Muslims Claim Temple Mount is '100% Islamic'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Muslims Claim Temple Mount is '100% Islamic'*
Warning: 'Any action that offends holy site will be answered by 1.5
billion Muslims'
Posted: June 01, 2008
News From Israel
JERUSALEM – Jerusalem and the Temple Mount belong to the Muslims and any
Israeli action that "offends" the Mount will be answered by 1.5 billion
Muslims, declared the chief of staff for Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas.
"Jerusalem is Muslim. The blessed Al Aqsa mosque and Harem Al Sharif
(Temple Mount) is 100 percent Muslim. The Israelis are playing with fire
when they threaten Al Aqsa with digging that is taking place," said
Abbas' chief of staff Rafiq Al Husseini.
The Temple Mount is Judaism's holiest site.
Husseini was referring to Israeli plans to construct a new bridge from
the Western Wall area to the Temple Mount.
The old bridge was damaged two years ago. When Israeli workers tried to
repair it, Palestinian leaders claimed the work was threatening the Al
Aqsa Mosque, even though the mosque is located hundreds of feet away,
the work did not tunnel under any Mount foundation or touch any
structure connected to the mosque, and the repair work – which had been
pre-approved by Jordan and the Mount's Muslim custodians – was conducted
under the scrutiny of an accessible 24/7 webcam.
"Any hurting of Jerusalem will explode the whole negotiations between us
and the Israelis ... we must work to strengthen Palestinian ties to
Jerusalem," al-Husseini said.
Israel has been negotiating with Abbas in line with talks started at
last November's U.S.-backed Annapolis Summit, which seeks to create a
Palestinian state before the end of the year. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
is widely expected to offer the Palestinians most of the West Bank and
eastern sections of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is located in eastern
Jerusalem.
Mainstream Palestinian leaders claim the Temple Mount is Muslim in spite
of overwhelming archaeological evidence documenting the first and second
Jewish temples.
In an exclusive interview last year, Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian
Justice and one of the most influential Muslim leaders in Israel, argued
the Jewish Temples never existed, the Western Wall really was a tying
post for Muhammad's horse, the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels, and
Abraham, Moses and Jesus were prophets for Islam.
Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after
Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
"Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish
signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city and they
found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews
invaded in the 1880s," said Tamimi.
"About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at
the [Temple Mount]," Tamimi said during a sit-down interview in his
eastern Jerusalem office.
The Palestinian cleric denied the validity of dozens of digs verified by
experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second
Temples throughout Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount itself;
excavations revealing Jewish homes and a synagogue in a site in
Jerusalem called the City of David; or even the recent discovery of a
Second Temple Jewish city in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
Tamimi said descriptions of the Jewish Temples in the Hebrew Tanach, in
the Talmud and in Byzantine and Roman writings from the Temple periods
were forged, and that the Torah was falsified to claim biblical
patriarchs and matriarchs were Jewish when indeed they were prophets for
Islam.
"All this is not real. We don't believe in all your versions. Your Torah
was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses never
mentions Jerusalem. Maybe Jerusalem was mentioned in the rest of the
Torah, which was falsified by the Jews," said Tamimi.
He said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus were "prophets for the
Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam."
Asked about the Western Wall, Tamimi said the structure was a tying post
for Muhammad's horse and that it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, even
though the Wall predates the mosque by over 1,000 years.
"The Western wall is the western wall of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It's where
Prophet Muhammad tied his animal which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem
to receive the revelations of Allah."
The Kotel, or Western Wall, is an outer retaining wall of the Temple
Mount that survived the destruction of the Second Temple and still
stands today in Jerusalem.
Tamimi went on to claim that the Al Aqsa Mosque , which has sprung
multiple leaks and has had to be repainted several times, was built by
angels.
"Al Aqsa was build by the angels forty years after the building of
Al-Haram in Mecca. This we have no doubt is true," he said.
The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. It
was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was
rebuilt in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity.
That temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in A.D. 70. Each temple
stood for a period of about four centuries.
The Temple was the center of religious worship for ancient Israelites.
It housed the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant
and was said to be the area upon which God's presence dwelt. All
biblical holidays centered on worship at the Temple. The Temples served
as the primary location for the offering of sacrifices and was the main
gathering place for Israelites.
According to the Talmud, the world was created from the foundation stone
of the Temple Mount. It's believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, the
location where Abraham fulfilled God's test to see if he would be
willing to sacrifice his son Isaac.
The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for
thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding
of the Temple have been uttered by Jews since the Second Temple was
destroyed, according to Jewish tradition.
The Al Aqsa Mosque was constructed in about 709 to serve as a shrine
near another shrine, the Dome of the Rock, which was built by an Islamic
caliph. Al Aqsa was meant to mark what Muslims came to believe was the
place at which Muhammad, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven to
receive revelations from Allah.
Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Quran. It is mentioned in the Hebrew
Bible 656 times. Muslims worldwide pray with their backs away from the
Temple Mount and toward Mecca.
Islamic tradition states Muhammad took a journey in a single night on a
horse from "a sacred mosque" – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi
Arabia – to "the farthest mosque" and from a rock there ascended to
heaven. The farthest mosque became associated with Jerusalem about 120
years ago.
According to research by Israeli Author Shmuel Berkovits, Islam
historically disregarded Jerusalem. Berkovits points out in his new
book, "How dreadful is this place!" that Muhammad was said to loathe
Jerusalem and what it stood for. He wrote Muhammad made a point of
eliminating pagan sites of worship, and sanctifying only one place – the
Kaaba in Mecca – to signify the unity of God.
As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya,
whose writings influenced the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that
sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula, and
that "in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same
holds true for the tombs of Hebron."
It wasn't until the late nineteenth century – incidentally when Jews
started immigrating to Palestine – that some Muslim scholars began
claiming Muhammad tied his horse to the Western Wall and associated
Muhammad's purported night journey with the Temple Mount.