city wrote:Hi cannedmoose, I like your idea of having combined religious places where everyone can pray. And you are very right about Kykkos monastery. I personally like Macheiras a lot if you happen to be there when its open and you are allowed to enter the church. Even though I'm atheist I very much appreciated the athmosphere in there and to be honest that was the first and only place ever where I could imagine something about the relation religious people have to their god....
Yes, I feel the same way about Machairas Monastery ... that place (and the people there) has taught me a lot over the last few years ... sadly, the abbot died tragically in a helicopter accident a few months ago, but the brotherhood there has dealt with this blow courageously.
As for Hagia Sophia ... look, let me clarify my position: I'm not going to strap bombs around my waist if Hagia Sophia is not returned to the faith-community which originally built it, and which used it as the central gathering symbol of Christian civilization for 1000 years, but I don't have to like it either ...
I am not against efe's dream, all of us freely intermingling in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, all of us being friends ... that is my dream also. But I suggest we edit out the part about "being able to freely visit the Hagia Sophia" (as tourists), because that's a bitter consolation at best.
By the way, I further believe that for the dream to come true, it is important to allow full religious freedom both in Turkey and in Greece. At the moment, Islam is subtly suppressed by the state in Greece (most ex-mosques in Thessaloniki are now shopping malls, it is next to impossible to get a building permit for a new mosque), and similarly Christianity is subtly suppressed by the state in Turkey (the patriarchate is not even allowed to have a Theological academy operating, and most Churches have been turned to all sorts of other uses).
Unless we get over such mentalities of subtle oppression and subtle discrimination, we will always have two ethnically pure states (i.e. Greece and Turkey) and the only people freely intermingling will be the businessmen and the tourists.