When a year ago I walked out of the former basilica of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, reconverted into a mosque by Erdogan, I said to one of my children-old enough to begin understanding the world we live in and the one that awaits him: “You’ll see, they will do the same in the West".
When sanctuaries change hands, civilizations speak. The transformation is architectural, but the message is cultural: a testimony to what one society has abandoned and what another is willing to claim, sealing the decline of a civilization that illuminated the world for centuries.
Tulsi Gabbard, Director of Intelligence in the Trump administration, is right: “Their goal is not only the Islamization of Australia, but of the entire world, including the United States. It is probably too late for Europe, and perhaps also for Australia. It is not too late for the United States of America. But soon it will be."
In Italy until now there were two churches transformed into mosques. Both in the heart of Arab-Norman Sicily.
First the church of San Paolino dei Giardinieri in Palermo, where in place of the Creed the Shahada is now recited. Then a mosque in a church in Agrigento.
The Court of Appeal has now ruled in favor of the Association of Muslims of Bergamo. And the former church of the Ospedali Riuniti can become a mosque.
The case dates back to late 2018, when the church was put up for sale by the Giovanni XXIII hospital authority. Following a public tender, the property was awarded to the Muslim Association. The regional president, Attilio Fontana, declared that the building, as a symbol of Christianity, would be safeguarded. The Region decided to exercise its right of first refusal, acquiring the church. And the legal battle began.
In Livorno too, there is talk of transforming a historic evangelical church in the city center into a mosque. It is the “Temple of the Dutch," one of the testimonies of the city’s cosmopolitan character.
Soon, that temple which told the story of Protestant merchants from Northern Europe will become a mosque, with the minaret in place of the cross, veiled women, and the altar transformed into a mihrab facing Mecca.
Not to mention the Florentine mosque built on land belonging to the Catholic diocese.
And a church for sale in Veneto: the parish priest promises it will never become a mosque. But it sounds very much like a promise written on water.
I went to Edinburgh, the Scottish city whose breathtaking architecture leaves you speechless, but where you can no longer find a church that is not a restaurant or a mosque.
I had read a report in The National titled “Empty Churches, Full Mosques": “Churches in Scotland are being converted into mosques as Christian congregations decline and Muslims seek places of worship."
So I started looking for them. In a church on the Royal Mile, a Christmas market is held.
Others have become souvenir shops.
The most striking is the old church now Al Arqam Mosque. My hotel was next door.
It stands beside the university with its neat green lawns and next to a convent of nuns, also long closed.
Less than a kilometer away is the Frankenstein pub in place of an old church, like Bertie’s, where they serve the best fish and chips in the city.
In England, a church has just been purchased for £3.5 million to be turned into a mosque. St Thomas’ Church will reopen as Masjid Al-Ummah in 2026.
In Stoke-on-Trent, the BBC reports, a Catholic church becomes a mosque. In Bradford, it is a Protestant church. The same in Blackburn. Then in Birmingham. Then in Liverpool.
In one generation it will all be over. “Church or mosque?" asks The Telegraph. We know the answer.
Another church becomes a mosque in Canada. After remaining empty for three years, St. Margaret’s Catholic Church in Ottawa reopens as a mosque, CBC reveals. In Chatham, Ontario, another church converted into a mosque. In Toronto, a 148-year-old Catholic church is now a mosque. In Winnipeg, another church converted into a mosque. In Windsor, a 1915 church becomes a mosque.
Hundreds of Catholic and Protestant churches in America are becoming mosques.
We are in a historical trend. And obviously completely unconscious of it.
In Drammen, 66,000 inhabitants and eighteen mosques in Norway, the Landfalløya church is a mosque. In Norway, Aftenposten reports, the Islamic Cultural Center received one million kroner from the government to purchase two churches in Skien and Stavanger and turn them into mosques.
Dozens of English churches pass to Islam: in Keston, the Hyatt United Church, St Peter’s Church, the Brick Lane Mosque, in Clitheroe, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Fulmer… Catholic and Protestant churches.
A church in Hagen, Germany, has also become a mosque. The cross on the external façade has been painted white. Similar scenes from Hamburg to Berlin. At Flughafenstrasse 43 in the capital, only the organ pipes recall that Christian services were once held there. Where there were pews, there is a red carpet. In place of the altar, the imam’s staircase.
The phenomenon of churches being converted into mosques-now out of control and reaching even sleepy little Italy-presents itself as an epochal sign. Not so much for what it announces, but for what it reveals: a silent, slow transformation determined by the succession of generations, cultural evolution, religious pluralism, and the identity crises of the West itself.
The empty pews, one after another, made way not for a sudden assault, but for the simple passage of time.
For those who observe this transformation with unease (I am in favor of a law preventing the conversion of churches into mosques), the feeling is that of witnessing the conclusion of a long sunset. Islamic tiles on walls once decorated by time-worn frescoes become the sign of a Europe that no longer recognizes itself; of cities that change face more rapidly than their inhabitants can accept.
It is an ancient weariness, that of the West, which does not stem from encountering the other, but from the exhaustion of its own spiritual energies and from the void left by the loss of a shared cultural center.
No clangor, no titanic clash. Just doors that close for one community and open for another.
On social media an extraordinary English woman-cultured, calm, and courageous-says everything that needs to be said, starting from a paraphrased quote by T.S. Eliot, who wrote "This is the way the world ends, not with a cry but a whimper":
“We must understand with Eliot. This is the beginning of the end. I lived 12 years in Iran and I know Islam. Persians are not Islamic. They have religion there, but they do not have the mentality of Arab nations and Pakistan, this type of Islamist. And what is happening here now is a conquest. If you see a young British girl in a T-shirt, this was normal for us. Today they look at us and consider us something to be gotten rid of, removed. Their mentality is evil. And they are demolishing churches. The situation will not improve. Neither in your country nor anywhere else in the world. This is the beginning of the end."
There is a square in Oslo where stands announce that “Jesus is Muslim." When will we understand?
The multicultural mass is over. The West goes in peace.