By Raymond Ibrahim Previous to Pope Benedict XVI’s November 30 visit to the Hagia Sophia complex in Constantinople, Muslims and Turks variously expressed apprehension and rage. Turkey’s independent paper Vatan put it thus: “The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian center that fell to Muslims.” A sign of the cross, apparently, would be interpreted as a signal for a crusade. Built in Constantinople in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia — Greek for “Holy Wisdom” — was Christendom’s greatest and most celebrated church. After parrying centuries of jihadi thrusts from Arabs, Constantinople was finally sacked by Turks in the jihad of 1453. Its crosses desecrated and icons defaced, this millennium-old church — as well as thousands of other churches in the then Byzantine Empire — was immediately converted into a mosque, the tall minarets of Islam sur...