The broadcast of the morning call to prayer from within Hagia Sophia is likely to reignite controversy over the use of the building, which was designated a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Although the call to prayer has been played from Hagia Sophia’s minarets for the last four years, the muezzin has always chanted from a prayer room in the museum grounds rather than from inside the former mosque and cathedral.
Built as an Orthodox Christian basilica during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in 537, the famous domed structure, known as Ayasofya in Turkish, was converted into a mosque following Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of the city in 1453.
In recent years there have been calls to return the building to Muslim worship. Last month, the Greek government complained about the reciting of the Quran in Hagia Sophia during Ramadan – criticism the Turkish Foreign Ministry described as “unacceptable.” For the azan call that was televised in a July 2 program featuring Mehmet Görmez, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), Greek Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Efstratios Eftimiu said: “We express our intense concern and discomfort at yet another step that undermines the nature of Hagia Sophia as a monument of global cultural heritage and that obviously is not compatible with the principles that should govern a modern, secular state.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/first-call-to-prayer-inside-istanbuls-hagia-sophia-in-85-years.aspx
This is bad news.
The Umayyad Mosque, in Damascus, is also a big tourist attraction.
BUT, there are imams there 24/7 gathered around a decorative 10’ tall obelisk that purportedly has the HEAD of St. John the Baptist.
Muslims believe that St. John was a holy man and so continue, after all this time, to pray at this memorial.
We saw that with our own eyes. We all had to take off our shoes, as one does when one enters a mosque.
My point: museum cum mosque or mosque cum museum. It really doesn't bother me.