Between a Rock and a Holy Site
Muslims have increased efforts to take control of Holy Land sties revered by Jews and Christians.
Clarence H. Wagner Jr | posted 2/05/2001 12:00AM
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Capture of biblical sites
In a disturbing new trend, Muslims have stepped up their efforts to take over biblical sites sacred to Jews and Christians. In Jericho somebody set the ancient Jewish synagogue on fire, and crowds prevented fire trucks from putting out the blaze. In the heart of Nablus, the biblical Shechem located about 40 miles north of Jerusalem, Palestinians took control of Joseph's Tomb after days of fierce fighting. Under the Oslo Accords, the tomb was considered a holy site where Jewish young men were to be allowed to pray and study the Torah. After the takeover last October, Muslims immediately converted Joseph's Tomb into a mosque, complete with a freshly painted green dome.
This takeover was quickly followed by calls among the Palestinians to take over Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem (not far from my house) and the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, the burial place of the partriarchs. The Palestinian forces launched a three-pronged attack on Rachel's Tomb on December 5 and came within 30 feet of taking the site.
All of these are holy sites to those of us who honor the Bible. But since Islam considers itself superior to both Judaism and Christianity, its adherents have no theological problem usurping Jewish and Christian sites and changing them into Muslim sites.
Islam teaches that Jews and Christians perverted the faith given them by God and that Allah gave the final revelation to Muhammad. Furthermore, it considers all Jewish and Christian heroes—such as Moses, David, and Jesus—good Muslims whose teachings have paved the way for Islam, a religion that did not even exist before the seventh century.
A Muslim mosque in Bethlehem's Manger Square, with a minaret towering above the Church of the Nativity's bell tower, is a case in point. It especially pains the Israelis that the PNA has taken over Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus (Shechem), and Jericho, which were Jewish towns in biblical times, trying to extinguish the last vestiges of Jewish life and presence in these cities.
Muslims will say that they were just retaliating for Israel's actions, but my Christian friends and I, as well as many Jews, see the severe desecration of biblical sites as an unprovoked attack.
The Palestinian usurpation of the Temple Mount concerns my friends and me the most. The Temple Mount, with remains of Solomon's and Herod's temples, is the central holy site for both Jews and Christians.
There are now three mosques on this site, and a fourth one is being constructed at the Golden Gate. As of late December, Muslim workers have dug out and disposed of 13,400 tons of artifact-rich rubble from the site, according to Eilat Mazar, professor at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The construction process is destroying not only the Temple Mount artifacts, but also layers of biblical history, and Israel is unable to stop it. Even though Israel left control of the Temple Mount in the hands of Muslim authorities in 1967 and has respected the Islamic recharacterization of the site, the Muslim leadership refuses to acknowledge the importance of the site to Jews. Here is what the official PNA Web site says about the Western Wall, the surviving remnant of Herod's Temple complex:
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