This is part of the ongoing effort to rewrite history and appropriate the holy sites of Jews and Christians. It gains a principal impetus from the Qur'anic delegitimization of Judaism and Christianity, and presentation of Islam as the true message of the founders of those religions.
"'Western Wall was never part of temple,'" by Mike Seid in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to JS):
The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque."There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."
Sabri rejected Judaism's claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.
"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."
Asked if Jews would ever be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control, he replied: "It is not the Temple Mount, you must say Al-Aksa. And no Jews have the right to pray at the mosque. It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area. No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aksa. Everyone knows that."
"Zionism tries to trick the Jews claiming that this was part of a Jewish temple, but they dug there and they found nothing," Sabri added.
Archeologists overseeing Islamic infrastructure work on the Mount announced this week that they had unveiled a sealed archeological level dating back to the First Temple period.
The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century BCE, and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Second Temple was built 70 years later, enlarged during the first century BCE by Herod, and destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.
The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque were constructed on the Temple Mount site in the late seventh century.
"The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque were constructed on the Temple Mount site in the late seventh century."
.. and seem to be Syrian christian buildings, actually.
"Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."
Directly contra their standard operating procedure.
"Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."
Do they ever stop to think how stupid they sound?
Do they ever stop to think?
Isn't the holiness of Jerusalem to muslims based on the idea that Mohammed ascended into heaven from the "temple most remote", which they understand to have been in Jerusalem? If the "temple most remote" was not the Jewish temple (or its ruins, since it was actually destroyed 500 years before Mohammed's lifetime), then what exactly was it that Mohammed ascended from?
The Al Aksa Mosque was built at the southern end of the Temple Mount esplanade in order that when they prayed in the direction of Mecca, they wouldn't be praying towards the Dome of the Rock as well.
This was done so that the Ommayad muslims would understand that even if the Temple Mount looks like Mecca (with the Dome of the Rock instead of the Kaaba)they should never make the mistake of praying towards the Jewish site.
Dr. Spencer,
Is this actually mainsteam Islamic history, or somehow endorsed by Mohammad, that there was no Jewish temple, but rather a mosque built by Abraham, the great Muslim prophet?
Or Is this mufti simply making up his assertions, with no foundation in Islamic orthodoxy?
Nor will they ever be.
This is perfectly consonant with the Islamic worldview. The earth belongs to Allah and His Messenger Muhammad -- which means, in human terms, those who are the Believers in Allah and that Messenger. Everyone else must either convert, be killed, or in some cases be permitted to live, but only in a condition of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity, as "dhimmis."
Nothing else has value. Nothing else is of interest. And since everyone since time began -- a nice bit of backdating -- is in the Muslim view born a Muslim, but for one reason or another falls away (talk about a bad environment!)-- every claim by those of other faiths are meaningless.
Sometimes you smash the Bamiyan Buddhas, when you can finally get the right dynamite, after a thousand years of smashing Buddhist stupas, and Hindu temples, all over Asia. Sometimes you turn a church, or many churches, into foundations for mosques (see the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus), or turn the whole thing, merely by adding minarets, into a mosque (see the Hagia Sophia), taking cae to break off all the crosses and vandalizing any pictures that depict persons. Sometimes you simply deny the claim altogether, as in the case of the Temple Mount.
This statement is not a strange one. It is one that almost every single "Palestinian" and for that matter, if asked, hundreds of millions of Muslims, would agree with. It is the "Palestinians" who own the Land of Israel. It is they who were always there, since time immemorial, tilling the soil. Nothing about Israel has anything to do with Jews or with Christians. It is a Muslim land. It became, of course, a Muslim "land" when Muslims conquered it, and let it fall into ruin and desolation -- but it was still a Muslim "land" no matter how indifferent Muslims were to it, except as a place important, as a holy land, to Jews and to Christians, who therefore must be denied any claim, or any right to live in, or to visit, without strict permission of their Muslim masters.
