Name Debate Echoes an Old Clash of Faiths

[Richard]

Complicated it is. I'd rename the place "Provo's Privy" and put it on the market.

And so it goes...

Richard

Name Debate Echoes an Old Clash of Faiths
Rachel Donadio, NYT, 4 Nov 2010

The great mosque of Córdoba was begun by the Muslim caliphs in the eighth century, its forest of pillars and red-and-white striped arches meant to convey a powerful sense of the infinite. With the Christian reconquest of Spain in the 13th century, it was consecrated as a cathedral.

Today, signs throughout this whitewashed Andalusian city refer to the monument, a Unesco World Heritage site, as the “mosque-cathedral” of Córdoba. But that terminology is now in question. Last month, the bishop of Córdoba began a provocative appeal for the city to stop referring to the monument as a mosque so as not to “confuse” visitors.

For now, the matter is largely semantic because the mayor says the city will not change its signs. But the debate goes far beyond signs. It is the latest chapter in the rich history of the most emblematic monument in Christian-Muslim relations in Europe — and a tussle over the legacy of “Al Andalus,” when part of Spain, under the Muslim caliphs, was a place of complex coexistence among Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The debate takes on greater weight ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s planned visit this weekend to Spain, which he has identified as an important battlefield in his struggle to shore up Christian belief in an increasingly secular — and implicitly Muslim — Europe.

The polemic in Córdoba began in mid-October, when Bishop Demetrio Fernández published an opinion article in ABC, a Spanish center-right daily newspaper.

“There’s no problem saying that the Muslim caliphs built this temple to God,” the bishop wrote. “But it is completely inappropriate to call it a mosque today because it has not been one for centuries, and to call it a mosque confuses visitors.”

“In the same way, it would be inappropriate to call the current mosque of Damascus the Basilica of St. John or to expect that it could be both a place of Muslim and Christian worship,” Bishop Fernández added, referring to the Syrian site where an Umayyad mosque was built in the eighth century above a fourth-century church said to contain the remains of John the Baptist.

The Córdoba monument — one of the true architectural wonders of the world, with its rows of pillars that both disorient and overpower — drew 1.1 million visitors in 2009, most of them tourists, not worshipers. But diocesan officials are upset that some Muslims have tried to pray there, even though it is a consecrated cathedral.

(cont'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/wo...05cordoba.html