Friday 31 July 2020

Gulf states will be among the biggest losers if Trump is defeated this fall

As the US president's approval rating tanks in the run-up to the November election, his allies in the Gulf have serious cause for concern
US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the 2019 G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan (Saudi Royal Palace/Bandar al-Jaloud/AFP)


The US is just a few months away from an election in which the American people will have the opportunity to re-elect President Donald Trump, or make him one of the few one-term presidents in the country’s history by electing his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. 
While a lot can happen between now and November, Trump faces an uphill battle for re-election. Buffeted by a combination of the devastating public health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, alongside waves of protest over police brutality against African Americans after the brazen killing of George Floyd, Trump’s campaign is in deep trouble, with recent polls showing Biden holding a 50-41 lead. 

Biden likely to win

Although it is theoretically possible for Trump to win re-election while losing the popular vote, something he already accomplished when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, Biden is reportedly leading in key battleground states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which Trump carried by the narrowest of margins in 2016 and which edged him to victory in the electoral college. 
In short, unless something dramatic changes in the political environment, there is a strong likelihood that Biden will defeat Trump decisively in this fall’s election - and even a good chance that the Democrats will recapture the Senate, giving them control over all three branches of government. 
Trump has been willing to give Gulf Arab leaders cover to pursue whatever policies they deem necessary for their own security, without regard to questions of human rights or democracy
Trump, in the mind of his detractors, represents a unique combination of arrogance, narcissism, cruelty, incompetence, greed and racism. He has polarised US politics to an unprecedented extent, and all of those associated with his rise face the prospect of a dramatic reversal in fortunes should he and his Republican allies lose the coming election.
The Trump years have seen a strange recalibration of US-Arab relations, under the guise of the “deal of the century”. The general contours of the deal entail Arab states, and particularly Gulf states, abandoning any resistance to Israeli ambitions in Palestine, in exchange for complete US and Israeli support for Gulf states in their confrontation with Iran. 
A secondary aspect of the recalibrated relationship has been a no-questions-asked approach on the part of the US regarding arms sales to Gulf states, combined with turning a blind eye to the human rights violations of Gulf Arab allies. 

Weapons sales

The Trump administration’s insistence on selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE was especially controversial in the face of US congressional opposition, due to the massive humanitarian suffering these two countries have inflicted upon the Yemeni people since their intervention in Yemen’s civil war starting in March 2015. 
The gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 laid bare the contradictions between Trump’s transactional approach to foreign relations, in which he said he would not jeopardise lucrative Saudi arms contracts by pressing for real justice, and the demands of the US Congress that Saudi Arabia be held accountable for this brazen act of criminality.  
Trump has been willing to give Gulf Arab leaders cover to pursue whatever policies they deem necessary for their own security, without regard to questions of human rights or democracy - so long as they give Israel a free hand in Palestine, continue buying astronomical amounts of US weapons, and stand ready to resist Iran. 

US presidential candidate Joe Biden (Reuters)

US presidential candidate Joe Biden (Reuters)

All things being equal, it would not be inconceivable that a Democratic administration would support these same policies - but everything Trump does is divisive. For many Democrats, Trump’s embrace of Arab autocrats, such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has not been understood as a shrewd strategy to further US interests, but rather as his embracing another autocrat - a fellow traveller in the world community who acts in open defiance of international legality. 
In short, even as Gulf states have in Trump a valuable ally in the White House - both in their external confrontation with Iran, and in their internal confrontations with reformers at home - they seem to have underestimated the extent to which Americans now view them as irredeemable Trumpists, a fact that renders them virtual pariahs to the more than half of Americans who despise Trump.  

Resetting US-Gulf relations

There is a strong likelihood that in the event of a sweeping Democratic victory this fall, the Biden administration and Democratic congressional leaders will seek a complete reset of US-Gulf relations. 
Taking a hard line against these regimes would come at a relatively low cost to the US internationally, but play very well to US domestic audiences. The coalition that replaces Trump would be multi-ethnic, multi-religious and working class, keenly attuned to issues of income and wealth inequality, and respect for human rights.

