Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Why and When was the Myth of al-Aqsa Created?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15953
How did Jerusalem become so important to Muslims?
The importance of Jerusalem for Jews and Christians is beyond dispute,
since the connection of this city to Judaism and Christianity is part
of universal concepts about history and theology. However, when it
comes to modern politics, we hear over and over that Palestinians,
Arabs and Muslims demand that Jerusalem become the capital of the
future Palestinian state, owing to its holiness to Islam. The question
is how and when this city became holy to Muslims.
After Palestine was occupied by the Muslims, its capital was Ramle, 30
miles to the west of Jerusalem, signifying that Jerusalem meant
nothing to them.
When the Prophet Muhammad established Islam, he introduced a minimum
of innovations. He employed the hallowed personages, historic legends
and sacred sites of Judaism, Christianity, and even paganism, by
Islamizing them. Thus, according to Islam, Abraham was the first
Muslim and Jesus and St. John (the sons of Miriam, sister of Moses and
Aaron) were prophets and guardians of the second heaven. Many Biblical
legends (“asatir al-awwalin”), which were familiar to the pagan Arabs
before the dawn of Islam, underwent an Islamic conversion, and the
Koran as well as the Hadith (the Islamic oral tradition), are replete
with them.
Islamization was practiced on places as well as persons: Mecca and the
holy stone – al-Ka’bah – were holy sites of the pre-Islamic pagan
Arabs. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Great Mosque of Istanbul
were erected on the sites of Christian-Byzantine churches – two of the
better known examples of how Islam treats sanctuaries of other faiths.
Jerusalem, too, underwent the process of Islamization: at first
Muhammad attempted to convince the Jews near Medina to join his young
community, and, by way of persuasion, established the direction of
prayer (kiblah) to be to the north, towards Jerusalem, in keeping with
Jewish practice; but after he failed in this attempt he turned against
the Jews, killed many of them, and directed the kiblah southward,
towards Mecca.
Muhammad’s abandonment of Jerusalem explains the fact that this city
is not mentioned even once in the Koran. After Palestine was occupied
by the Muslims, its capital was Ramle, 30 miles to the west of
Jerusalem, signifying that Jerusalem meant nothing to them.
Islam rediscovered Jerusalem 50 years after Muhammad’s death. In 682
CE, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr rebelled against the Islamic rulers in
Damascus, conquered Mecca and prevented pilgrims from reaching Mecca
for the Hajj. ‘Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Calif, needed an alternative
site for the pilgrimage and settled on Jerusalem which was then under
his control. In order to justify this choice, a verse from the Koran
was chosen (17,1 = sura 17, verse 1) which states (trans. by Majid
Fakhri):
“Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the
Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed,
in order to show him some of Our Signs, He is indeed the All-Hearing,
the All-Seeing.”
The meaning ascribed to this verse (see the commentary in
al-Jallalayn) is that “the furthest mosque” (al-masgid al-aqsa) is in
Jerusalem and that Muhammad was conveyed there one night (although at
that time the journey took three days by camel), on the back of
al-Buraq, a magical horse with the head of a woman, wings of an eagle,
the tail of a peacock, and hoofs reaching to the horizon. He tethered
the horse to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and from there
ascended to the seventh heaven together with the angel Gabriel. On his
way he met the prophets of other religions who are the guardians of
the Seven Heavens: Adam, Jesus, St. John, Joseph, Idris (=Seth?),
Aaron, Moses and Abraham who accompanied him on his way to Allah and
who accepted him as their master.
Thus Islam tries to gain legitimacy over other, older religions, by
creating a scene in which the former prophets agree to Muhammad’s
mastery, thus making him Khatam al-Anbiya’ (“the Seal of the
Prophets”). According to this legend, Islam came to the world in order
to replace Judaism and Christianity rather than to live side by side
with them.
Not surprisingly, this miraculous account contradicts a number of the
tenets of Islam: How can a living man of flesh and blood ascend to
heaven? How can a mythical creature carry a mortal to a real
destination? Questions such as these have caused orthodox Muslim
thinkers to conclude that the nocturnal journey was a dream of
Muhammad’s. The journey and the ascent serves Islam to “go one better”
than the Bible: Moses “only” went up to Mt. Sinai, in the middle of
nowhere, and drew close to heaven, whereas Muhammad went all the way
up to Allah, and from Jerusalem itself.
What are the difficulties with the belief that the al-Aqsa mosque
described in Islamic tradition is located in Jerusalem? For one, the
people of Mecca, who knew Muhammad well, did not believe this story.
