Next Year in Constantinople?

If Muslims choose to build a mosque or study center in America, anywhere, even near Ground Zero, they should be allowed to do so. This would be hard for many Americans, but liberty for people to live their faith as much as possible is a deep American value.

We learned this value from the long dialogue that began in Greece and continued in Philadelphia with the constitution of 1789. We have perfected that document as we worked out the heritage received from Athens as mediated through Jerusalem and incarnated in Washington. Nobody should challenge the right of Muslims to build where they can. This is America and we respect both freedom of religion and reasonable uses of private property.

It is good to see Islamic scholars supporting both ideas. Through bitter experience and failure, many religious people have learned that the free market of ideas is the best way to protect religion. Forced conversions or enforced conformity to a state religion is harmful to the individual, the state, and the religion.

For Islam to become more integrated into the global community, it must continue to embrace both freedom of worship and the ownership of private property. Americans trust that the same Muslims pressing for an Islamic study center near Ground Zero will also publicly support and rejoice in the rebuilding of the Orthodox Church destroyed on 9/11.

This accomplishment is a marvel and a testament to the central nature of Hellenism to American culture.

Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of Arab Christian citizens in the United States, forgotten by the media, know that Christian liturgy has been said in Arabic longer than the Koran has existed. Arab Christian citizens have heeded American values, fought in her wars, and supported her government for almost two hundred years. Now they see an Orthodox community in Lebanon and Syria embattled while America does little or makes things worse.

All Orthodox Christians watch the Hagia Sophia, the great mother church, culturally appropriated, again, as a mosque.

We are told that it was a twisted view of Islam that led to the attack on 9/11, to the deaths of Christians in Syria and Lebanon, and Americans want to believe. Christians have a duty to protect the rights of unpopular groups and so we will stand in solidarity with religious freedom here. If Islam is indeed a religion of peace, Christians trust we will see the same treatment in the parts of the world where Muslims are a majority and Christians are not.

As a result, I look forward to seeing American Islamic scholars and public relations people pushing for the government of Turkey to allow Christians to worship on Sunday in the most sacred church in the East: Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It will be even easier for them to argue for reopening the Orthodox seminary in Turkey so the Ecumenical Patriarch, spiritual father to millions of Orthodox Christians in the world, can train his clergy. The same principles should also allow for church planting activity all over the Arabian Peninsula. Despite official statistics, we know there are Christians residing in Arabia. Can they build churches? Do they have property rights?

Our example in America should spur our State Department to ask these questions of the house of Saud, which receives billions in aid from the United States. You can build a mosque in the United States, Kenya, Italy, the United Kingdom, Russia, or Greece. Can you build a church in Arabia? Following the American model, Egyptian Christians,  in Egypt long before there was an Islam, will not face persecution and be allowed to witness to their faith. They will be allowed to build new churches and to easily rehabilitate old ones.

Even more important than buildings is the right to choose one’s own religion or lack thereof. Converts to Islam, or atheism for that matter, do not face death in Moscow (Russia) or Moscow (Idaho). Will a convert to Orthodoxy in Cairo (Egypt) be as safe as in Cairo (Illinois)? Muslims who embrace Hellenistic values of freedom of religion and freedom of property do not face their main foes in Washington. They face their main foes in Tehran and Istanbul.