Spain's Islamic Board wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI to be allowed to pray in Cordoba Cathedral, on the grounds that the building was originally a mosque before being transformed into a church in the thirteenth century. "What we wanted was not to take over that holy place," reads the Islamic Board's letter, "but to create in it, together with you and other faiths, an ecumenical space unique in the world which would have been of great significance in bringing peace to humanity."
The Islamic Board took this initiative after senior Catholic clergy announced they "did not recommend" this step and indeed declared themselves unprepared to permit the cathedral's shared use with any other faith. On an operational level, security guards in the cathedral are said often to prevent Muslims from praying inside the medieval mosque that surrounds its church structure.
St John's Shrine, which is inside the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus.
The Islamic Board's general secretary, Mansur Escudero, complained that some in the Church feel threatened by Spain's growing Muslim population. "There are reactionary elements within the Catholic Church, and when they hear about the construction of a mosque, or Muslim teachings in state schools, or about veils, they see it as a sign we are growing and they oppose it."
Comment: The Muslim demand is all very reasonable – but only if Muslims permit reciprocal rights to Christians. For example, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is built over a Byzantine church and to this day contains a shrine said to contain the head of John the Baptist; Christians should be granted leave to pray there. Or the grandest church of Byzantium, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, for centuries a mosque and now a museum – it too should be made available for Christian services. The Vatican has made reciprocity the cornerstone of its relations with Muslims, and this looks like a simple place to start implementing that policy. (December 26, 2006)
Mar. 19, 2007 update: A reader, "gus3," reminds me that a mosque was, in turn, built atop the Visigothic monastery of San Vicente, which in its turn was built atop a Roman temple dedicated to Janus. One suspects that Christians did not get to pray in the mosque, nor devotees of Janus in the church.
Apr. 11, 2007 update: Another reader, "Marcus," takes this point to its elegantly logical extreme: "The mosque builders used the Roman and Visigothic columns to make the mosque. So . . . while the site was a mosque, Muslims have no particular claim on the site. I guess if the remnants of a Roman cult of Jupiter would like to make a claim, we'd have to listen to them."
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