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They would not be terribly sympathetic to the Gulf states in light of their vast (unearned) wealth, the vast income and wealth inequality in those states, and the states’ contempt for human rights and democracy. These states could easily become punching bags for the new Biden administration. 
Bernie Sanders, although he did not win the Democratic nomination, remains a highly popular figure among the party’s base, and there is no doubt that the base is moving closer to his ideals. His public condemnations of Saudi Arabia, for example, are likely representative of the views of the vast majority of Democratic Party voters and activists. 
As the global economy’s need for Gulf oil declines in conjunction with the rise of alternative energy technologies and the discovery of massive new oil fields in North America, the global importance of the Gulf has declined and will continue to decline. The collapse of oil prices in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated this trend. 
The brittle nature of Gulf regimes has made them even more dependent on external support to survive. Americans are increasingly unwilling to provide this support, especially if it means risking substantial losses, as would follow in a new war with Iran. 

Existential questions

This will be especially true if Biden defeats Trump and the US populace sees Gulf states solely through the lens of their previous relationship with a despised and failed president. At the same time, it is unlikely that other external powers, such as Russia or China, will be able to replace the US as guarantors of the Gulf states’ security.  
Gulf states are increasingly facing existential questions: they can either seek to bolster their security by re-establishing their states on democratic grounds, and seeking regional peace, integration and development - something that would require a radical (but much more equitable) redistribution of political and economic power - or they can openly embrace Israel and become its client states. 
Gulf states, having bet so much on Trump, are unlikely to see a substantial payoff before the end of his first term
If they refuse to undertake fundamental political reforms, both domestically and in their regional politics, they will find that Israel, which has an abiding interest in maintaining disarray in the Arab region, is the only state that could reliably guarantee the status quo. 
But an open embrace of Israel, despite increasingly clear attempts to lay the groundwork for normalisation of relations, carries substantial risks for the Gulf states, especially as Israel proceeds apace with annexation and de jure apartheid. Gulf states, having bet so much on Trump, are unlikely to see a substantial payoff before the end of his first term - and ironically, they now stand to be among the biggest losers if he and the Republicans lose decisively this fall.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Mohammad H Fadel
Mohammad H Fadel is Professor of Law at University of Toronto. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles on Islamic legal history, theology and Islam and liberalism.

AFRICOM confirms HQ is leaving Stuttgart, German defense minister says US withdrawal is ‘regrettable’

31 Jul, 2020 13:43

AFRICOM confirms HQ is leaving Stuttgart, German defense minister says US withdrawal is ‘regrettable’
The US Africa Command will seek to move its headquarters as the Pentagon plans a major reduction of American forces based in Germany. The German Defense Ministry is now considering how to help regions after the US withdrawal.
Since its establishment in 2008, the US Africa Command has been headquartered in Stuttgart, the capital of Germany’s southwestern Baden-Wurttemberg state. Now the command “will look first at options elsewhere in Europe, but also will consider options in the United States,” AFRICOM said in a statement.
AFRICOM chief US Army General Stephen Townsend noted that the decision-making will “likely take several months” as the command searches for a new home.
The Pentagon previously said it will move the Special Operations Command Europe, also based in Stuttgart, to Mons in Belgium. Overall, the US plans to withdraw nearly 12,000 of the 36,000 American troops stationed in Germany, relocating a portion of them to other NATO member states, including Belgium and Italy.
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German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called the plan to reduce the US military presence in the country “regrettable.” She promised to invite the heads of German states after the summer to discuss how that the German forces can “support the affected regions.”
We’re bearing German and European interests in mind. The truth is that a good life in Germany and Europe increasingly depends on how we ensure our own security.
As well as Baden-Wurttemberg, the US is set to pull some of its troops from Rhineland-Palatinate and Bavaria.
US President Donald Trump and other officials have accused Berlin of not contributing enough to NATO. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper argued that Germany “can and should pay more to its defense.”
German officials were caught off guard by Trump last month when he first announced the decision to scale down the US contingent in the country. Politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union argued that the withdrawal will weaken NATO, while the opposition Left party welcomed the decision.
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As part of its military repositioning scheme, the Pentagon plans to move the HQ of the US Army’s V Corps to Poland. Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak confirmed that at least 1,000 additional American soldiers will be deployed in the country. Poland currently hosts around 4,500 US personnel.

