Monday, November 28, 2005
This article in Ha'aretz reviews the work of Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, who will be releasing a book entitled From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back - the Muslim Rallying Around Jerusalem which collects the massive amount of Arab/Muslim denial regarding Jewish connections to Jerusalem and the presence of a significant Temple there. This is not a fringe issue, but represents part of the ideological war against Israel, Judaism and common scholarly standards, as well as a showcase of Islam's inability to play well with others.
Worth checking out.
...Reiter reveals hundreds and thousands of legal rulings, publications and sources that demonstrate the extent to which the denial of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and to the holy places has grown in the Muslim world. Various Islamic sources are now trying to refute the Jewish conception of Jerusalem's centrality in Judaism, and deny the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, and contend that the Western Wall is not an authentic remnant of the outer retaining wall of the Temple compound, but rather the western wall of the Al-Aqsa compound, the place that Muslims now identify with Al-Buraq, the Prophet Mohammed's wondrous beast of burden, which according to legend was tethered by the prophet to the wall...