When an early Umayyad caliph selected Jerusalem, selected the Temple Mount, as the site where he insisted, the "furthest mosque" (al-masjid al-aksa) mentinoed in the Qur'an, would be found, he was at first opposed by some Muslims. For of course there is no way to know what was meant by "the furthest mosque." He was making a geopolitical statement, a planting of the flag of Islam right in the heart of Jerusalem, right on the place, the Temple Mount, most sacred to the Jews, and in the city known to Christians as the Holy Land. It was a geopolitical statement. For Islam is not so much, or not mainly, a religion, but rather, a geopolitics, a worldview, with some features of individual worship attached. It originates in the need for marauding and conquering Arabs to both justify and promote, to themselves and to the far more advanced and numerous peoples, Christians and Jews, whom they first conquered, that conquest, and to hold out to some of them the immediate prospect of remaining not the oppressed vanquished, but part of the conquerors, by abandoning their own faiths and becoming Muslims.
The statement by Ikrema Sabri is no different from, is exactly consonant with, many remarks by Arafat and not only Arafat -- by Muslim Arabs, and non-Arab Muslims who deny the claims of non-Muslims to their own history, their own monuments, their own civilization.
Indeed, the sinister Tariq Ramadan, when he keeps claiming, absurdly -- he did it yet again a few weeks ago in the debate with Ibn Warraq, David Aronovich, and Douglas Murray -- that the Western world owes so much, so incredibly much, could harrdly have existed, without the contributions of the "Islamic world" and Muslims. He has it exactly backwards. It is despite Islam, despite the conquests of many lands once full of Christians, that Western Christendom managed to flourish. Or, if one wishes to find some bleak truth in Ramadan's remark, one can agree that the refugees from Islamic conquest, such as the Greek scholars who, clutching their manuscripts, fled Byzantium during the century-and-a-half before the final fall of Constantinople (May 29, 1453), helped to bring about the Revival of Learning and what is, or used to be called, the residcovery of classical antiquity in what also used to be called (it is now, more bloodlessly, described in college courses and in professional-historical-graduate-student-speak as "the Early Modern Period") the Renaissance.
Next thing you know they'll deny that Jews ever existed. Lord knows they're trying to make that a fact of life anyway.
Allah has never been fair to the unbelievers. Read the Qur'an if you need proof. Consult some of the stories of the vindictive and unjust Allah attributed in the ahadith Bukhari and Muslim if you need further verification of Allah's lack of fairness.
Also: think of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/haso/hd_haso.htm
The Buddhas of Bamyan ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan)
The destruction of and overbuilding of mosques on Hindu temples: http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/temple1.html
The destruction of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic sites and cultural artifacts in the Balkans:
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/wahhabismbuddhasbegova.htm
The destruction of 359 stone fetishes and idols in Mecca when Mohammed took over the town.
Islam from its beginning has always destroyed the artifacts of other belief systems and religions.
And as far as Allah being 'fair'... here are 711 quotes from the Qur'an to show that Allah has not been just or fair from before time began. These words are eternal and pre-universe...
Allah has not been fair or just to anyone who is an unbeliever and many times it will punish Muslims too. Allah likes to punish people more than anything else if you base the assertion on the sheer number of times Allah's wrath and punishment are described over the count of the descriptions of connection, relationship, reward for those who do well. There's no comparison.
If you read up on criminal psychology (something I've done a bit of) you will note the similarity of outlook between this mufti and your average street criminal.
The most essential point being:
It's true because I said so. I.e. you can will something to be true or false.
And if you don't even scratch, but merely rub the surface of that idea you find the notion that power is the source of truth, i.e. that might makes right.
I'll leave off comment on the complete rejection of fact and the feeble circular reasoning displayed.
