Jerusalem is important to Islam, not for political, but on theological grounds

Submitted by Asad (United Arab Emirates), Mar 22, 2011 at 03:44

Dr. Pipes

My compliments on a well researched scholarly article. Apologies if I do not agree entirely with your conclusion.

There is also some contradiction in your initial statements which says that there is no mention in Quran, while throughout your article you make numerous citations, most notably at the end where you quote Palazzi.

Without debating the politics, for me this is foremost a matter of faith. We muslims (admittedly not all), believe there is varying degrees of rewards commensurate with the location where prayers are offered.

Simply put, one of the 5 obligatory prayer offered at Makkah is rewarded 100,000 times any other place, while at Madina it is 10,000 and at Jerusalem it is 1000.

So you are right, Jerusalem is 'secondary city' (tertiary actually) to Makkah for muslims, nonetheless a thousand times more important than any other place. So I do have an issue when you propose to deprive me of this privilege to go to Jerusalem.

For completeness of your scholarly work, I'd like to hear from Torah, where it says Jerusalem is the exclusive place for Israel (not believer or chosen people but Israel, irrespective of their faith).

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