‘Muslim historians consistently confirm Jewish ties to Jerusalem’ (JNS.org)

It’s hard to hide the TRUTH about Jerusalem… despite the never ending attempts by extremists. However, when you look at things closely, you’ll find that even Muslim historians confirm the TRUTH! This article explains more…

Illustrative Photo Credit: Peter Mulligan [License]

‘Muslim historians consistently confirm Jewish ties to Jerusalem’

Article Courtesy: Jewish News Syndicate

The book “Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount: The Rock of Our/Their Existence,” is bound to cause an uproar in the Muslim world. Published last year, it presents a comprehensive list of early Islamic sources that recognize the historical Jewish claim to Jerusalem, contrary to modern Muslim religious scholars who—in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict—deny any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and promote the argument that no Jewish Temple ever stood there.

Fifty-four years after the unification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City, professor Yitzhak Reiter and co-writer Dvir Dimant hold a mirror up to this prevailing Muslim narrative.

According to the book, Islamic leaders deny canonical Muslim historical works that date back to the seventh century C.E., a few decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and that state that the very reason Islam came to regard the Foundation Stone situated in the center of the Dome of the Rock as holy is because of the knowledge that the Jewish Temple stood there.

It’s all in there. Muslim sources time and again describe history the same way Jewish sources do: the building of the First Temple on the Foundation Stone by King Solomon; its destruction by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar; the Babylonian exile; Persian emperor Cyrus the Great’s permission for the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build the Second Temple; and its destruction by Roman emperor Titus.

Moreover, not only do Islam’s most respected historians confirm the Jewish historical timeline, but they also emphasize that the reason Jerusalem and the Temple Mount came to be considered holy in Islam is that the sites were regarded as sacred in Judaism.

In their book, Reiter, an expert on Islamic, Middle Eastern and Israeli studies, and Dimant, a graduate of the Shalem Academic Center in Jerusalem and a research assistant at the Truman Institute for Peace Research, present Jewish and Islamic sources side by side and reveal an undeniable resemblance between the two.

“Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount” shows that until the Balfour Declaration of 1917, not only did Muslim sources not deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, they systematically pointed it out and confirmed it. However, in 1967, when Israel took control of the Old City during the Six-Day War, the narrative took a drastic turn, and denying any Jewish link to the Temple Mount became the norm.

From then on, Muslims turned their backs on a vast and rich Islamic literature that confirms the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

In the 10th century C.E., Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, perhaps one of the most well known and respected historians in the Muslim religious world, described how God prevented King David from building the Temple because he had blood on his hands, and how therefore the task was assigned to his son, Solomon. His account is almost identical to that found in the Book of Chronicles.

In the 11th century, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wasiti, who served as the preacher of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, described how King Solomon had difficulty opening the gates of the Temple and only succeeded in doing so after mentioning in prayer the name of his father. The story appears almost word for word in the Babylonian Talmud.

In the 14th century, Arab historian Ibn Khaldun in his canonical work “Muqaddimah” also noted how King Solomon built the Temple in the fourth year of his reign. His description of the inauguration of the Temple is identical to that of Kings I, Chapter 6.

In the 15th century, historian Mujir al-Din from Jerusalem also mentioned how the Temple was built by King Solomon, and so did many after him. Almost always, the description in Muslim sources is similar to that found in Jewish scripture.

The most important thing, Reiter and Dimant told Israel Hayom, “is that the Al-Aqsa compound—or as Jews call it, the Temple Mount—be acknowledged by [modern] Islam as the site of two Jewish Temples, and most importantly, Solomon’s Temple. Islam has adopted the Jewish and Christian tradition in this matter, and in medieval times it did not try to deny the fact that the Dome of the Rock symbolizes the continuation of Solomon’s Temple. One could go as far as to say that Islam was proud of this.”

“Some scholars even noted that certain customs and ceremonies that took place outside the Dome of the Rock and even inside, during the Umayyad dynasty, were similar to those that used to take place in the Jewish Temple,” they said.

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