The situation on the Temple Mount and in the alleyways of the Old City, with Jews being humiliated for merely wishing to openly pray, is seen by many as an issue that is only important to religious people. That is not the case. Israeli Arab MK Jamal Zahalka once told me that he was an atheist, so what was he doing on the Temple Mount? What did it mean when he yelled, "This is my house, not yours"? After all, "this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" (Genesis 28:17) -- all peoples are invited to climb and pray at the Temple Mount. So what does a non-religious MK care about other people praying? Along almost all of Islamic history, Jerusalem enjoyed a very marginal status. Research shows that the sanctity of Jerusalem in the Islamic tradition has been expressly influenced by the Jews' and Christians' reverence for the city. For many Muslims, more than the Crusaders' hold over the city, the Jews' sovereignty over Jerusalem after the Six-Day War was a real offense. Both Christianity and Islam based their faiths on "replacement theology" -- the idea that God first chose the Jews as his chosen people, but when they refused to accept Jesus as the messiah or Muhammad as the prophet, God abandoned the Jews and chose a new people. That is why the theological rivalry between Christianity and Islam isn't very prominent, as opposed to the hundreds of years and millions of pages that both Christians and Muslims have devoted to confronting the Jewish faith and tradition. Ever since the 1960s, a theological revolution has been underway in the Christian world in regard to the Jewish people and the validity of replacement theology. In recent years, I have reported on interesting voices in the Christian world who reject replacement theology, or at least acknowledge the fact that Christianity evolved from Judaism. Hence the Christian recognition of the Jewish people's historical and religious (and legal) link to their land. 2. Until it was changed to Mecca, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem. The idea of fasting as part of repentance and accepting the rules of the religion was adopted from Judaism, and the fast day was initially set for the 10th day of the first month on the Muslim calendar (just like the Yom Kippur fast on the 10th day of Tishrei), and more. The foundation for the Quran and for the New Testament can be found in the Jewish Torah. There is plenty of literature on the topic. I recommend starting with Dr. Avi Beker's excellent book "The Chosen: The History of An Idea, and the Anatomy of an Obsession." 3. But Jerusalem does not appear in the Quran. Not even once. The entire Muslim theology on the matter rests on one vague verse: "Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al-Aqsa, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing" (Sura 17:1). The accepted Muslim interpretation places "al-Masjid al-Haram" (the holy mosque) in Mecca and "al-Masjid al-Aqsa" (the farthest mosque) in Jerusalem (even though at the time, there was no mosque in Jerusalem). Early interpretations argue that the farthest mosque was in heaven and even in Mecca. Others viewed the story as a vision, not reality, as inferred from a later verse: "We informed you that your Lord fully controls the people, and we rendered the vision that we showed you a test for the people" (Sura 17:17). The story later developed further in the Hadith, the later text on the life of the Prophet, to cement the new religion as the heir of the Jewish faith. Apparently Muhammad had heard from the Jews that prophecy was not possible outside the Land of Israel, so a point was made to emphasize Muhammad's visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, where he rose to heaven. In the same Sura, the Quran says "And We gave Moses the Scripture and made it a guidance for the Children of Israel" (Sura 17:2). The link between the story of Muhammad rising to heaven and the story of God giving the Torah to Moses is obvious. The rest of the Sura (called the Sura al-Isra -- the Israelites!) tells the history of the chosen Jewish people who were twice given an opportunity and failed, having both their temples destroyed. Not only is Muhammad Moses' heir, but the new nation of Islam inherits the status of chosen people from the Israelites. "You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah. If only the People of the Scripture had believed, it would have been better for them. Among them are believers, but most of them are defiantly disobedient" (Sura 3:110). 4. Where does the drama of replacing the chosen people take place according to this particular school of interpretation? In Jerusalem! In this regard, the Muslim denial of any Jewish link to Jerusalem, and certainly to the Temple Mount, is interesting because it contradicts the very tenets of the Muslim faith itself as the heir of the Jewish faith. The issues discussed in short above are not just a discussion of the abstract religious aspect but also have to do with the roots of the Muslim faith. They certainly have to do with the prevalent interpretation (whose implication are clearly evident in the Middle East and in Europe today) suggesting that Islam is not just another religion seeking to coexist alongside existing monotheistic religions, but rather history's final religion -- the heir of Judaism (and Christianity), whose faithful are instructed to spread the faith in the world, by force if necessary: "It is He who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion" (Sura 9:33). The current tension in Jerusalem has everything to do with these deep analyses, and they have a profound impact on the peace process. Moreover, the current situation in Jerusalem is linked to the future of Europe, where tens of millions of Muslims continue to flow in. It is in this context that everyone should read the horrific remarks uttered by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about two weeks ago, when he stated that Jews "have no right to defile [the holy sites of Jerusalem] with their filthy feet." To view this hundred-year-old conflict between us and the region's Arabs as a mere territorial dispute is to willingly blind yourself, as the world nations are doing, to the deeply rooted concepts outlined above. As time goes by, it is all coming together, whether we want it to or not, at the keystone of the historical return to Zion: Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
But Islam is not as open to this idea. A cursory reading of the Quran reveals just how much Muhammad focused on the Jews -- their tradition and sacred texts as well as his pleas to the Jews to join his new religion. In the early 19th century, Abraham Geiger published his doctoral thesis from the University of Bonn titled "What did Muhammad take from Judaism-" Geiger demonstrated how Islam incorporated Jewish ideas like prayer, the Holy Land, temple, synagogue, pilgrimage, cherubs, fasts, charity, sacrifice, monotheism, prophets, the end of days and dietary restrictions. He analyzed the semantic proximity between Islam's theological lexicon (formulated in Hebrew) and Jewish concepts. He discussed the religious principles derived from the Jewish tradition, like monotheism, six days of creation, seven heavens, seven circles of hell, prophecy, punishment and reward, punitive measures, resurrection, Armageddon before the coming of the Messiah (the Mahdi) and more. Of course there is also the overlap of dozens of stories from the Bible, the Talmud and the Midrash that appear in various versions in the Quran.
As part of replacement theology, whereby Islam inherited the Jewish faith, the story of Muhammad rising to heaven from the Jews' holiest site after tethering his winged horse al-Buraq to the wall of the Jewish Temple, was inserted into late Muslim tradition. It was only toward the end of the 1920s, just before the 1929 massacres, that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini linked the story of the winged horse to the Western Wall. He even claimed in testimony before the British Shaw Commission (appointed to investigate the 1929 massacres) that the Western Wall was owned by the Muslim Waqf. "The Buraq Wall forms an integral part of al-Haram al-Sharif [the noble sanctuary], not a single stone of which dates back to the days of Solomon's Temple," it was said.
