Posted on 10/01/2014 1:56:35 PM PDT by markomalley
The crowning of this Islamization endeavor will be the conversion of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, made a museum in the early years of Kemalist secularism, into a mosque. Rapid Re-Islamization of Turkey Update: “Ninth Hagia Sophia Church converted into a mosque in Turkey,” Pravoslavie, September 25, 2014 (thanks to Filip):
The Hagia Sophia Church in Eregli (the Greek form is Heraclea) has become the ninth Hagia Sophia Church converted into a mosque by Turks over recent years.
The Orthodox Church was given a new name by the Turkish authorities – the Orhan Mosque, in honor of the Turkish Sultan Orhan I (who reigned from 1326 till 1359).
The Turkish historian Recep Cetin, speaking at the unveiling of the new mosque, noted the “historic significance of the event”: “Hagia Sophia in Eregli is already the ninth church with such name, converted into a Muslim mosque”.
Earlier the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Trabzon (Trebizond) and the Hagia Sophia Church in Nicaea (it was the very church where the Seventh Ecumenical Council was held) had been given to the Muslim community. The importance of this event can scarcely be overestimated, since the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Heraclea is more ancient than the famous Hagia Sophia Church in Constantinople. According to the historians’ information, it was built under the Roman Emperor Theodosius II, that is, between 408 and 450 AD.
Save Thy people, O Lord,
and bless Thine inheritance.
Grant victory to Thy Church over her enemies,
and protect Thy people by Thy Holy Cross!
We are seeing a new Holocaust where Christianity is being systematically wiped out in the Middle East by the forces of Islam.
The Turkish government and the Islamic faith in general has a policy of “Christianity is an extinct religion.” Therefore, Christians are also extinct. Those who are not Islamic are just Dhimi unbelievers.
PFL
Sad.
I remember when Benedict (or was it JPII) toured this museam a few years back. I thought it should be turned back into a church at the time.
“Those who do not learn from History are damned to repeat it.” George Santayana
It is a well known fact the bloody history of Islam, but useful idiots still call it a “religion of peace”, even though that in the name of Allah more than 220 millions infidels (Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus) have been slaughtered by Muslim, since the prophet of Allah beheaded in 627 AD over 700 hundred men and the pubescent boys and enslaved the women and children. In doing this, he wiped entirely the last remaining major tribe of Jews in Medina: the Qurayza.
The Fall of Constantinople - May 29, 1453.
In Constantinople,after breaking down the church’s bronze gates, they found inside a huge throng of Byzantines who had taken refuge and who were praying that the city might be delivered by some miracle. The Christians were seized and separated according to age and gender. The infants and elderly were brutally murdered; the men, including some of the city’s most prominent senators, were carted off to the slave markets; and the women and girls were taken by soldiers to be raped or sent into a life of slavery.
1. Before the siege began, the entire civilian population, including the City’s priests, nuns, and monks, came out to refortify the walls.
2. The siege of the City lasted 54 days. This was the first, large-scale, sustained bombardment by cannon against medieval fortifications in Europe.
3. The Turks had an army of 80,000-100,000 men. The defenders of Constantinople numbered only 7,000. Constantinople, a city whose greater environs had once approximated 1 million people, had been reduced by the time of the fall to about 50,000 inhabitants.
4. Emperor Constantine XI Paleologos died a hero’s death, fighting at the walls of the City. After he knew that the siege was lost, he threw off his imperial cloak and charged into a wave of advancing Turks, never to be seen again.
5. One of the great targets of the Turks’ destruction was Agia Sophia, the great Church of the Holy Wisdom. The Turks desecrated the altar, hacked away at the Byzantine icons, murdered Christians who had taken refuge in the sanctuary, and raped women and children inside the Church.
6. Of that total, an estimated 15,000 were killed by the Turks while some 30,000 were chained and dragged to the docks on the Golden Horn, where they were boarded onto ships to be sent to Arab and Turkish Muslim slave markets, never to see their homes again.
Turkey is rapidly deteriorating to the ignorant, barbaric, godless part of the middle east that it once was...Pathetic.
Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle,
be our protection against
the malice and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him we humbly pray;
and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan
and all evil spirits
who wander through the world
for the ruin of souls. Amen.
To add to your excellent post I offer these passages from Roger Crowley’s excellent book “1453”.
May 27th, 1453: “Late in the afternoon the people of the city, seeking religious solace, converged for the first time in five months on the mother church of St. Sophia. The dark church which had been so conspicuously boycotted by the Orthodox faithful was filled with people, anxious, penitent, and fervent, and in the first time since the summer of 1064, in the ultimate moment of need, it seems that Catholic and Orthodox worshipped together in the city, and the 400 year old schism and the bitterness of the Crusades were put aside in a final service of intercession.”
