Moslems and the Al-Aksa Mosque: Can You Dig It?

Arutz Sheva reports on Tuesday:

Moslem incitement on the Temple Mount has reached new depths, so to speak, as the chief cleric of the Al-Aksa mosque accuses Israel of building a synagogue under the mosque.

The cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, said at a news conference on Tuesday that Israel was building the synagogue in order to cause the mosque to collapse.

This of course is not the first time that Moslems have accused Jews of trying to destroy their holy sites. The Hebron riots of 1929 were caused in part by claims that the immigration Jews and their purchasing of land would displace the Arabs there. However:

The riots were also fueled by false rumors that the Jews intended to build a synagogue at the wailing wall, or otherwise encroach upon the Muslim rule over the Temple Mount compound, including the Al-Aqsa mosque.

And of course, who can forget the Al Aksa Tunnel Riots of 1996.

In February 1997, the Alayam newspaper in Bahrain was reporting:

The chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council Ahmed Korei' (Abu Alaa) has warned of an explosion by the masses in the occupied territories if Israel continued its policy of settlements and the excavation of tunnels under Al-Aqsa mosque.

With this background of Moslem knee-jerk reaction to any threat to their holy sites, there was a conference in Mecca dealing with the destruction of their holy sites:

Documents issued by the conference indicated that member states should make contributions to "preserve the holy sites in the city of Al-Quds" and "safeguard the sacred city's cultural and historic landmarks and Arab-Islamic identity." The documents cited the need to counter "the judaization of the Holy City."

A statement released by the OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu warned of "illegal Israeli practices" and "aggressions" that aim to alter "historic landmarks."

If this is how concerned Moslems are with sites in Israel, how do they feel about sites safely under their own control?

"It is very ironic," said Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs. "The same place where they had their meeting, not one mile away, there are Islamic landmarks much more important in Islamic history than all Islamic landmarks in Jerusalem, that are being destroyed."

Al-Ahmed, a Saudi scholar and expert on Saudi political affairs, estimates that the majority of Islamic landmarks in Saudi Arabia have already been destroyed. Islamic architecture expert Sami Angawi told media earlier this year that at least 300 historical buildings have been leveled in Mecca and Medina over the past 50 years.

"A telling example is the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born and [another] house he lived in until he was 29 are going to be demolished," Al-Ahmed said. Also destroyed was the 18th -century Ottoman-era Ajyad Fort. "They destroyed it at night. They blew up the hill where the fort was situated to make room for hotels," Al-Ahmed said.

There are 2 reasons for this--notice the way the first seques smoothly right into the second one:

Behind the destruction is the Wahhabist strain of Islam, which seeks to destroy any revered physical structures that clerics believe could lead believers to idolatry, said Al-Ahmed. Real-estate development, especially around Mecca and Medina, which hosts millions of pilgrims every year, is also a major factor.

In another interesting dichotomy:

If a historic Islamic site in Jerusalem such as the Dome of the Rock were ever to be destroyed, Al-Ahmed said, "we'd have a bloodbath."

By comparison, Al-Ahmed noted the irony of a tape of the late Sheikh Mohammed bin Othaimeen, who he described as the "number one Wahhabi cleric."

"On the tape he says, 'We hope one day we'll be able to destroy the dome of the Prophet Mohammed," al-Ahmed quoted bin Othaimeen as saying in reference to the "Green Dome" (Gunbad-e-Khadra), under which Mohammed is buried in the Al Nabawi Sharif mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

Apparently nothing makes Moslems as appreciative of their holy sites as when Jews are around--and Smooth Stone has the pictures to prove it.

Technorati Tag: Temple Mount.