New Reports Suggest Libyan Warlord Khalifa Haftar is Working with Mossad

Reports of Israeli support for the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar are nothing new, but as the apartheid state gains ground among Arab nations, the need to hide Mossad’s role in the destabilizing of oil-rich Libya may be disappearing.



The stench of the CIA and its covert operations in oil-rich Libya has long followed General Khalifa Haftar. But now another intelligence organization is being tied to the controversial military officer as accusations of extensive dealings with the Mossad are being levied against him by an Israeli journalist, who claims that Haftar met with members of the Israeli outfit in Cairo from 2017 to 2019.
It is not the first time Haftar has been linked to the apartheid state. In 2017, the General reportedly coordinated with the Israeli Defense Forces IDF to bomb military positions of the so-called Islamic State inside Libya. Two years earlier, in 2015, the Jerusalem Post published an account from an unnamed Arab newspaper asserting that Haftar planned to meet Israeli officials during a visit to the capital of Jordan and struck a deal with them to exchange oil and arms for help in his push for power.
The latest claims of Haftar’s Israeli links also involve the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is said to have mediated the meetings between the commander of the Libyan National Army and two Israeli assets named by the anonymous source as Ackerman and Mizrachi. The source, in fact, dates Haftar’s connections to the Jewish state as far back as 2011 when the Israeli Air Force ostensibly coordinated with the Libyan strongman to target jihadist groups who had flooded the country in the wake of Gaddafi’s U.S.-sponsored murder.
Adding to the intrigue are parallel claims that Iran – Israel’s sworn enemy in the region – has also been providing Haftar with military aid in his campaign to topple the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, running counter to official reports coming out of Iran declaring its support for the GNA. These accusations are coming from none other than the Israeli envoy to the UN, who accused Tehran of supplying advanced weapons systems to Haftar, calling it a “grave violation of Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” which attempts to halt the “supply, sale or transfer of arms” from Iran.

Allies in the desert

Iran, for its part, denies these allegations. In a joint press conference held by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu last month, Zarif stated that Iran wanted to “have a political solution to the Libyan crisis to end the civil war” and both reiterated their support for the GNA. Iran contends that Haftar’s main allies, such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are Iran’s enemies and it would, therefore, make no sense for them to support him in any way, as this would only increase the influence of the Gulf states in the region.
But the turmoil in Libya coupled with its immense deposits of oil and strategic geopolitical significance make Haftar a magnet for a plethora of interests vying for some measure of influence over whichever faction ends up assuming control of the country. Indeed, there is practically no country with any precedent in Libya that has not been caught trying to gain Haftar’s favor or better.
At the top of the list is the United States. When Haftar betrayed the man he had helped put in power back in 1969, it was in Langley, Virginia – a stone’s throw away from CIA headquarters – where Haftar resided for two decades, plotting the overthrow of the “Brother Leader.” So it is perhaps not too surprising that a man known to be an asset of the only superpower operating in the region would attract the favor of more than one suitor, in spite of any differences between them.

Israel’s interest

What is undeniable, however, is Israel’s burgeoning intention to build stronger alliances with Sunni states like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – all of whom are strong supporters of General Haftar. In addition, Israel has historically cultivated relationships with African despots and helped execute coups throughout the continent. Both during the conflicts that bring them to power and once installed, these authoritarian regimes help to put Israel among the top ten arms dealers in the world.
The more successful Israel is in currying favor with the Gulf states and its Arab partners, the less need there will be for any pretense to hide its role in the ongoing reconfiguration of the Middle East and Africa. In June, the deputy prime minister of the eastern Libya-based government, Abdul Salam al-Badri, was reported to have sought the support of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that Libya has “never and will never be enemies of Tel Aviv.” For the moment, such open gestures of friendship with the apartheid state are still too distasteful to be uttered in public, and al-Badri was forced to deny the report after his remarks caused an uproar in Libya.

Raul Diego is a MintPress News Staff Writer, independent photojournalist, researcher, writer and documentary filmmaker.

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The only reason the corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Jovenel Moïse is currently president of Haiti is due to US (and Canadian) support.

 Posted on


While remembering their past has not prevented history from repeating itself, it is not possible for the descendants of the world’s first successful large-scale slave revolt to forget the trauma inflicted by their northern neighbors.

One hundred and five years ago today a brutal US occupation of Haiti began. To commemorate an intervention that continues to shape that country Solidarity Québec Haiti is organizing a sit in in front of the US Consulate on Saint Catherine St.

