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| Mon, 04-19-2004 - 8:29pm |
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/19/1082357118088.html
Muslims across Spain are lobbying the Catholic church in Cordoba to make a symbolic gesture of reconciliation between faiths by allowing them to pray in the city's cathedral.
Cordoba's Renaissance-era cathedral sits in the centre of a 10th century mosque complex, and local Muslims want to be allowed to pray there again. They have appealed to the Vatican to intercede on their behalf.
Zakarias Maza, director of a mosque in neighbouring Granada, said: "We hope the Vatican will give a signal that it has a vision of openness and dialogue.
"Cordoba has been a symbol of the union of three cultures for centuries. Even now, Jews and Muslims live together with Christians in the neighbourhood around the mosque."
The number of Muslims in the south of Spain is growing as a result of immigration from north Africa and Spaniards converting. Cordoba has about 500 Muslims, too many for the present mosque.
A spokesman for the local bishop said that the proposal faced many obstacles and it would be many years before it came to anything. The proposals have also provoked anger from some Catholics. "Will Christians be able to pray in the mosques of Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Kuwait?" demanded one contributor to a Catholic website.
Muslims are going out of their way to portray the proposals as a union, and not a clash of faiths.
Nowadays, Cordoba is a small provincial capital, but 1000 years ago it was one of the great cities of the world. As the capital of Moorish Spain, it became one of Islam's holiest places and a centre of Islamic art and scholarship to rival Baghdad.
The original mosque was built in the eighth century, following the conquest. It was expanded by successive generations of rulers until the Christians took the city again in the 13th century.
With its hundreds of marble columns and distinctive red-and-white brickwork, the mosque is considered one of Moorish Spain's greatest legacies.
It stands at the heart of a UNESCO world heritage site.
The addition of the cathedral was only the most recent change of use for a site that has seen the ebb and flow of the world's great religions.
The Guardian

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First, the site has no special religous significance to Muslims. It is not a sacred site. Centuries ago the building happened to be a mosque. Now it's not. It's a church. It's private property and the Catholic Church has the right to use it, sell it, and decide what happens within it's walls.
If you are on a campaign to open all religous sites and buildings to everyone, you might start with Haia Sofia in Turkey or the thousands of other churches in Asia minor which are now mosques or allowing Jews to even walk on the Temple Mount let alone enter the Dome of the Rock and defile the place with their presence.
Renee
I hear that!!! Do you ever wonder how many problems and deaths could be avoided if religion didn't exist in modern times?
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
Well, I could say that everyone else 'defiles' MY sacred places when they enter ANY church, synagogue, mosque, whatever, because I consider the entire planet to be sacred.
In one breath you are claiming to not view the world in terms of 'them' and 'us,' and in the next, you're asserting your uniqueness for considering the natural world sacred. I think that is one of the universals among all religions.
You're remark sounds like you think I was personally using the term 'defiled;' I was not. I was using it to describe the reason why Muslims will not allow Jews to enter the Dome of the Rock eventhough they believe their holy of holies was located there by God.
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No one spreads tolerance and understanding by making demands on others.
<< Spanish Muslims have no control over what goes on in other areas. >>
Are we to assume these are the only Muslims who are interesting in spreading tolerance and unity? Have they called for Muslims around the world to follow their lead and throw open mosque doors to others who would like to come in and pray? Have they done anything to promote those ideals in Spain beside calling on the Catholic Church to let them in?
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Why would the location of an ordinary church, mosque, synague, or any religous meeting place be sacred? We can and do worship God inside and outside of church walls, and Muslims do most of their worship outside of mosques wherever they happen to be when they have their call to prayer.
The building and location don't have any special significance except in a few rare instances in which places are consecrated for some particular holy event which occured there such as the holy sites in Mecca & Medina and the church in Bethelam that marks the spot where Jesus was born.
As far as I'm aware, Catholics are unique among the Abrahamic religions in believing their churches are sacred and most of their sacrements have to be performed there because of their belief in transubstantiation in which the wine and bread become the body and blood of Christ. That's why Catholics cannot get married outside or in any other building, and I can certainly see them having an issue with Muslims who hold such a radically different view of Christ praying in the place where they believe that most sacred miracle takes place. That said, it is not the building or the location that is sacred to them, but what goes on when Christians worship there, and if they eventually sell the building, it is no longer a sacred place because the Body of Christ is no longer worshipping there and the sacrements are no longer being performed. The building may be turned into a restaurant or torn down, and no Catholic is going to show up 200 years later demanding a right to worship in that spot.
Edited 4/23/2004 6:29 pm ET ET by wrhen
Renee
Renee
In one breath you are claiming to not view the world in terms of 'them' and 'us,' and in the next, you're asserting your uniqueness for considering the natural world sacred. I think that is one of the universals among all religions.
LOL!
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I say:
This is not really about "organized religion", a phrase which is bandied about in a completely overdramatized fashion.
This is about private land and building ownership. The laws which protect private land owners in Western society have done more to bring about peace in the past 100 years than just about anything else.
We can talk for hours about organized religion, diversity, tolerance, and so forth. But the reality is that the Catholic Church owns the building and is entitled to host or not host other religious groups there at its own discretion.
Would we be having this conversation if the Clear-Cut Logging Society wanted to use facilities owned by the Sierra Club for their meetings? Would you suggest pressuring Greenpeace into "sharing" their boats with Japanese whalers? Is that your idea of tolerance?
The fact is, Muslims and Catholics may tolerate each other, but they are radically different religions with diverging goals. There is no reason they should be sharing space. Catholics pay to maintain the building as a Catholic place of worship. The Catholic Church owns the building.
Why should the Catholic faithful subsidize the activities of Muslims? Why should Catholics enter a place of Catholic community with the intention of praying with other Catholic believers, only to find that another religious group is chanting at the other side of the church? That's not tolerance, that's chaos.
Renee
Wait, let's tell treehugger...
Look, treehugger, wrhen and I agreed on something! Maybe world peace COULD happen after all!
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