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The Wailing Wall

The Wailing Wall
By Jack Kinsella

What had been a minor bulge in the southern wall near the Islamic Museum on the Temple Mount gave way and collapsed, after the Muslim Waqf that administers the area failed to bring Jordanian engineers to shore it up. The Islamic Waqf is blaming Israel.

Adnan al-Husseini of the Waqf said the failure was the result of ”the Israeli intervention in our work and preventing us from maintaining it after we stated it was in urgent need for a rapid action to prevent its collapse”.

The Temple Mount is the foundation of the Jewish Temple that was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans. Because it is the only remnant of the foundation, it is considered the holiest site for observant Jews.

Muslims claim it is the third holiest in their faith because two mosques were constructed on the site hundreds of years later.

The Moslem “claim” to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the “Furthest Mosque”: “Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque.”

The Islamic version of how the Temple Mount became the al Aqsa Mosque says the Temple Mount was the launchpad from which Mohammed climbed aboard a winged steed and rode off to heaven.

According to Islam, in the ninth year of the Prophet’s mission, about 620 AD, Muhammad rose in the middle of the night to visit the Sacred Mosque in Makkah. After a time of worship he fell asleep near the Ka’aba.

The angel Gabriel came to him and woke him from his slumber. He led the Prophet, to the edge of the sacred Makkan mosque. Awaiting them was al-Buraq, a white winged beast “whose each stride stretched as far as the eye could see.” Muhammad mounted al-Buraq and sped northwards with Gabriel to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Furthest Mosque.

But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this “Furthest Mosque” (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.

During Mohammed’s lifetime, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem wasn’t captured by Khalif Omar until 638, six years after Mohammed’s death. Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style.

The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name “Omar Mosque” is therefore false. In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik’s son, Abd El-Wahd – who ruled from 705-715 – reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine “basilica” structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular “ship” in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.

So it is abundantly clear that Mohammed could never have had the Temple Mount area in mind when he was compiling the Koran. It did not exist as a mosque until some three generations after Mohammed’s death.

Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the “Sacred Mosque,” and the mosque in Medina as the “Furthest Mosque.” So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque.

In fact, Mohammed issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer. That practice had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Mohammed put an abrupt stop to it on February 12, 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Moslems themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain.

Assessment

During the Six Days’ War in 1967, Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, including East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. General Moshe Dayan, hoping to blunt global demands for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the captured territory, agreed instead to let the Muslim Waqf administer the Temple Mount as an Islamic holy place.

It was a grave mistake; in so doing, Dayan gave ‘legs’ to the myth. Surrendering control to Islam was seen as a tacit admission that Islam had the superior claim.

As we’ve already seen, Islam’s claim is only valid if one deletes three decades in the 5th century from the historical record. None of this information is a secret — anybody with access to a history book can resolve in a matter of seconds the validity of Islam’s claim to the Temple Mount and to Jerusalem.

Anybody except the enlightened and highly educated diplomates at the UN, not to mention the 134 countries who consistently side against Israel.

It would appear that only in America, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia have history books. Does this make sense? Of course not. This is Jerusalem, and we are living in the last days.

And in the last days, says the prophet, Jerusalem will become a ‘burdensome stone’ to all the peoples of the world, and all that burden themselves with details like historical facts that indicate the Islamic claim is false will be ‘cut in pieces’. (Zechariah 12)

If this were any other piece of real estate on the face of the planet — except Jerusalem — the dispute would have been settled based on fact and not emotion.

But it isn’t. It is Jerusalem, and it is in Jewish hands. That triggers the emotion that the Bible said would follow the Jews until the end of days — hatred. Islam’s claim to Jerusalem is based entirely on hatred of the Jews. Global support for Islam’s claim to the Land of Promise is based on the universal hatred of the Jews.

The UN’s unfailing condemnation of all things Israeli is rooted in a hatred so deep that most can’t even explain it. The best they can come up with is the canard, ‘Christ killers’ — a view that is expressed even by those who don’t believe in Christ in the first place.

The world claims Jerusalem, either for Islam, or for mainstream Christianity. But the Bible says that, in the last days, God will eventually reclaim Israel — and Jerusalem — for Himself.

“And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” (Zechariah 12:10)

Note: Jack wrote this detailed, historial Letter a decade ago. The battle for Temple Mount still rages on.

Original Article

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