Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia: a Cathedral – a Museum – a Mosque

Hagia Sophia’s real beauty was its symbolism of mutual sense of belonging shared both by Islam and Christianity and reflected in the interior that had been much restored in terms of paintings, calligraphy and other artefacts, though from the exterior it looked like a mosque or a church or a museum depending upon whether the beholder was a Muslim or a Christian or a tourist respectively. Its one-liner history is that it was formerly a patriarchal cathedral, then it became a Roman Catholic cathedral, then the Ottomans converted it into a mosque, then the secular Turkish Republic established it as a museum and now, may not be finally though, it has been made a mosque again. The present Turkish government, owing to the significant religious uniqueness of the monument, could have made it a mutual house of prayer both for Muslims and Christians which they did not do and so the genuine meanings of its religious and cultural symbolism of belonging has been encroached by the religio-political ideology. Drawing upon the semantics of Islam both as a religion and a tradition, this paper argues that Islam does not in any way force its believers to convert a religious or cultural place into a mosque and it is plausible in religious terms to establish a mutual house of prayer for Muslims and others if it is culturally and politically required to do so. Following this line of logic, it critiques the religio-political ideology being the original of this lopsidedly myopic political posture of the contemporary Turkish regime. And the philosophical backdrop of this critique is Habermas’ recently developed critical interpretation concerning the distinction between ‘the political’ (le politique) and ‘politics’ (la politique) in the nexus of religion. This paper, on the Habermasian lines, attempts to convince the postmetaphysical thinking to be open to learning from religion straightening out the ethicao-political problem of establishing ‘social solidarity’ in the postsecular society through the communicative reason guaranteeing a dialogical space for the members of different faiths.