If you wish to look into the jihaddi/criminal psychology connection I recommend:
Inside the Criminal Mind: Revised and Updated Edition by Stanton Samenow
There's nothing in it about the jihaddis as such, nor mohammedanism, but you will notice the similarities between what comes out of the mouths of jihaddis and common criminals on essential ideas about life, truth and ethics.
In the Islamic rush to destroy anything Jewish found at these sites, they have dug up and disposed of, as rubbish, many ancient Jewish artifacts dating to temple times and beyond. Muslims can deny all they want, but recovered objects show Jewish occupation on these sites dating back to antiquity. That five foot trench, uncovering items ground up by tractors, is not only a supreme insult to Israeli national identification, religion, and pride, but is also an affront to historians, and to anyone who likes 'old stuff'. Olmert is allowing this...disgusting...
Dore Gold's latest book The Fight For Jerusalem calls this "Temple Denial." It's been SOP for a couple decades now. Some European academics - surprise, surprise - provided much of the support for it.
Of course the archaeological evidence all runs counter to Temple Denial.
"There is no proof of a Temple?"
Perhaps not in the 1st of 2nd Temples. But the Temple of Herod the Great ( that unpopular foreigner - taxing the people to death in order to keep adding extravagantly to the Temple) -
This 3rd Temple has been extensively documented. There are blueprints and space satellite pics of the temple walls - etc.
How strange that these clowns will use computers and phones and all else, but will refuse to see all the evidence.
speaking to the uneducated masses who will believe them.
Next they will claim the Agia Sophia, in former Constantinople (Istanbul), was always a Mosque and never a church or are they doing this now?
One more way the evil west has tried to steal their Muslim heritage. History prior to Islam does not matter anyway to these extemist.
There is so much archaological proof that the Hebrews had their temple there but they will simply ignore the evidence because Allah is fair and he would not put a Mosque on a place which is claimed by other people- Wonder how many Churches have been turned to Mosques over the centuries??????
"It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area".
Just like the Kaaba, right?
I'd like to see definitive proof that Mo ever set foot in Jerusalem but somehow I don't think the Islamaniacs will be able to offer any aside from Koranic references. And those sound like delusions anyway.
joeblough - Stalin basically said the same thing.
Historical revisionism (negationism) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism_%28negationism%29
is a common ploy of any power group trying to gain legitimacy by denying historical facts and rewriting them to suit their own biased interests. Same as Holocaust denials, to discredit the horrific events of Nazi mass murder of Jews and other groups, Islamists want to deny the right to culture for any of their conquered peoples. So they will discredit their history without ever presenting any evidence, but just through the power of repetition, as if this would somehow change historical facts. It is an ignorant ploy, but it works well on the ignorant masses who believe them.
Islam is deeply steeped in ignorance, superstitions, supremacist cultism, war crimes of massive proportions, and genocidal destruction of all cultures they conquered. So why is this Jewish Temple on the Mount denial of historical revisionism a surprise? They had always done this. And now that Judaism has once again reoccupied its homeland in Israel, the insanity of Islamic rage makes their irrational claims of historical revisionism more absurd and transparent than ever before. They foam at the mouth for their Allah and Mohammed conquests as if these are ordained by God, which are no more than quasi-pagan cults of conquest, a pure power play. So for them historical evidence, archeological evidence, or any historical truths have absolutely no value whatsoever, while what they repeat ignorantly to their ignorant masses, repetitiously spouting the same lies over and over again, that has much more traction for them than the truth.
This strange upside down world of Islam is based on their invert logic in everything they think and do. They will put more credence on something written by ignorant barbarians 1300 years ago then on any evidence that proves the facts. So if it was in their Koran war manual or Hadiths, that for them is ‘truth’, while any scientific and archeological, historical evidence to the contrary for them is a ‘lie’ or irrelevant. To try to prove to them they are wrong headed and illogical then only elicits their rage, it makes them crazy. To counter the truth of the Jewish Temple they will then invent some strange revisionist version of history based not on real evidence but on their Koranic traditions, as if those were really true. How insanely upside down their lives must be, so sick! While for most of the civilized world “the truth will set you free”, for their inverted upside down world of Islam “the truth will make you crazy.”