On July 28, 1915 the USS Washington, with 900-men and 20 canons, docked in Port-au-Prince. US troops withdrew in 1934 but Washington largely controlled the country’s finances until 1941 and the Banque de la République d’Haïti remained under US supervision until 1947.

The occupation wasn’t Washington’s first instance of interference in Haiti but rather consolidated its grip over the country. Six months beforehand US Marines marched on the treasury in Port-au-Prince and took the nation’s entire gold reserve.

At the height, 5000 US Marines were stationed in the country of less than 3 million. US-led forces brutally suppressed a largely peasant resistance movement, killing 15,000 Haitians.

In one of many instances of overt US racism, a top commander in the occupation, Colonel Littleton (Tony) Waller, descendent of a prominent family of slaveowners, said, “I know the nigger and how to handle him.”

To suppress the anti-occupation movement the US employed the nascent technique of aerial bombardment. Most of the fighting ended when rebel leader Charlemagne Peralte was killed, pinned to a door and left on a street to rot for days at the end of 1919. The US military described Peralte as the “supreme bandit of Haiti”.

In a famous mea culpa, an architect of the occupation confessed he was in fact the true “gangster”. Describing himself as a “high class muscle man for Big Business” and “gangster for capitalism”, Marine Corps General Smedley Butler wrote in an article years later, “I helped make Haiti … a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in.”

Opposition to the occupation was fed by conscription. US authorities captured civilians and compelled them to work on public roadway, buildings and other infrastructure. One reason the Marines wanted new roads was to help them bypass rugged terrain to suppress the resistance.

During the occupation the US established a new military. Created to crush resistance to the foreign presence, the National Guard “never fought anyone but Haitians.” For the next 70 years it would be used by Washington and the elite against Haiti’s poor. Haiti’s current government is seeking to revive that force.

In general, the occupation devastated the peasantry. Wealth extracted from the countryside was overwhelmingly channeled to infrastructure in the capital and foreign banks. The occupation spurred migration to Port-au-Prince and out of the country.

The US instigated other major changes to rural ways. In 1918 they rewrote the constitution to allow foreigners to purchase land, which had been outlawed since independence. A number of US corporations took advantage of the changes. The US controlled North Haytian Sugar Company and Haytian Pineapple Company both acquired hundreds of acres of land while the Haitian American Development Corporation, Haytian Corporation of America and Haytian Agricultural Corporation acquired tens of thousands of acres.

Toronto-based Sun Life Assurance Company initiated its operations in Haiti during this period. Canada’s largest bank also benefited from the US occupation. In 1919 the Royal Bank of Canada became the second bank in Haiti. RBC hired former finance minister Louis Borno as a legal advisor and officials of the Canadian firm subsequently financed his successful presidential bid during the US occupation.

Unfortunately, Solidarity Québec Haiti’s sit in is not only about drawing attention to a dark chapter in Haitian history. Washington retains significant influence over the country. In fact, the only reason the corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Jovenel Moïse is currently president of Haiti is due to US (and Canadian) support.


Yves Engler is the author of several books, including his latest, Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the road to Economic, Social and Environmental Decay. Reprinted from CommonDeams with the author’s permission.

Hagia Sophia is still symbolic of Christianity and Islam's shared history

Standing on its promontory between east and west, the celebrated site has always reflected the politics of the time


A tourist visits the inside of Hagia Sophia on 10 July in Istanbul (AFP)


Hagia Sophia’s conversion from a museum into a mosque has seen thousands and thousands of words committed to the page across the globe. 
Most of it recycles the same information - that the great church was built in the sixth century under the Byzantine emperor Justinian, that it was converted to a mosque when Mehmed the Conqueror captured Constantinople in 1453 and that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, repurposed it as a museum in 1934. 
All this is true but misses so much of the flavour and historical context of this hugely important building.
The tone of much western coverage is pained, as if the Hagia Sophia is somehow part of a European Christian cultural heritage now wrenched away into the dark folds of Islam by a Turkish president with neo-Ottoman delusions.
The architecture reflects the politics, making visible what is happening in society. The current events are just the latest in a long line of twists and turns
There can be no doubt that President Erdogan does indeed have his own agenda for converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and his timing is clearly political. It heightens his popularity with his core Islamic supporters at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is hitting Turkey’s struggling economy hard, and provides a welcome distraction.
He makes no apology for his actions - and an Optimar poll shows that 60 percent of Turks support the move.
The important thing to understand is that the Hagia Sophia, like so many religious buildings, has its own highly political backstory. As ever, the architecture reflects the politics, making visible what is happening in society. The current events are just the latest in a long line of twists and turns.

