Supreme
Moslem Council: Temple Mount is Jewish
arutz 7 ^ | 9-1-08 | Hillel Fendel
Posted on Monday,
September 01, 2008 11:18:20 AM by Nachum
(IsraelNN.com) The widely-disseminated Arab Moslem position
that the Temple Mount
is not Jewish has been debunked - by the Supreme Moslem Council (Waqf) of Jerusalem, in a Temple Mount
guide published in 1925.
Wakf guidebook, 1925, cover The Temple
Institute
Guidebook Puts the Lie to Current Arab Campaign In
1997, the chief Moslem cleric of the Palestinian Authority, Mufti Ikrama Sabri, stated, "The
claim of the Jews to the right over [Jerusalem] is false, and we recognize
nothing but an entirely Islamic Jerusalem under Islamic supervision..."
Thus began a campaign to convince the world that
the millennia-old natural association between Jerusalem and Jews was untrue. As Islamic
Movement chief Raed Salah
stated in 2006, "We remind, for the 1,000th time, that the entire Al-Aqsa mosque [on the Temple Mount], including all of its area
and alleys above the ground and under it, is exclusive and absolute Moslem
property, and no one else has any rights to even one grain of earth in
it."
However, it
is now known that this "absolute" Moslem claim is actually not as
absolute as claimed. In fact, back in 1925, the Supreme Moslem Council - also
known as the Waqf, which has overseen Temple Mount
activities on behalf of the Moslem religion for hundreds of years - boasted
proudly that the site was none other than that of Solomon's Temple.
The Jerusalem-based
Temple Institute (http://www.templeinstitute.org) reports that it has acquired
a copy of the official 1925 Supreme Moslem Council Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Moslem name
for the Temple Mount). On page 4, the Waqf states, "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute.
This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built
there an altar unto the L-rd...', citing the source in
2 Samuel XXIV,25.
Wakf guidebook, 1925, excerpt close-up The Temple Institute
In addition,
on page 16, the pamphlet makes reference to the underground area in the
south-east corner of the Mount, which is refers to as Solomon's Stables.
"Little is known for certain of the history of the chamber itself,"
the guide reads. "It dates probably as far back as the construction of
Solomon's Temple.
According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by
the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem
by Titus in the year 70 A.D."
The Temple Mount
in Jerusalem
was in fact the site of the two Jewish Holy Temples which stood for nearly
1,000 years (see below).
Wakf guidebook, 1925, excerpt The Temple Institute
Proof of Moslem Anti-Jewish Revisionism The Temple
Institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman writes that the
pamphlet provides proof that the Waqf's current
position is a departure from traditional Muslim belief. "In recent
years," he writes, "the Moslem Waqf has
come to deny the historic existence of the Holy
Temple, claiming that the Temple Mount
belongs solely to the Moslem nation, and that there exists no connection
between the Jewish nation and the Temple
Mount. It is clear from
this pamphlet that the revised Waqf position strays
from traditional Moslem acknowledgment of the Mount's Jewish antecedents."
"The current denial of historical reality is
merely one tool in the war being waged by Moslems against the G-d of Israel and the
entire 'infidel' world," Richman declares.
Examples of the new Palestinian/Arab position on Jerusalem: PA Mufti Sabri was quoted in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam on November 22, 1997 as saying, "The 'Al-Buraq' Wall [the Western Wall] is a part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Jews have no relation to it."
The same newspaper, on July 18, 1997, reported
that Hamad Yusef, head of
The Institution for the Rejuvenation of the Palestinian Heritage, referred to
the "false historical claim of the Jews in the holy city, a claim which
they were unable to prove in all of the excavations conducted by foreign groups
for the past hundred years." The paper also stated that Hamad "accused the Israelis of unprecedented
historical forgeries, emphasizing the Palestinian, the Arab and the Islamic
nature of the holy city for the past 6,000 years. Israel
fails in her attempt to find a historical connection to Jerusalem." (courtesy
of Jewish Virtual Library)
Jewish History on the Mount The
Temple Mount in Jerusalem
was the site of the two Jewish Holy Temples, the first of which was built by
King Solomon in the year 832 BCE, close to 1,500 years before Islam was
founded. It stood for over 400 years, and after the 70-year Babylonian Exile, a
Second Temple was built on the same site. Thus,
for nearly 1,000 years, Holy Temples stood on the site, until the Romans
conquered the entire land and destroyed the Second Temple.
Though the area came under the control of the Romans, Byzantines, Moslems,
Christians, Turks, British and others over the intervening centuries, Jerusalem
and the Temple Mount were always the focus of Jewish religious and national
yearnings, and continued to be the Jews' "capital" even while in
exile. In the Six Day War of 1967, the modern State of Israel liberated the Temple Mount
area and all of Jerusalem,
placing it under Jewish control once again after a hiatus of 1,900 years.
Israel, however, never actualized its sovereignty over the holy Temple Mount
site, but rather granted the Waqf nearly total
control. Jews, in fact, have not been allowed to pray there ever since
then-Chief IDF Rabbi Shlomo Goren led a prayer
service there on the first Tisha B'Av
after the liberation. Jews' visiting hours are also restricted.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127428