The El-Aqsa mosque was built on the temple mount

Submitted by Anon (Israel), Apr 10, 2019 at 18:15

And the temple mount is called that because it housed the two Jewish temples. This is the most sacred site for Judaism, it always has been. This, several hundred years before Christianity and a thousand years before Islam. It was never the most sacred site or even a particularly holy site for Christianity and Christians do not go there on pilgrimages, unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Worth noting is that not so long ago, before the modern state of Israel came into existence, muslims were quite open about this site having been the site of the ancient Jewish temples, and this would have been the reason for constructing a mosque right there and for giving it a special story (suggesting it's the mosque their prophet visited in a dream). It was common for religions to set up structures on top of sites sacred to prior religions. I remember reading some sacred pagan sites of worship were converted into churches and it is believed that the structure Muslims visit in Saudi Arabia existed prior to Islam and was sacred to Pagans back in the day.

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