“Jews
and Jerusalem in Christianity and Islam”
By Dr. Mohiuddin Waseem
Gulshan Iqbal, Karachi
Pakistan
Many in the Muslim world believe that the unconditional
American support for Israel is due to the economic
power of American Jews who are in control of America’s
political and financial institutions. This superiority
of theirs is helping them acquire domination over
the media and that’s how American public
opinion is swayed in favor of Jews in general
and Israel in particular. Unfortunately what Muslims
do not realize is the historic fact that Jews
have a long history of persecution in the West
spanning over the last two millennia the main
cause of which was a religious charge that they
participated in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In this article I’ll show you how the evolution
in the religious thought process of Judeo-Christianity
has led to accommodation between these two historic
rival religions and I believe that by generating
a similar constructive dialogue between different
Abrahamic faiths including Islam, Christianity
and Judaism, specifically focusing on the commonness
of these religions we can help foster a peaceful
and just global society.
Jews’ persecution at the hands of Christians
first started many centuries ago under Roman Catholic
domination which became the official religion
of the Roman Empire when Constantine The Great
converted to Christianity in 325 AD. Though the
New Testament (60-110 AD) holds both Jews and
Romans responsible in collaborating a plot to
crucify Jesus the later Jewish sages in their
book of traditions ‘Talmud’ (200AD)
made the situation even worse by taking the sole
responsibility of this alleged act upon themselves,
raised doubts of promiscuity about Jesus’
miraculous birth and attributed many of his miracles
to magic: these Jewish charges against Jesus and
his mother lead to many ‘holocausts’
(burnt offering to God) by Christians of Europe
the last one in Nazi Germany which unfortunately
resulted in the death of some six million Jews.
The Roman Catholic Church taught that Jews are
not the chosen people of God any more; rather
Christians are and Jerusalem is no more the seat
of God’s glory on earth but that has shifted
to Rome instead. That is why we do not see any
effort on the part of the Roman Empire and the
Catholic Church to give any leverage to Jews to
establish a governance of their own in Jerusalem
or to rebuild the Solomon’s temple which
was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD after a failed
Jewish coup against the earlier Roman authorities.
The event was seen as fulfillment of Christ’s
prophesy who is reported to have said, “There
will not be left here (temple) one stone upon
another that shall not be thrown down” (Holy
Bible, Mark 13:2). In fact the very site where
the temple once stood was used by the Catholics
for the city’s rubbish dump ground which
was personally cleaned by Caliph Umer and the
other companions of the Prophet Mohammad (peace
be upon him) when the Muslim armies first conquered
Jerusalem in 638 AD. In the Christian world Jews
got their major breakthrough after the Protestant
reformation movement of the sixteenth century
which challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic
Church and because they were drifting away from
Rome they reinstated the central role of Jews
and Jerusalem in formulating the Protestant doctrine
for their fellow Christians. The natural conclusion
which followed in our present time is a wish to
rebuild the Solomon’s temple where Jesus
Christ once preached along with the renewed anticipation
that Christ on his second coming will reappear
in the new temple, an adulteration with the prophesies
of the Jews who are still waiting for their own
Messiah to appear. Many of these Protestant sects
follow laws and commandments of the Jewish Bible
(Old Testament) and call themselves Jewish-Christians
in an effort to keep their Jewish linkage alive,
a sharp contrast to typical Roman Catholic teachings.
Finall, the horrible events of holocaust during
World War II became a necessary catalyst that
triggered a desire in the Roman Catholic Church
to change the anti-Jewish sentiments from its
liturgy. It’s because holocaust unveiled
to the church the disastrous consequences of such
preaching; therefore in 1962, Pope Paul convened
a Vatican Council which lead to the famous declaration
called ‘Nostra Aetate’ (“In
our time”) which declared, “Although
the Church is the new people of God, the Jews
should not be presented as repudiated or cursed
by God, as if such views followed from the Holy
Scripture” (James Carroll, Constantine’s
Sword p38).
Jews on the other hand have also softened their
stance on the personality of Jesus Christ. Rabbi
Joseph Telushkin in his book ‘Jewish Literacy’
writes, “Is there a Jewish consensus on
how Jews are to regard Jesus? Perhaps not, but
in recent decades many Jewish scholars have tended
to view him as one of several first and second
century Jews who claimed to be the Messiah, and
who attempted to rid Judea of its roman oppressors”
(p128).
Islam tried to give a common ground to both Jews
and Christians but unfortunately for almost 1400
years now its message is largely misunderstood
in the Judeo-Christian world. First, it acknowledged
all the Hebrew prophets including Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon
to name a few (may peace and blessings be upon
all of them), teaching that they all were God’s
rightly guided who should be respected and Muslims
should not prefer one over the other because all
have similar stature in the sight of God (Holy
Qur’an, 2:136). It also requires that in
every ritual prayer Muslims should send peace
and blessings to patriarch Abraham (PBUH) and
his followers as they send peace and blessings
to prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and his followers.
