Update on the Temple Mount

The Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque has reopened, but not without its controversy.  The latest news out of Turkey is that President Erdogan has converted the Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) from a museum into a mosque.  He did so in order to free Turkey from its growing secularism and to foster a call to prayer and an Islamic awakening.  Erdogan has proclaimed that the conversion of Hagia Sophia church into a mosque was the “harbinger of the liberation” for the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.  Hagia Sophia was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6^th century.  In 1453 the church was converted into a mosque following the Ottoman invasion that same year.  After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920’s the church was turned into a museum.  Erdogon has been planning to turn it into a mosque since about 2013.