Ethnically diverse

The first church on the site was built in 360, but there is no evidence that it had Christian mosaics on the walls of the type found from the fifth and sixth century onwards. Walls instead were covered with marble revetments, plaster, and painted and gilded stucco in decorative patterns.
Many Europeans call the Byzantine Empire "Greek", when in practice it was very ethnically diverse
Constantine denuded virtually every city in the empire of its pagan statuary to adorn Constantinople, his new Rome, just as Justinian scoured the empire for precious marble two centuries later, like the eight green columns from the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, to build Hagia Sophia.
When the Western Roman Empire and Rome itself collapsed in 476, Constantinople became the largest and wealthiest city in Europe, and the influences upon it were wide and varied, including from the Roman Latin culture, the Egyptian Copts, the Thracians, Macedonians, Illyrians, Bithynians, Carians, Phrygians, Armenians, Lydians, Galatians, Paphlagonians, Lycians, Syrians, Cilicians, Misians, Cappadocians, Persians, and later the Arab Muslims.
Many Europeans call the Byzantine Empire "Greek", when in practice it was very ethnically diverse. Greeks composed a relatively small portion of this multi-ethnic empire, and most Byzantine emperors were not ethnic Greeks. 
Justinian was obliged to build the current Hagia Sophia after it was damaged beyond repair by angry crowds protesting his high taxes. According to art historian John Lowden, Justinian was "a person of vision and extraordinary energy, both intensely pious and utterly ruthless… his military ambitions matched by his grandiose building programme."

Reconstructing Hagia Sophia

To re-establish control as quickly as possible, he commissioned two famous architects in 532, both from western Asia Minor, a geographic region located in the south-western part of Asia comprising most of what is present-day Turkey, to complete the project with a huge workforce over an intense five-year period.

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Both ignored numerous stylistic quotations and detailed instructions from the emperor to come up with their own unique creation, universally recognised as the highpoint of Byzantine architecture and admired round the world for the stunning achievement of the central dome.
A very different image is conveyed by the western European Latin manuscript now held in the Vatican Library, in which an enormous Justinian, many times bigger than the Hagia Sophia itself, is seen directing a small, rather nervous-looking mason who is balancing on a ladder.
The inspiration for Hagia Sophia was never Hadrian’s Pantheon, but earlier Eastern traditions. St Simeon’s Basilica, in Syria west of Aleppo, completed in 490, was the largest and most important religious establishment in the world for 50 years before the construction of Hagia Sophia.
It also inspired the UNESCO World Heritage Site basilicas of Ravenna, briefly capital of the Western Roman Empire, where all the bishops up until 425 were Syrian and whose patron saint Apollinaris was a native of Antioch. Famed across Europe as a site of pilgrimage, the Santiago de Compostela of its day, St Simeon’s could hold 10,000 worshippers, more than Notre-Dame de Paris or the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny. 

The heavenly temple

Hagia Sophia was the largest cathedral in the world for over a thousand years, a major influence on and inspiration for future religious architecture, both Christian and Muslim. A series of earthquakes caused it to fall in 558, just twenty years after it was completed, by which time Justinian was 76 and both architects had died.

ConquestOf Constantinople By The Crusaders In 1204

Conquest Of Constantinople By The Crusaders In 1204

Sections of this second dome, completed in 562, collapsed again in 989 and in 1346, but were restored and repaired without material change. It was a remarkable achievement, openly praised by later Ottoman historians - following the typical Byzantine tradition, they used language implying that the architect must have worked in direct union with God, with descriptions of a guardian angel watching over the church.
In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, Hagia Sophia suffered the greatest damage in its long history, looted and sacked, along with the whole of Constantinople, thereby consummating a major schism between the Latin and Greek churches - Roman Catholics against Greek Orthodox Christians.
For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed.

