Recordings › Why converting the Hagia Sophia to a mosque is a mistake | Mufti Abu Layth · 16 Jul 2020 › Segment 3 of 9
Was it haram for Muslims to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque after the conquest?
salah salat salaah namaz salaat namaaz as-salah al-salah salawat haj pilgrimage hadj masjed masaajid masajid muftis haraam forbidden ayah ayat ayaat aayah aayat verse madinah madina al-madinah madeenah yathrib ummah umma ummat ibadah ibada ibaadah ibadatMedieval conversions both ways: the politics of men, not haram but not good; the museum and the argument for reconversion
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This segment7:58 to 10:35 · 2 min 37 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenNo, he says: it was the politics of conquest in medieval times, done by Muslims and Christians alike and neither encouraged nor prohibited by Islam, but it was not a good thing. The building later became a museum, and the argument now is only that it was once a mosque.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth says that although converting holy sites was never Islam's goal, Muslims did it, as did many others. One explanation, he says, is that places of worship were the main buildings of their time, so a new community saw them as the natural choice for a prayer facility. He notes that in Muslim Spain Christians turned mosques into cathedrals just as Muslims had turned churches into mosques, a back-and-forth law of the jungle in medieval politics that Islam neither encouraged nor prohibited. So he does not say the original conversion was haram; it was conquest and the politics of men, and like the taking of slaves, which he calls detestable, it was what everyone did at the time, but he does not think it was a good thing. He then explains that the Hagia Sophia remained a mosque for centuries until the Turkish nation-state turned it into a museum, and that the crux of the present argument for reconversion is simply that it was once a mosque.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says the medieval conversion of churches into mosques and of mosques into cathedrals was the politics of men, neither encouraged nor prohibited by Islam, so the original conversion of the Hagia Sophia was not haram but was not a good thing.
“i'm not saying it was haram it wasn't i suppose they've kind of conquered and this is what they did i don't think it was a good thing”
Category: ruling
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine7:58 to 10:35 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
allah does not say and this is you know suratul hajj this is speaking this is in medina allah is speaking about how uh muslims should be because he goes on to say who are these people these are those people who if we give them dominion this is what they do that they would prevent such things tragedies from happening so islam does not set out to convert holy sites to mosques it's never that's never been the goal of islam but
people muslims have done that okay many not just muslims many people have done that one may argue that one of the reasons they did that is because that these were the main buildings in their time so people built you know the places of worship as major buildings so whenever a new community came they saw that major building and they thought yeah that's you know that's a perfect choice to make it into a prayer facility since it's designed like that and you see that muslims did that christians did that in muslim spain they did that as well uh you know they turned many of the masjids
but to be fair muslims when they took over they turned the christian things into masjids they also when they took over turn the muslim things into christian cathedrals it seemed to be you know back and forth a kind of law of the jungle that took place in the medieval times it was neither it was not encouraged by islam but it wasn't prohibited if it was just something that seems to have been the politics of men that they did so okay just to be clear on that so if they did it in the past i'm not saying it was haram it wasn't i suppose they've kind
of conquered and this is what they did i don't think it was a good thing i don't think it's a good thing but it i wouldn't say it was haram per se because it was the politics it was the kind of battles it was what they were doing and you know everybody seemed to be like a a practice that people were doing like the way they took slaves i think that's a it was a detestable thing but the whole world was doing it muslims were doing it christians were doing everybody was doing it so it's like that now the question is that it did become a masjid and for many centuries it remained a masjid
now when turkey was set out as a separate state nation state in the kind of decades that followed you see that this hagia sofia the aya sofia was turned into just a museum now the argument has come that we need to convert this back into a masjid why because it was once upon a time a masjid this is the crux of the argument that why should we turn this into a masjid because it was once upon a time
Paragraphs overlapping 7:58 to 10:35. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2020-07-16-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bgsfy-umsa4/s/3/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, July 16). Was it haram for Muslims to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque after the conquest? [Video, segment 2020-07-16-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bgsfy-umsa4/s/3/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "Was it haram for Muslims to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque after the conquest?" Video, segment 2020-07-16-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded July 16, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bgsfy-umsa4/s/3/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2020-07-16-S03, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Was it haram for Muslims to turn the Hagia Sophia into a mosque after the conquest?}}, year = {2020}, month = {7}, date = {2020-07-16}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bgsfy-umsa4/s/3/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bgsfy-umsa4/s/3/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2020-07-16-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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