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MOSES IN MECCA |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 15 December 2006 |
Have you ever wondered why Arab Palestinians think Jerusalem
is so important to them? Why they say
there will never be Arab-Israeli peace until they control it? They say it's because of the "sacredness" of
the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Why is Al Aqsa so vitally important to the Palestinians? The
Palestinians are Moslems who proclaim Al Aqsa to be the third holiest site in
all Islam after Mecca and Medina -
Mecca being the alleged birthplace of Mohammed and Medina being the
nearby town to which Moslems believe he fled in 622 AD (an event known as the
"Hegira" and provides Year One in the Islamic calendar).
How could Al Aqsa possibly be close in sacredness to these
two holy Moslem cities?
Sura (chapter) 17 of the Koran, entitled "The
Night Journey," relates that in a dream or a vision Mohammed was carried
by night "from the sacred temple to the furthermost point, whose precinct
we have blessed, that we might show him our signs."
A subsequent legend arose, not told in the Koran, that
Mohammed's mystic night journey was in the company of the Archangel Gabriel,
and they rode on a winged steed called El Burak (Lightning), which had the face
of a woman and the tail of a peacock.
When they reached the "furthermost point," they
encountered Abraham, Jesus and other prophets, whom Mohammed led in prayers.
Gabriel then led Mohammed to a ladder of golden light, upon which Mohammed
ascended through the seven heavens into the presence of Allah, from whom he
received instructions for himself and his followers.
Following his divine meeting, Mohammed was flown back to
Mecca by Gabriel and the winged horse, arriving there before dawn. So goes the
legend.
Mohammed died in 632 AD. Six years later, Caliph Omar I
captured Jerusalem from the Persians. Seeing the magnificent Church of the Holy
Sepulcher built by Constantine in 335 A.D. and well aware of how sacred the
city was to both the Christians and the Jews, Omar declared that the city was
sacred to the Moslems as well.
Needing a rationale, he searched the Koran and zeroed in on
Sura 17. The "Furthermost Point" of Sura 17, where Mohammed ascended
to heaven, was, Omar decreed, none other than the Jews' holiest of holies, the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
After David established the kingdom of Israel and Judah with
his capital at Jerusalem in 957 BC, his son Solomon built the First Temple on
the mountaintop rock in the city's center where the Jews believed Abraham
almost sacrificed his son Isaac.
Destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, the Second Temple was
built in 515 BC and rebuilt by Herod, 37-4 BC. Destroyed again by the Romans in
70 AD, the ruins were chosen by Omar to be a "mashhad," a Moslem
pilgrimage shrine. Omar's successor's built the shrine known as the Dome of the
Rock, Qubbat As-Sakrah, and adjacent to it, the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Today, Moslems give a formal name to the entire Temple Mount
as the Noble Sanctuary, Al Haram ash-Sharif, but commonly refer to the
whole complex as Al Aqsa.
The point to focus on in all of this is that the name
"Jerusalem" (or Al Quds, as Arabs refer to it) is never
mentioned in the Koran - not in Sura 17 or anywhere else.
The "sacred temple" from which Mohammed dreamed he
departed in his night journey is clearly Mecca, where he was living. But the
"furthermost point whose precinct we [meaning Allah] have blessed"
has no reality attached to it at all.
Omar simply issued an edict, saying in effect, "Well,
if Jerusalem is sacred to the Jews and the Christians, then it must be sacred
to Moslems too - so I have decided that the "furthermost point" of
Mohammed's sacred dream is the Jewish people's holiest site, and that it is
ours now, not the Jews'."
So, here's a thought experiment. In Deuteronomy 34:6 of the
Old Testament, Moses dies and is buried in a valley in the land of Moab,
described as north of Jericho, but that "no man knoweth of his grave site
to this day."
Let's say that an ancient set of parchments are discovered
by archaeologists like the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are found in a cave near
Mecca and were written by the Jews of Kheibar, descendants of two of the 10
"Lost Tribes," those of Reuven and Gad, who escaped from Assyrian
exile in 721 B.C. and settled in Arabia.
The parchments tell a story: that the Kheibar Jews found the
sepulcher of Moses and rescued its contents from the Assyrians, who were going
to desecrate it. They took Moses' remains with them to Arabia and interred them
where Jehovah instructed, at a site where a "sacred stone from beyond the
earth" lay. There they built a shrine which in time became revered by all
local inhabitants.
The archaeologists pronounce as genuine the parchments,
which reveal the burial site of Moses to be Mecca and the "sacred
stone" to be a meteorite worshipped by ancient Arabians,. Thus the Kaaba,
the holiest temple in all Islam at the center of Mecca and which was built at
the meteorite site, actually sits on the grave of the founder of the Jewish
religion.
Suppose this thought experiment really happened. It has a factual basis: The 12th century Spanish traveler Benjamin
of Tudela met the Jews of Kheibar while traveling through Arabia. And the Koran
tells of a successful Jewish community in Mecca in Mohammed's time.
What would be the response of the Islamic world if millions
of Jews began claiming that Mecca was sacred to them now just as it is sacred
to the Moslems, and demanded that they had the right to build a Dome of Moses
next to the Kaaba as a pilgrimage shrine honoring the Founding Patriarch of the
Jewish People?
Obviously it would be a nuclear explosion of outrage and
rejection.
What this thought experiment demonstrates is that the
negotiating tactic of the Palestinians, and Moslems in general, is the same
used by the Soviets: "What's mine is mine and what's yours should be mine
too."
Mecca and Medina belong entirely and completely to the
Moslems. Why must they have Jerusalem on top of them?
Moslems have no genuine historical or Koranic claim on the
Temple Mount. The Jews' claim is obviously grounded in thousands of years of
history. The world needs to let the Jews have something sacred of their own.
There will be no "peace in the Middle East" until Moslems
cease being in denial over this.
The real solution to the "Arab-Israeli conflict" is for
Arabs to recognize the validity of history, the false claim of Islamic holiness
to Jerusalem, and the rightfulness of letting Moslems keep their Kaaba and Jews
their Temple Mount.
So let's start asking, just what were those Jews doing in
Mecca that the Koran talks about? Maybe
Moses really is buried there - probably right underneath the Kaaba! Could Mecca really be a Jewish Holy
City?
Such questions could play havoc with simple Moslem minds in
which truth and myth form an indistinguishable muddle. That's why it's important to ask them, to
ask about Moses in Mecca.
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