Only Abu Bakr, (later the first Caliph), believed him and thus was
called al-Siddiq (“the believer”). The second difficulty is that
Islamic tradition tells us that al-Aqsa mosque is near Mecca on the
Arabian peninsula. This was unequivocally stated in “Kitab al-Maghazi”
(Oxford University Press, 1966, vol. 3, pp. 958-9), a book by the
Muslim historian and geographer al-Waqidi. According to al-Waqidi,
there were two “masjeds” (places of prayer) in al-Gi’irranah, a
village between Mecca and Ta’if, one was “the closer mosque”
(al-masjid al-adna) and the other was “the further mosque” (al-masjid
al-aqsa), and Muhammad would pray there when he went out of town.
This description by al-Waqidi which is supported by a chain of
authorities (isnad), was not “convenient” for the Islamic propaganda
of the 7th century. In order to establish a basis for the awareness of
the “holiness” of Jerusalem in Islam, the Caliphs of the Ummayad
dynasty invented many “traditions” upholding the value of Jerusalem
(known as “fadha’il bayt al-Maqdis”), which would justify pilgrimage
to Jerusalem for the faithful Muslims. Thus was al-Masjid al-Aqsa
“transported” to Jerusalem. It should be noted that Saladin also
adopted the myth of al-Aqsa and those “traditions” in order to recruit
and inflame the Muslim warriors against the Crusaders in the 12th
century.
Another aim of the Islamization of Jerusalem was to undermine the
legitimacy of the older religions, Judaism and Christianity, which
consider Jerusalem to be a holy city. Islam is presented as the only
legitimate religion, destined to replace the other two, because Jews
and Christians had changed and distorted (“ghyyarou wa-baddalou”) the
Word of God, each in their turn. On the alleged forgeries of the Holy
Scriptures, made by Jews and Christians, see the third chapter of: M.
J. Kister, “haddithu ‘an bani isra’il wa-la haraja”, IOS 2 (1972), pp.
215-239. Kister quotes dozens of Islamic sources).
Though Judaism and Christianity can exist side by side in Jerusalem,
Islam regards both of them as betrayals of Allah and his teachings,
and has always done, and will continue to do, all in its power to
expel both of them from this city. It is interesting to note that this
expulsion is retroactive: The Islamic broadcasters of the Palestinian
radio stations consistently make it a point to claim that the Jews
never had a temple on the Temple Mount and certainly not two temples.
(Where, then, according to them, did Jesus preach?)
Arafat, himself a secular person (ask the Hamas!), did exactly what
the Caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty did 1300 years ago: he marshaled
the holiness of Jerusalem to serve his political ends. He could not
give control of Jerusalem over to the Jews since according to Islam
they are impure and the wrath of Allah is upon them (“al-maghdhoub
‘alayhim”; Koran 1,7, see al-Jalalayn and other commentaries; note
that verse numbers may differ slightly in the various editions of the
Koran). The Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs (5,60). (For the
idea that Jews are related to pigs and monkeys see, for instance,
Musnad al-Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, (Beirut 1969) vol. 3, p. 241. See
also pages 348, 395, 397, 421, and vol. 6, p. 135.) The Jews are those
who distorted the holy writings which were revealed to them (2,73;
3,72) and denied God’s signs (3,63). Since they violated the covenant
with their God (4,154), He cursed them (5,16) and they are forever the
inheritors of hell (3,112). So how could Arafat abandon Jerusalem to
the Jews?
The Palestinian Arab media these days are full of messages of Jihad,
calling to broaden the national-political war between Israel and the
Palestinians into a religious-Islamic war between the Jews and the
Muslims. READ THEIR LIPS: for them Christianity is no better than
Judaism, since both “forfeited” their right to rule over Jerusalem.
Only Islam – Din al-Haqq (“the Religion of Truth”) – has this right,
and forever. This was and still is the leitmotiv in Friday sermons in
Palestinian mosques and official media. (Note: photo acccompanying
this article is a keffiya showing the hoped-for taking Jerusalem from
Israel and the destruction of Israel on the scarf. On the right side
it says “Jerusalem is ours” and the left: “Palestine” with no Israel
on the map.)
Since the holiness of Jerusalem to Islam has always been, and still is
no more than a politically motivated holiness, any Palestinian Arab
politician would be putting his political head on the block should he
give it up. Must Judaism and Christianity defer to myths related in
Islamic texts or allegedly envisioned in Muhammad’s dreams, long after
Jerusalem was established as the ancient, real center of these two
religions which preceded Islam?
Should the world reshape the Middle East map just because Muslims
decided to recycle the political problems of the Umayyads 1250 years
after the curtain came down on their role in history?
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