Too potentially hostile for GQ and IMHO, and I don’t have a debate point to make, and so…
I was listening to a Bible radio show (my first mistake) and they got to talking trash about Islam (gosh, what a surprise…)
And the guy said that Muslims deny that there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. They oppose achaeological exploration in that area (he said) because it would lead to the establishment of the facts, i.e., that there had indeed been such a Temple.
Is this a load of shit, or something that has a half an ounce of truth buried in it somewhere? Do many in Islam argue that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem?
Or is that like saying that many Christians deny the Apollo Moon-Landing history? i.e., yeah, some do, but it isn’t a religious stance, just a stupid one.
(There is a Wikipedia article on Temple Denial, and it suggests this is a very new phenomenon. But is it real, or just something that Christianists are exaggerating, the way they do nearly everything regarding Islam these days?)
(In roughly the same vein, is it true there are some Hindus who deny the Apollo Moon-Landings took place, because the Moon is a holy and pristine place where the hand of man has never set foot? Is the view widespread, or really rare and obscure?)
Yeah, far as I can tell it’s bullshit. One wonders what then exactly attracted the early Muslims to the site if it wasn’t holy. Even Ibn Taymiyyah, the late 13th/early 14th century ground zero scholar for a lot of modern Islamist whackadoos, was firmly of the opinion it was the site of the Temple. It looks like an entirely political Palestinian issue, not an Islamic one per se.
It’s something I’ve encountered before, although I have no idea how common the belief is. I do know that it’s a political statement, not a religious one.
I recently watched a documentary about the temple mount, and it was mentioned that the Muslim organisation that administers the site and its buildings in fact denies that a Jewish temple ever existed at the place. As was mentioned before, this is mostly an irrational, political stance by an organisation that has a strong willingness to claim the site as a Muslim sanctuary, and I don’t think you can extrapolate this stance to the whole of Islam, which is, as everybody should know, a vast and diverse entity. Sorry, no cites, I’m working from memory.
I don’t know anything in the Qur’an that would foster this belief, however to them the Qur’an is a divine ‘correction’ of the Bible (both OT - called Torah, and NT - called Gospels in the Qur’an ), and I don’t recall the book ever mentioning the temple either - though I’m not a student of the Qur’an.
I did get the impression that the instructions was to love their Jewish brethren as Allah has made them and placed them there, it is hard to take it as a book to be hostel towards the ‘non-believer’, yes some verses can be taken as that, but many more oppose this.
I do wonder if the Islamic people in mass actually read and study the Qur’an for themselves or just mainly depend on their Mosque visits to hear what their book has written in it.
Yup, as other have noted, it is not a position attributable to “Islam”, but rather to the current conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.
It is pretty risable, as the remains of the Second Temple mount are still there for everyone to see, and they are massive (part of them forms the so-called “wailing wall”). One wonders what the deniers claim those things are!
The wiki article is correct. Temple denialism is less than 20 years old, and was begun by PLO leader Yasser Arafar as a political maneuver. Despite being seized upon by revanchist Palestinians and antisemitic Islamists in the years since 2000, it’s most definitely not a Muslim or an Islamic thing. The wiki article even mentions in passing that, in the years before the establishment of the State of Israel, the religious authorities controlling access to the al-haram al-sharif were quite open about it being the site of Solomon’s Temple.
Right-wing Christians and Israelis have, as you noted, also seized upon it as a way to smear all Palestinians and all Muslims (which is why pretty much the only ones talking about it are places like CAMERA and World Net Daily), and if they haven’t exaggerated the reports of Temple denial among Palestinians, they’ve certainly exaggerated their importance.
It’s basically just one more weapon in the ideological war over who has the rightful claim to the Levant - the Palestinian equivalent of the right-wing Christian and Israeli arguments that the land was empty before Jewish settlers arrived in the 19th Century.
The challenge is that the Dome of the Rock (a religious site for Islam) sits on the grounds of the Temple. There has long been a conflict between those Jews who wish to rebuild the Temple, right wing Christians who think that they need the Temple rebuilt to get Christ back to earth (and trigger the Apocalypse, but who wants to worry about that), and Muslims who wish to protect THEIR piece of the area. Add all of this together in a city that Israel claims as a capitol while other nations refuse to recognize it, and we get a nice little bit of religious strife among the Abrahamic religions combined with the battle over the existence of Israel.
Of the Western Wall, only the bottom parts are the actual remains of the second temple, the middle sections are a mix of Herodian stones and later Ummayad rebuilding and the top are mostly of Ottoman origin.(Cite)
[QUOTE=Wiki]
The very large stone blocks of the lower courses are Herodian, the courses of medium-sized stones above them were added during the Umayyad era, while the small stones of the uppermost courses are of more recent date, especially from the Ottoman Period.
[/QUOTE]
“Herodian” stones are, in point of fact, stones of the Second Temple period. From your cite:
They form the part of the “wall” that people are familiar with - as it is approached from the bottom of the wall, not from the top (the top towers way above their heads). You can see the different stones and their relationship with the viewer in this picture:
The “Herodian” stones are easily differentiated from the others because they are massively huge, and because of their distinctive carving (they have a ‘border’).
Like most ancient cites, it has of course been repaired and improved on over the centuries - understandably so: the temple mount is now used as the platform for famous Ummayad buildings.
The notion that these enormous and very distictive stones - stones that form the part of the wall actually facing the viewer at eye level - do not date from the Temple is, as I said, risible, and that is not contradicted by the fact that later repairs and additions were made.
Yes, I am well aware of that. I just rather doubt the early faithful would have picked a completely random spot around which to cast the story of the heavenly ascension of Muhammad :).
Where did I say that? The fact that devout muslim dynasties would build upon the remains of the Temple is proof that the building i) existed and ii) was accepted to be the Temple itself and repairs were a duty.
Is the view widespread, or really rare and obscure?)
