From World Net Daily, with thanks to EPG:
JERUSALEM -- A plan by a grassroots Jewish organization to bring 10,000 Jews to the Temple Mount has prompted an Islamic group allegedly connected to Hamas to instruct followers to disrupt the visit, a high-ranking Jerusalem police official told WND.Revava, a group with the stated mission of ''restoring self-esteem to the state of Israel by restoring national pride and values,'' has planned the April 10 event at the heavily restricted Temple Mount to spark Israeli dialogue about reclaiming the holy site from its Islamic custodians.
The Jerusalem police last week told WND they would not allow thousands of Jews on the Temple Mount at once.
Shmulik Ben Ruby, a police spokesman, said the current government restrictions of allowing only small groups of about 30 to 50 non-Muslims to ascend the Temple Mount, the holiest site for Jews, will apply on the day of the scheduled gathering.
''We will not let so many Jews up at once. This is not the usual habits on the Temple Mount," Ben Ruby said. "We have to ensure that every Jewish group is going up in safety and will go up quietly."...
The Islamic Movement [which plans to disrupt the event] has been accused by Israel of urging its members to join Hamas, and was blamed for participation in several terror attacks, including a car bombing in September 1999. Many Movement members allegedly recruited by Hamas in the West Bank have been arrested in recent years....
Ben Ruby told WND although Jews are barred from the Mount in large groups, the Israeli police would allow thousands of Muslims to ascend.
Well we all know how wild, violent and dangerously out-of-hand large groups of Jews get vs large gatherings of Muslims, don't we?
On the other hand, I gather from an item in the Jerusalem Post that there has been a united front presented by some Orthodox Jewish rabbis, the head of the Catholic Church in Jerusalem (if not Israel), the virulently anti-Israel/anti-Semetic Michael Sabbah and equally imminent mullahs against the hosting of a gay film festival in Jerusalem lest the event evoke the wrath of God and result in some horrific natural disaster.
The Temple Mount -- isn't that where the Byzantine martyrium that the Muslims appropriated for their own purposes, the so-called Dome of the Rock, is located? But the use of a Christian structure for Muslim uses (just like St. John's in Damascus that became the Umayyad Mosque that tourists ooh-and-aah over without realizing just whose building it is).
When, after some debate, and despite the fact that Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Qur'an, and there is not the slightest evidence of Muhammad ever appearing there (but only a Believer would believe in the truth of the miraj, or Night Journey, a 24-hour round-trip to Seventh Heaven departing from the top of Temple Mount), early Muslims such as the Umayyad ruler in Damascus who had so much to do with the contents of early Islam, decided to place that "furthest mosque" from which Muhammad's steed al-Buraq took off in Jerusalem. It made sense. In one fell swoop, the appropriating faith of Islam appropriated the city that was holy to both Jews and Christians, and for good measure planted the flag of Islam right on top of the holiest site for Jews, the Temple Mount. Talk about two birds, one stone.
But appropriation of the major figures, the stories, the holy sites, important in other religions (which is why mosques in India were built on, and using stone quarried from, Hindu or Buddhist temples), is part of Islam. Since nothing matters in Islam but Islam, and those who become Muslims are discouraged from taking any interest in their own pre-Islamic or non-Islamic histories (how many Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, or Indian Muslims have pondered, if only briefly, the question of their own obviously Hindu ancestry, and what forced those ancestors, at some point, to convert to Islam?
Temple Mount is Muslim, of course. Jerusalem is Muslim. Constantinople, by rights, is Muslim, and so is Hagia Sophia. And next after Constanintople, according to a "vision" of Muhammad that circulates widely in the Muslim world and on Muslim websites, the next city to become Muslim will be -- Rome.
The Vatican as a Mosque: that should get someone's attention.
Hugh:
You know as well as I do the penchant Islam has for appropriating real estate and razing temples and other sites sacred to infidels and monotheists.
Ironically, according to Daniel Pipes, but for the physical intervention of an Austrian Jewish captain, the Dome of the Rock would have been destroyed by the Austrian army on directions of the erstwhile protectors of Jerusalem (the Ottoman Turks) to keep it from falling into British control.
This visitation will be the excuse for the outbreak of another Intifada, more violent than that which started in reaction to Sharon's visit to the Dome of the Rock.
Interesting piece of history Waterdragon, thanks.
Of course Hugh, we all KNOW that everyone is born naturally Muslim, and thus by default the Vatican is a mosque (albeit shirk - polytheist)
But why would it get attention, the dhimmi Pope didn't get any attention (of substance) when he kissed the Qur'an, or when he altered the mass to "The Unity of God" from "the father son and holy spirit", to placate the charges of polytheism by the Muslims.
Depressing.
One architect and archeological scholar from Tel Aviv, Tuvia Sagiv, may have a perfect 'out' for this entire problem.
From his researches, it appears that the actual site of the original first and second Temples was NOT where the supplanted Islamic mosque now sits. But south of it, "due east of the Western Wall", and right between the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque. Therefore there is NO necessary religious contradiction between the places, and no need for a holy conflict over "two claims to the same piece of land".
The Jews should immediately rebuild the Third Temple on that area which Mr. Sagiv has mapped
See:
http://www.templemount.org/theories.html
-and then both faiths can live in perpetual peace, within a stone's throw of one another.