Mordechai Kedar on the Muslim Attitude toward the Temple Mount

What Trump Does Not Yet Understand: The Arabs and Muslims are Incapable of Accepting Israel as the Jewish State

Trump’s declaration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city aroused, unsurprisingly, a massive wave of opposition in the Arab and Islamic world for two main reasons – one religious and one nationalist.

The religious reason is rooted in Islam’s conception of itself as a faith whose mission is to bring both Judaism and Christianity to an end, inheriting all that was once Jewish or Christian: Land, places of worship and people. In Islam’s worldview, Falestin in its entirety belongs to Muslims alone because both Jews and Christians betrayed Allah when they refused to become followers of His prophet Mohammed, the punishment for that being expulsion from their land and the forfeiture of all rights to it.

Throughout the history of Islam, Muslims turned churches into mosques, including: The Great Mosque of Ramle, the Beni Omaya Mosque in Damascus, the Hagia Sofia of Istanbul, and many Spanish churches. The reason for this is the belief that Christianity, like Judaism, was nullified by Islam, making churches unnecessary.

The prophets revered by these obsolete religions are Muslims, according to Islamic tenets. That list includes Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, and others – all of them Muslims. And, according to Islam, Solomon built a mosque, not a Temple, in Jerusalem. The fifteen hundred year gap between the reign of King Solomon and the birth of Islam is of no import to true believers.

Jews and Christians can be protected under Muslim rule by being subservient to Islam in what is known as dhimmi status, deprived of the right to own land, bear arms and, naturally, not allowed to harm Muslims. Dhimmis are forced to pay a head tax (jyzia) and are to be kept in a downtrodden state, as is the Quran mandates. In Islam’s view, Jews are not a nation but a collection of communities to be found in various countries: A Jew in Poland is a “Pole of the Mosaic religion” and a Jew in Morocco is a “Moroccan Arab of the Mosaic religion.”

Suddenly, towards the end of the 19th century, it all changed. Jews began coming to Falestin in ever increasing numbers and the Zionists invented a new nation, the “Jewish People” and decided that the land holy to Islam is their homeland and known as Eretz Yisrael. They built communities and a protective fighting force even though, as Jews, they were not supposed to be allowed to bear arms.

In 1948, the Jews actually declared a state, although they were not allowed sovereignty either, and in 1967, they “conquered” Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem.

They now attempt to pray on the Temple Mount, making it a distinct possibility that Judaism has returned to being an active, live and even dynamic religion. This brings the very raison d’etre of Islam into question, as, after all, Islam came into the world in order to make Judaism obsolete.

Muslims loyal to their religion and aware of this danger cannot possibly accept the existence of a Jewish state, not even a tiny one on the Tel Aviv coast. To them, Israel as the state of the Jewish people is a theological threat to Islam and only later a nationalistic, political, judicial or territorial threat.

Along comes Trump and authorizes Israel’s existence by recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, a double blow for Islam: Trump, a Christian, has granted recognition to the Jews!! This must be a Christo-Judaic plot against Islam, and it infuriates the Muslim world. Trump’s Declaration reminds them (and also several Jews) of the Balfour Declaration exactly a century ago, concerning which the Arabs continue to accuse the world, saying: ‘You made the promises of non-owners to those who do not have the right to be given those promises.”

Accordingly, during the week following Trump’s declaration, we have seen Muslims all over the world expressing their fury at the stamp of approval granted the Jewish State, despite its very existence being opposed to that of Islam. Leader and ordinary citizens, men and women, have been going out to the streets to demonstrate their inability to live with the fact that Trump, a Christian, has recognized the capital chosen by the Jewish nation and by extension, the right to their own land.

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From MordechaiKedar.com [Defunct]