A Muslim Recounts His Visit To Jerusalem

A columnist for the Toronto Sun, Salim Mansur, writes about his experience in Jerusalem:

There is something special when preconceptions dissolve on your first encounter with a new person or place.

As I disembarked a flight at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, I felt some apprehension arriving in Israel so soon after the Gaza flotilla episode, and forebodings of more troubles ahead.

But the warmth with which I was greeted and waved through passport control immediately made me feel at home in the country where I had come on a personal journey.


Beholding Jerusalem for the first time nestled in the folds of the Judean Mountains was a stunning experience.

I felt entirely disarmed of everything I had read, thought and anticipated about the city by the sheer majesty of its grandeur before me.

He goes on to briefly describe what he saw.
Mansur concludes:

The ease with which I moved — alone and without restrictions — from the inner sanctum of the Muslim sanctuary to Judaism’s holiest site, embracing both, is a testimony to the openness of Israel as a Jewish state and democracy.

Palestinian, Arab and Muslim narratives of Jerusalem’s recent history, however, is a denial of what my experience affirms, and the larger denial of Jewish rights that is the source of conflict here.

Yet peace, I believe, shall descend in the Holy Land when Muslims take to heart the original sacred purpose of Muhammad’s journey to Jerusalem.[emphasis added]

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jerusalem.