Second, it accepted Jesus as the awaited Messiah
who was born miraculously to pious Mary and who
showed many miracles at God’s Will including
raising the dead and healing born blind and lepers
(Holy Qur’an, 3:49). Third, it exonerated
Jews from charges of Christ’s death and
crucifixion stating ‘They killed him not,
neither crucified him but the matter was made
dubious.... for of a surety they killed him not...but
God raised him up unto Himself’ (Holy Qur’an,
4:157) and may be that was one of the reasons
Jews lived in relative peace and harmony in the
Muslim dominated areas. Fourth, it taught that
the Temple mount in Jerusalem is a holy place
which is one of the oldest places for worship
on earth which in the Arabic traditions is called
‘Masjid Al-Aqsa’ meaning the farthest
mosque (Holy Qur’an, 17:1). The mosque is
considered the third holiest site in Islam after
Kabah in Mekkah and the Mosque of the Prophet
Mohammad in Medina. In fact the mosque is considered
as old as Kabah itself (Sahih Bukhari).
A reference to this ancient site can also be found
in the Bible which tells that ‘the King
priest of Salam (Jerusalem) paid homage to Prophet
Abraham who in return gave tithe to the priest’
(Holy Bible, Genesis 14:18) implying its existence
well before prophet Abraham’s time. Israelites
took hold of this area after King David’s
conquest in the land and his son Solomon is said
to have built the famous Solomon’s temple
in tenth century BC. The temple was laid to ruins
by the Babylonians in 586 BC who were later defeated
by the Persians who allowed the reconstruction
of the temple in 520 BC. An enormous building
project at the temple site was carried out by
King Herod, who reigned in Palestine from 37 to
4 BC, which was finally destroyed by the Roman
legions in AD 70.
The original Solomon’s temple was basically
rectangular in shape about 105 feet long, 35 feet
wide and 52 feet high. The innermost chamber in
the temple was called ‘holy of holies’
which like the Kabah of Mekkah was a cube with
a door and measured 10x10x10 meters which housed
the ‘Ark of the covenant’. The floor
of the ‘holy of holies’ was slightly
elevated and if that was the very site of ‘foundation
stone’ (Eben Shetiyyah) or ‘the rock’
of Jewish traditions upon which the world was
founded is a matter of scholarly debates. Like
the Muslims the Israelites did not believe that
God’s presence could be localized or confined
to a particular building but the Temple did symbolize
a divine dwelling place and assured the people
of ready access to their God.
Because Jews in ancient times faced the ‘holy
of holies’ for their prayers and sacrifices
early Muslims who evolved from the old ‘Abrahamic
faith’ of Arabia also faced towards Jerusalem
for their ritual prayers. But as Islam slowly
grew into a system of its own the direction of
Muslim prayers (Qibla) was later changed to Kabah
in Mekkah instead. That was precisely the reason
Caliph Umer despite identifying ‘the rock’
(Sakhra in Arabic) upon his arrival at the temple
mount (638 AD) neither prayed facing it nor built
any structure upon it because the significance
of that particular spot on the temple mount was
over in Islamic jurisprudence after the change
of ‘Qibla’ event in Islamic ideology.
However because of the holiness of temple mount
itself Caliph Umer did make a small mosque in
the southern corner of its platform which initially
was called ‘mosque of Umer’ and today
is known as ‘Masjid Al-Aqsa’, taking
caution to avoid ‘the rock’ to come
between the mosque and the direction of Kabah
so that Muslims would face only Mekkah when they
prayed (The History of Al-Tabri). In fact, there
is evidence to believe that early Muslims did
allow Jews to pray at their own ‘Qibla’
(‘the rock’) site just as the Christian
delegation from Najran had been allowed by Prophet
Mohammad (PBUH) to pray in his Medina mosque (Robert
G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam As others Saw It, p127).
What motivated the later Umayyad Caliphs Abdul
Malik Bin Marvan and his successor Walid to build
the ‘Dome of the rock’ (688-691 A.D,
Quba Assakhra in Arabic) is a topic which has
baffled scholars throughout the ages and is worth
searching.
Many suggestions have been put forward by the
scholars such as a desire ‘to build a place
to commemorate the heavenly journey of Prophet
Mohammad’ or ‘to build a shelter for
the pilgrims who came to visit the rock’
or ‘to build another Kabah like religious
structure in Jerusalem’ or ‘to make
an Islamic monument larger in grandeur than the
Christian monuments of the city’ etc. (Karen
Armstrong, Jerusalem pp 217-244) & (Said Nuseibeh
& Oleg Grabar, The Dome of The Rock, p139).
Whatever might be the intention of the Caliphs,
unfortunately the dome gave a political message
to the Jews that the sons of Ishmael have established
themselves at their sacred site which triggered
a strong Jewish opposition first against the Umayyad
dynasty and then the later Muslim rulers and the
rift continued to our present days (Neil Asher
Silberman, Heavenly Powers p30).
From the preceding discussion it must be clear
to my readers that all three Abrahamic faiths
including Islam, Christianity and Judaism have
much in common and many of the differences they
have can be resolved by initiating a dialogue
specifically focusing on the commonalities of
these religions which clearly is the need of our
present times.
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