Muslim Backpedaling
Muslims today vociferously deny a Jewish Temple existed on the Temple Mount (Haram). However, their own literature affirms this fact and shows how they have changed their position to accomplish their objective of Islamic domination.
Page 4 of A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, published by the Supreme Moslem Council in 1924 (but also in all subsequent editions through the 1950s), made the following declaration:
The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to the universal belief, on which “David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”
On page 16, the booklet declares,
In the west wall of the chamber [beneath the southeast corner of the Haram], a door opens into a staircase descending to Solomon’s Stables. This is a vast subterranean chamber….It dates probably as far back as the construction of Solomon’s Temple. According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D.
The booklet teaches that the late Graeco-Roman marble monoliths inside the Dome of the Rock were taken from Hadrian’s Temple of Jupiter. Roman Emperor Hadrian ended the Second Jewish Revolt and punished the Jewish people by renaming Jerusalem and plowing the Temple Mount with salt. So this Muslim document affirms that Hadrian had indeed erected a pagan temple on the site of the Jewish Temple, as history has recorded.
Moreover, this official Muslim publication (page 16) reveals the Haram was clearly understood to have been the site of a Byzantine Christian Church venerating Jesus’ infancy (at the Temple). In addition, it states,
The first flight of steps takes us down to the small chamber…which was believed in medieval times to have been associated with Jesus Christ’s infancy;…and underneath the dome is a small niche lying horizontally, which was believed in early times to have been the Cradle of Christ and referred to under that name by several Arab historians.
How could such statements have been made by the same Muslim authority that today denies the existence of the Temple and its location on the Haram?
The answer is the need to develop a revisionist history in light of its goal to delegitimize the 1948 establishment of the Jewish state and its conquest of East Jerusalem (which includes the Temple Mount) in 1967.
