Jerusalem and Temple Mount

Jerusalem and Temple Mount

One of the most popular lies that has become universally accepted as if it was an indisputable  truth is the myth about Jerusalem being the third sacred place to Islam. It is quite rare to hear the honest truth, that Jerusalem is the First and Only Holiest place to Judaism! As a matter of fact, Jerusalem is not mentioned at all in the Koran, and Muhammad has never been there (perhaps he did not even know about the existence of Jerusalem!). The tale about his dream flight has been related with Jerusalem in a very recent time for political strategy purposes.

1) The Islamic claim to the Temple Mount is very recent – Jerusalem’s role as “The Third Holiest Site in Islam” in mainstream Islamic writings does not precede the 1930's. It was created by the grand mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Most of the problems surrounding Jerusalem can be traced to two areas of dispute: the political area that asks Jerusalem to be the capital of both Israel and the hypothetic Palestine; the other and most contentious problem is the holiness of Temple Mount to both Judaism and Islam.

The role Jerusalem has in the Hebrew Holy Scriptures is well known and not open to debate; however, there are varying opinions on the holiness of Jerusalem, specifically Temple Mount to Islam.

Many if not most opinions that counter Islam’s claim point out the Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Qur’an and did not occupy any special role in Islam until recent political exigencies transformed Jerusalem into Islam’s “third holy site”. This falsehood was created by the grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The mufti knew that nationalist slogans alone would not succeed in uniting the masses against arriving Jewish refugees; he therefore turned the struggle into a religious conflict. He addressed the masses clearly, calling for a holy war. Since the moment when he was appointed to the position of mufti, Haj Amin worked vigorously to raise Jerusalem’s status as an Islamic holy center.

2) The Islamic claim to Jerusalem is false – There were no mosques in Jerusalem in 632 c.e. at the death of Muhammad… Jerusalem was [then] a Christian-occupied city.
The Muslim “claim” to Jerusalem is allegedly based on what is written in the Koran, which although does not mention Jerusalem even once, nevertheless talks of the “furthest mosque” (in Sura 17:1): «Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the sacred mosque to the furthest mosque». But is there any foundation to the Muslim argument that this “furthest mosque” (al-masujidi al-aqsa) refers to what is today called the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, NO!

In the days of Muhammad, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian-occupied city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by caliph Omar only in 638 c.e., six years after Muhammad’s death. Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on theTemple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style. The Aqsa mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by caliph Abd el-Malik. The name “Omar mosque” is therefore false. In or around 711, about 80 years after Muhammad died, Malik’s son, Abd el-Wahd ‒who ruled in 705-715‒ reconstructed the Christian-Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine “basilica” structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular “ship” in the centr. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aqsa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.

Consequently, it is crystal clear that Muhammad could never have had this mosque in mind when he wrote the Koran (if he did so), since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Muhammad intended the mosque in Mecca as the “sacred mosque”, and the mosque in Medina as the “furthest mosque”. So much for the Muslim claim based on the Aqsa mosque.

With this understood, it is no wonder that Muhammad issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer, a practice that had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Muhammad put an abrupt stop to it on February 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Muslims themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain.

3) The present Arabic name of Jerusalem is “Al-Quds”… but “Al-Quds” is an abbreviation for “The Jewish Temple”!