The Fourth Crusade

The defeat of Byzantium, which was already in a state of decline, accelerated the empire's political degeneration, leaving it easy prey for the Turks. The Fourth Crusade and the crusading movement generally resulted, ultimately, in the victory of Islam, an outcome which was of course the exact opposite of its original intention. 
The Fourth Crusade and the crusading movement generally resulted, ultimately, in the victory of Islam
Pope Innocent III, who had unintentionally launched the ill-fated expedition, rebuked them:
"How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and devotion to the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs?
As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men... They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics."
The pope’s outrage however did not prevent him accepting the stolen jewels, gold, money and other valuables, and the Church was much enriched as a result. A great deal of this wealth was in turn repurposed into huge building projects across Europe - much of it decorates St Mark’s Basilica in Venice and some of it certainly would have helped to finance Europe’s Gothic cathedrals.

Mosaic of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna

The 6th century Byzantine mosaic in the apse of the basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe (Ravenna, Italy) (Wikipedia)

Remorse was expressed 800 years later by Pope John Paul II for the events of the Fourth Crusade.
Writing to the archbishop of Athens in 2001, he said: "It is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. The fact that they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret." 

Shared symbolism

When Mehmed the Conqueror took Constantinople in 1453, he permitted his armies three days of looting, as was the custom at that period for a victorious army (not just the Ottomans), but then he called for a halt.
Most churches were allowed to continue functioning, but the Hagia Sophia was adopted as a mosque. Mehmed erected a minaret and subsequent sultans installed three more, so there is now one at each corner, but the interior remains largely as it ever was. 
Maybe we should celebrate the fact that Muslims and non-Muslims alike can today make repeated visits to admire the blended architecture of Christianity and Islam on display for free
There is much shared symbolism between Christianity and Islam in the meaning of the dome as the physical representation of heaven and the afterlife, but the flavour of Hagia Sophia as a building was always different to the sacred buildings of Rome, like the pagan Pantheon and Michelangelo’s St Peter’s.
Its design was rooted in Eastern traditions, where Persian mausoleums had a circular dome resting on a square drum. The transition between the circle and the square resulted in an octagon, which came to represent, both in Christianity and Islam, the resurrection and the journey between earth and heaven, which is why so many tombs are octagonal in both religions.

St Simeon's Basilica in Idlib (Photo Diana Darke)

St Simeon's Basilica in Idlib in 2010 (Diana Darke)

As well as shared concepts, Christians and Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean enjoyed a common heritage of building materials, techniques and tools passed on from the Graeco-Roman, Persian and even earlier Etruscan worlds.
They also shared workers, builders and craftsmen, who moved around according to demand, following the next or the most profitable commission from a wealthy patron, no matter what his religion. Byzantine mosaicists, for example, were frequently employed to decorate Islamic mosques, such as the Dome of the Rock, the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, and the Cordoba Mezquita. 
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In 1573 the great Ottoman architect Sinan was commissioned to strengthen Hagia Sophia, which was again starting to show signs of possible collapse. Extra buttressing was added to the outside to ensure its resistance to earthquakes.
In total, 24 buttresses have been added over the centuries to ensure its stability, making its external appearance quite different to how it would have looked originally. 
In today’s world of intense economic pressures, a final mention should be made of the loss of revenue to the Turkish treasury through the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Like the Blue Mosque next door, and like all mosques in Turkey (unlike many cathedrals and churches in Europe), entry will now be free to all.
The entrance fee to Hagia Sophia as a museum was expensive, costing $15 per person. Maybe we should celebrate the fact that Muslims and non-Muslims alike can today make repeated visits to admire the blended architecture of Christianity and Islam on display for free in this unique building, standing on its promontory between East and West

Diana Darke's latest book "Stealing from the Saracens" is published in August 2020.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Diana Darke
Diana Darke is a Middle East cultural expert with special focus on Syria. A graduate in Arabic from Oxford University, she has spent over 30 years specialising in the Middle East and Turkey, working for both government and commercial sectors. She is the author of several books on Middle East society, including My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Crisis (2016) and The Merchant of Syria (2018), a socio-economic history. Her latest book "Stealing from the Saracens" will be published in August 2020 by Hurst Publishers.
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Spike in gold puts dollar's reserve status in question: Goldman Sachs

 BY NIV ELIS -