By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
It’s a well-known cliche that Jerusalem is “holy to the three main religions.” How did this come about? Very simple: The city was first holy to the Jews, and so it was inevitable that the rest of the world would ultimately jump on the bandwagon.
It’s far from the first time that the world has followed our lead. Remember the golden rules, “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you”? They are now axiomatic around the world, but they started off Jewish! (Vayikra 19,18 and Tr. Shabbat 51a, respectively) Same thing with the concept of a weekly day of rest and the concept of monotheism; they were brought into the world by Judaism and Torah, only to be subsequently adopted by much of the rest of the world.
The holiness of Jerusalem is no different. The original “place chosen by G-d” and the seat of the first national Jewish government; the site of the Holy of Holies and the object of Jewish longing for millennia – any wonder that the rest of the world ended up following the leader and “discovering” Jerusalem’s inherent holiness for themselves?
In the case of Jerusalem, however, the Muslims have gone one step further than the others. They maintain not only that Jerusalem is their 3rd-holiest site, and that they will never abandon it, etc. etc. – but also that it has no sanctity or historic significance for Jews! Talk about chutzpah; the sole reason it was ascribed any Muslim holiness is because of its Jewish history, which they now deny!
In fact, the city’s Arabic name is Al-Kuds, based on the word Mikdash, the Holy Temple of Jerusalem!
When the Muslim-Arab world claims “spiritual” bonds with Yerushalayim, this is downright dangerous – because it disguises a long-term, nationalist, strategic plot to take full control over Jerusalem and rid its Old City of a Jewish presence.
Using Religion for Politics
We, and the entire world, must not be fooled: Historically, Muslim ties to Jerusalem have always been based on little more than political expediency, disguised as religious fervor. Currently, we are experiencing the fourth wave in Muslims’ aggrandizement of Jerusalem – at our expense – for their own political purposes.
The first time Islam artificially enhanced Jerusalem was during Muhammad’s own lifetime. In a barefaced attempt to win over the Jews living near his hometown of Medina, he announced that prayers would be directed towards Jerusalem. However, when he saw that the Jews were not interested in his advances, he turned violent and slaughtered them – and subsequently directed prayers towards Mecca.
Mohammed’s abandonment of Jerusalem was so total, writes Arab-expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar, that not only did he not mention the city in the Koran, but later, when Moslems conquered the Holy Land, they totally ignored Jerusalem and established their capital in Ramle!
More Attempts
Some decades after Muhammed’s death, Islam again felt the political need to aggrandize Jerusalem. Caliph Abdel Malik, who reigned among Umayyad Muslims from 684 to 705, was caught off guard when Mecca and Medina were captured by a rival Muslim leader – and so he came up with the idea of renewing Jerusalem as “top holy city”! Imitating impressive Christian churches in the city, he decided to build the Dome of the Rock, precisely on the site of the Beit HaMikdash. Thus, possibly the #1 recognized Muslim symbol around the world came about as a result of internal Muslim politics and interests.
Once Jerusalem was no longer needed to buttress the Muslim leaders, its importance to Islam once again waned proportionately.
The third Muslim infatuation with Jerusalem occurred during the 12th-century Crusades. Muslim leader Salah a-Din needed to inflame his warriors against the Christian Crusaders – and again, Jerusalem briefly became the focus of jihad and religious longing. Interestingly, the Arabic inscriptions that so impressively adorn the Dome of the Rock, written by Salah a-Din and other Islamic conquerors, make no mention of Jerusalem per se, but only the triumphant refurbishing of the dome.
For centuries thereafter, Jerusalem remained way in the background for the Muslim world, which focused instead on Mecca and Medina as its holy cities.
Today, once again, the Muslims have taken to claiming Jerusalem as a pinnacle of their religious aspirations – and their political interests this time are simply to rid the Middle East of Israel. When the PLO was founded in 1964, its original charter did not even mention Jerusalem. Yet now, Hamas and Fatah spokesmen highlight the city’s “sanctity” and deny that our Beit HaMikdash ever stood there – despite historic knowledge and evidence to the contrary.
Hamas Artificially Fans Religious Zeal
The Hamas charter states clearly that its goal to destroy Israel is nourished by “religious” zeal, which must constantly be fanned and encouraged in order to attain the ultimate political goal. The introduction states, “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.” Article 15 then reads as follows:
“It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected… to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet’s nocturnal journey and through his ascension to heaven thence.”
The international community should relate to the secular Palestinian Authority’s claims to Jerusalem as nothing more than the desire to do away with Israel. As Dr. Kedar wrote several years ago: “Should UN forces be sent to the Middle East just because [the PLO] has decided to recycle the political problems of the Umayyads 1,250 years after the curtain came down on their role in history?”
Certainly, unlike the Muslims, we grant freedom of religion and freedom of access to holy sites. But nothing can justify forcing the Jewish People to “share” sovereignty over its holy city with an opportunistic usurper, no matter how many times the latter seeks to abuse the city’s inherent holiness.
To help advocate for keeping Jerusalem united under Israeli sovereignty, KeepJerusalem recommends you visit the holy city, and send e-mail to <info@keepjerusalem.org> to find out about our bus tours in news-making areas of the capital.