So these same Holocaust deniers are now also Temple Mount deniers. Islam lies, always had and always will. Why is anybody surprised?
Common revisionist tactics (from above linked):
Some of their most common rhetorical and other techniques include the following:
• Conspiracy theories
• The selective use of facts
• The denial or derision of known facts
• Argument from ignorance (hence the historian community's emphasis on the importance of historical memory and historical studies)
• The assumption of unproven facts
• The fabrication of facts
• The obfuscation of facts
• Appeal to fear
• Appeal to spite
• Association fallacy
• Hasty generalization
• The use of attractive or neutral euphemisms to disguise unpleasant facts concerning their own positions
• The use of unpleasant euphemisms to describe opposing facts
• The two wrongs make a right fallacy
• Wishful thinking
• Constant attack against those disputing their views (Ad hominem) (close to slander and libel)
• Meaningless statements
• Reversal of blame (example: accusing Jews of provoking the Holocaust, or Armenians the genocide of 1915)
All here who read and write on these JW/DW pages are well familiar with the Islamic revisionist truth denial tactics. Their lies hold not traction. Islam must lose all traction with everyone world wide, including their own 1.2 billion cult followers. This primitive belief system can be defeated permanently, with the truth.
Even if we remove the known archeological history (which is rather large) and went with just written history, it would prove the Jews had a temple there.
Go even further....remove also the Jewish written history. You say 'go further' ok, then remove the written history of the Jewish allies. Otherwards, take just the written history of the Jews enemies and invaders and conquerers.
The written history is proven.
Now if only we could get some history of Palestinians ever existing....that is where there is no proof. Something like a king, leader, queen, flag, ancient currency, great battles, military leaders.
Zero....
Do you believe what I tell you, or your own lyin' eyes?
Here's an apocolyptical scenaro for the future:
The Grand Mufti of Washington stated that there never was a Lincoln Memorial at the proposed location of the new mosque to be built there. He stated this as he dedicated the new minaret built atop the Washington Monument.
How far off? Take a guess.
Less than 50 years with the way things are going.
Of course the Washington Monument will have had a name change by then. The Mohammed Monument in keeping with the pahallic symbolism perhaps?
Oops-that should be "phallic symbolism"
"Next they will claim the Agia Sophia, in former Constantinople (Istanbul), was always a Mosque and never a church or are they doing this now?"
Well, the islamics do actually, have the nerve to claim La Catedral de Cordoba, in Spain, was always a mosque.
All that nonsense of moorish architecture, when anyone can see that it is really a hodgeposh of Roman and Byzantine columns and arches.
The islamics just painted red and white peppermint stripes inside the building:
CATEDRAL
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0geu7I7WSJH6AwAp5hXNyoA?ei=UTF-8&p=Cathedral%20of%20Cordoba&fr2=tab-web&fr=yfp-t-471
BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A9iby6I.WSJHBbgA61iJzbkF?p=Byzantine+architecture&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-471&x=wrt&js=1&ni=21
ROMAN
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A9iby6DFWSJHLskAImKJzbkF?p=Roman+architecture&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-471&x=wrt&js=1&ni=21
This primitive belief system can be defeated permanently, with the truth.
Posted by: Battle_of_Tours
If only it was this simple.
The truth will out eventually, but the defenders of Islam are murderous, vicious, defenders-to-the-death of the lie that is called Islam.
What can be done?
Given that the vast majority of the West's citizens don't even know that there might be a problem with Islam, perhaps we should ask, what is possible in the current circumstances.
Not much can be done, in my opinion.
The communists have hoodwinked us with political correctness and multicuturalism and now we can probably do no more than look on as the world falls into the abyss.
Personally, I'd like to see every single mosque in the world razed to the ground.
