Before we get excited… Were Christians and Muslims both allowed to pray in a single building? That’s no great news. Still occurs. The Muslim world is full of churches and tombs of saints and “prophets” and Christian sacred springs, especially, where Muslims pray and come to ask for favors and blessings, though I’m sure the High Ulemate considers that stuff shirk or haram. The mobs that descend on Prinkipo (Büyük Ada), one of Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands on St. George’s Day are huge and mostly Muslim…of course…in a city of 15 million where there are fewer than 1,000 Greeks left… And a few years ago the Times ran an article — which I, of course, can’t find now — about how women from the posh C-Town suburb of Kuruçeşme take their children to be blessed by the priest at the local church of St. Demetrius because deep in a cavern under its foundations there’s a spring whose water is considered to have blessing and healing properties.
Anybody can just drop into a church or mosque, grab a corner and pray. At least no one in any mosque I’ve ever been in has ever said anything to me. I even cross myself upon entering a mosque or museum that was once a church and never had a problem. Fact, I find the empty space and tatami-level perspective and silence of a mosque to be extremely comforting and nerve-soothing.
But were Christian liturgies and offices — meaning the theater and rituals and images and music of Christianity, which is what WORSHIP means to me — ever conducted in a building that also served as a mosque? And “side by side”, meaning the same time. Now THAT would be cool. I just doubt it.
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Comment: nikobakos@gmail.com
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Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 