Pope Pius, Mantua, 1459:
“We ourselves allowed Constantinople, the capital of the east, to be conquered by the Turks. And while we sit at home in ease and idleness, the arms of these barbarians are advancing to the Danube and the Sava. In the Eastern imperial city they have massacred the successor of Constantine along with his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, sullied the noble edifice of Justinian with the hideous cult of Muhammad. They have destroyed the images of the mother of God and other saints, overturned their altars, cast the relics of the martyrs to the swine, killed the priests, dishonored women and young girls, even the virgins dedicated to the Lord, slaughtered the nobles of the city at the sultan’s banquet, carried off the image of our crucified Saviour to their camp with scorn and mockery amid cries of “That is the God of the Christians” and befouled it with mud and spittle. All this happened beneath our very eyes, but we lie in a deep sleep….Mehmer will never lay down arms except in victory or total defeat. Every victory for him a stepping-stone to another, until, after subjecting all the princes of the West, he has destroyed the Gospel of the Christ and imposed the law of his false prophet upon the whole world.
Thank you for great your post.
THE SIEGE OF FAMAGOSTA (1570)
800 Italians Men Beheaded in Otranto in 1480 for Refusing Islam, by the Turks, with the Approval of Sultan Mehmet II
On August 14, 1480, a massacre happened on a hill outside the city of Otranto, in southern Italy, here 800 of the town’s men were taken to a place called the Hill of the Minerva, and, one by one, beheaded in full view of their fellow prisoners. It became known as the Hill of the Martyrs.
They died because they refused to convert to Islam. The 800 men of Otranto were martyrs. But due to their sacrifice, however, the Ottoman invasion was slowed and Rome was spared the same fate that had befallen Constantinople only 27 years before.
The people of Otranto knew of the siege of Constantinople and that when that city fell the Muslims pillaged the city, but the key moment came when they reached Hagia Sophia.
In Constantinople,after breaking down the church’s bronze gates, they found inside a huge throng of Byzantines who had taken refuge and who were praying that the city might be delivered by some miracle. The Christians were seized and separated according to age and gender. The infants and elderly were brutally murdered; the men, including some of the city’s most prominent senators, were carted off to the slave markets; and the women and girls were taken by soldiers to be raped or sent into a life of slavery.
At Otranto, the terms of the Muslims were ostensibly generous. If the town surrendered, the defenders would be permitted to live. They said no, it was repeated and again it was no. It was the city against 18,000 Muslims and it lasted 2 weeks.
Slaughter, Sacrilege, and Slavery
Turkish troops entered and killed anyone in their path. They made their way to the cathedral. As in the Hagia Sophia, the invaders found the church filled with people praying with Archbishop Stefano Agricoli, Bishop Stephen Pendinelli, and Count Largo, the commander of the soldiers. The Ottomans commanded:
1.The archbishop to throw away his crucifix, abjure the Christian faith, and embrace Islam. When he refused, his head was cut off before the weeping congregation.
2.Bishop Pendinelli and Count Largo likewise would not convert and were also put to death, reportedly by being slowly sawed in half.
3.As was the custom, the priests were murdered and the cathedral was stripped of all Christian symbols and turned into a stable for the horses. The Ottomans then gathered up the surviving people of Otranto and took them as captives.
The people of Otranto faced the same end as the Christians of Constantinople. All of the men over the age of 50 were slaughtered; the women and children under the age of 15 were either slain or sent away to Albania to be slaves.
According to some contemporary sources, the total number of dead was as high as 12,000, with another 5,000 pressed into slavery.
800 Men who survived told to Convert to Islam or Die
The Muslim commander ordered the men of Otranto, 800 survivors of the battle, those who were not over 50 and had not been already killed in battle or later, or were not children and had not be killed or enslaved, to be brought before him.
He gave them one chance to convert to Islam or die. To convince them, he instructed an Italian apostate priest named Giovanni to preach. The former priest called on the men of Otranto to abandon the Christian faith, and they would get many benefits.
One of the men of Otranto, a tailor named Antonio Primaldi (he is also named Antonio Pezzulla in some sources), came forward to speak to the survivors. He called out that he was ready to die for Christ a thousand times. He then added, according to the chronicler Giovanni Laggetto in the Historia della guerra di Otranto del 1480:
“My brothers, till today we have fought in defense of our country, to save our lives, and for our lords; now it is time that we fight to save our souls for our Lord, so that having died on the cross for us, it is good that we should die for him, standing firm and constant in the faith, and with this earthly death we will win eternal life and the glory of martyrs.”
At this, the men of Otranto cried out with one voice that they too were willing to die a thousand times for Christ.
Another excellent one. Oh and as a man of Hungarian descent, I am sorry for the cannons that were used in 1453.
I was hoping this would not happen.
Lord have mercy on us.
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