Mosques must be the world's ugliest buildings, suitably hosting that fetid pile of Satan's droppings known as Islam.
Of course they won't be razed, at least not until a radical change in the West's philosophy.
Watch Russia ad China.
They set this garbage up.
Again, because the quote is so darned apt to our predicament,
Read the article, Russian Footprints by Ion Mihai Pacepa:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjUzMGU4NTMyOTdkOTdmNTA1MWJlYjYyZDliODZkOGM=
An excerp:
"In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.
According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch.".
Watch Russia ad China.
They set this garbage up.
Posted by: Mike_W
The cold war ain't over, is it? It just moved battlefields. To get to the truth of the matter will take more work than our lib officials want to bother. Here we keep chipping at it, as we must. The Jewish Temple is but one more small front of the bigger war. It ain't over till it's over.
Great article in NR, thanks.
I hope to see in my life that ugly dome being reduced to dust. As if the Jews would collectively forget where the Temple was. Give me a break. If the Muslims had any love in their religion they would give the temple back to the Jews.
I think the rest of the world should give the Jews enough support so they can kick the Muslims off the temple and out of Israel.
In order to do this we must find an alternative to oil. Without oil Muslims don't have economies. No economies means no significant armies. To destroy Islam we must end the Oil Age. GW Bush should have spent his 1 Trillion dollars to that end. Saudi Arabia would shat itself if someone found energy cheaper than oil.
We also must move to Cold War tactics and start destabilizing Muslim countries. Contrary to what Muslims say, we are not really doing this now, but we must. There is enough collective hatred within Islam to cause them to destroy themselves. Just look at Iraq. We gave them the opportunity for freedom and they chose civil war. That is their weak point and we should exploit it in order to cripple Islamic totalitarianism from spreading.
Yes! Here here! Let that primitive cult of Mohammed hang itself. They have enough hate to do this, and be rid of them. You can't give pearls to swine. Our freedom will destroy their evil hate.
"Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."
.......................................
Just ludicrous. Islam has a history, as has been noted, of appropriating churches and temples for use as mosques. This happened in North Africa, in Persia, in India, in Spain. Hagia Sophia, where Christians taking sanctuary had all been massacred after the Muslim invasion of Constantinople in 1453, is one such. It was transformed into a mosque after its great mosaics were whitewashed and its crosses removed. This continues today as Muslims are turning deconsecrated churches into mosques in Britain and Europe.
The presence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem is well documented, and not just in Jewish records. Roman and other records are full of references to the Temple. The Arch of Titus in Rome shows a procession of objects taken from the Temple after its destruction. Hadrian then raised a temple to Jupiter on the site.
Furthermore, the Al Aqsa mosque is *itself* a hodgepodge of Islamic and Christian architecture. Poster FreeSpeech, above, is correct: originally it was a church--about the middle of the sixth century the Emperor Justinian built a basilica in honour of the Virgin on this spot. It was taken by the Muslims in the seventh century and converted into a mosque. A century and a half later it was partially rebuilt and much enlarged by El-Mahdi, the third Khalif of the Abassides. The Crusaders, of course, dedicated it back to Christian worship--but they refered to it as the Temple of Solomon!--obviously, they understood the history of the site. The porch is clearly Christian, with its tripartate doors (in reference to the Trinity).
Similarly, archeologists from all over the world have worked at the Temple site. Some have been devout Jews, but many more secular Jews, Christians, atheists and agnostics, and even Muslims (this is not to imply that devout Jews are not objective, just that their findings are confirmed by so many others). Most of these people are scientists, and have no religious axe to grind. There are small disagreements in interpretation between archeologists, but there is no disagreement that the temple mount is the historical site of the Jewish Temple.
This is why there is a danger to even laughable claims such as the presence of Native American "Muslims" supposedly found by early European explorers in the Americas. If enough Muslims come to believe this, despite the complete lack of historic or archelogical proof and abundant proof to the contrary, it would make them even more agressive than they already are.