this is nothing but projection.

    More:

    “The mosque, which is 500 years old, will remain a mosque until the Day of Judgment, and the Turkish people are indebted to Erdogan’s move,” he stressed.

    He further said, “Hagia Sophia is one of the most important mosques in Turkey and its history dates back to 857 AH when it was conquered by Mehmed II.”

    This is while, he stressed, “Many of the architectures inside the mosque show that it is Islamic rather than Christian.”
    ……………………….

    Has he missed the fact that this was built as a Christian Cathedral, and stood as such for a thousand years?

    As for Hagia Sophia having Islamic features, these were grafted onto the structure after the conquest, including the awkward minarets and discs with Islamic script hung in the main Church. Is he implying that for some reason Christians had Islamic features in their Cathedral? How would that even make sense?

    More:

    “The Turkish people adhere to the true Islam and respect the Shia scholars,” Velayati added.
    ……………………….

    This is laughable–Turkey is almost 82% Sunni Islam, and several sects of Shia Islam make up a small percentage of the population. Moreover, the Shia are persecuted in Turkey: This, from a few years ago:

    “Turkish Shias in fear of life on the edge”

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkish-shias-in-fear-of-life-on-the-edge-8862645.html

    So what is the point of this? Iran likes to pretend that there is no violent Sunni/Shia split, and that Iran is a world leader for all Muslims.

    More:

    “In an article published a few days ago, it was also said that Mehmed II bought this place from a priest and turned it into a mosque,” he said.
    ……………………….

    This ludicrous claim came up only a couple of weeks ago–Muslims had *never* claimed previously that the taking of Hagia Sophia was anything other than bloody conquest. They have, notably, not allowed anyone else to look at this document. The idea that some unnamed random priest would have been in a position to sell the Conqueror the greatest Cathedral in Christendom after the conquest of Constantinople makes no sense, either.

    But this Muslim’s claim of peaceful transfer is ludicrous in any case–what he is best known for is being on the Interpol watch list for his connection with the terrible bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, which led to the murder of 85 people, and is still South America’s worst terrorist attack.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Akbar_Velayati#AMIA_bombing

  9. GreekEmpress says

    Aug 3, 2020 at 7:59 pm

    Velayati said “The first violent treatment of Muslims by Europeans took place during the Crusades”. Great revisionist history, there Mr. Velayati
    The Crusades commenced after Byzantine Emperor Alexios Comnenos called on the west to help the Eastern empire from the Muslim hordes that were invading the land, killing and pillaging.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 3, 2020 at 8:04 pm

      Exactly, GreekEmpress–the Crusades were *defensive* wars.

      • Vladimir says

        Aug 3, 2020 at 11:39 pm

        Definitely not the Fourth Crusade, or the Northern crusades.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 3, 2020 at 11:59 pm

        There were serious problems with some of the Crusades, there is no doubt. But they started as defensive wars, certainly.

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