Jerusalem & Muslims

Submitted by sTs (United Arab Emirates), Nov 19, 2008 at 13:38

The centrality of Jerusalem in Muslim spirituality is apparent in the story of Muhammad's mystical Night Journey to Jerusalem. One night Muhammad was conveyed miraculously from the Kabah to Jerusalem's Aqsa Mosque. There he was welcomed by all the great prophets of the past before ascending through the seven heavens. On his way up he sought the advice of Moses, Aaron, Enoch, Jesus, John the Baptist and Abraham before entering the presence of God.

Respect for other faiths was manifest in Islamic Jerusalem. When Caliph Umar, one of Muhammad's successors, conquered the Jerusalem of the Christian Byzantines in 638, he insisted that the three faiths of Abraham coexist. He refused to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher when he was escorted around the city by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch. Had he done so, he explained, the Muslims would have wanted to build a mosque there to commemorate the first Islamic prayer in Jerusalem.

Umar, according to a variety of accounts, built a simple wooden mosque on the southern end, site of al-Aqsa Mosque today.

The Jews found their new Muslim rulers far more congenial than the Byzantines. The Christians had never allowed the Jews to reside permanently in the city, whereas Umar invited 70 Jewish families back.

Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, built by Caliph Abd al-Malik in 691, was one of the first great building to be constructed in the Islamic world. It symbolizes the ascent that all Muslims must make to God, whose perfection and eternity are represented by the circle of the great golden dome. Other Islamic shrines on the same area that is called al-Haram al-Sharif, the Most Noble Sanctuary.

After the bloodbath of the Crusades, when Saladin reconquered Jerusalem for Islam in 1187, the Jews (barred from the city by the Crusaders) were invited to return, and even the Western Christians, who had supported the crusading atrocities, were allowed back.

An abstract from an article by Karen Armstrong in TIME Magazine

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