Is Jerusalem a Muslim Holy Place?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. The topic of our program for this week is our continuing discussion of Dave Hunt’s new book Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations. And in this segment, Dave, as you remember, we were focusing on Jerusalem, and for our listeners, if they have a copy of Judgment Day and they want to track along with us, we’re about half way through chapter four. “Muslim writers recently began to laude Jerusalem as ‘comparable in holiness’ to Mecca and Medina, or even ‘our most sacred place.’”

Dave: Which would be Mecca.

Tom: Yeah. In support of that, didn’t Muhammad encourage his followers to pray toward Jerusalem?

Dave: He did at the very beginning. That was the qibla, as they call it, because he was trying to attract Christians and Jews. When they would not accept him as the prophet of Allah, then he turned against them and turned the qibla back to Mecca, and that’s rather interesting. Why wouldn’t the Christians and Jews accept Allah as the true God? Because they knew Allah was the chief idol in the Kaaba, and don’t forget that now Muhammad has his Muslim followers praying toward the Kaaba. The Kaaba has 300 and some idols in it, and Allah is the chief idol in it. No wonder the Christians and Jews didn’t want to go along with this idea. Why are we acknowledging this idol, Allah - which, remember, is a contraction of Al Elah. Elah is the generic term for “God” in Arabic; Al Elah means “the god,” or “the chief god,” and Allah was the chief god in the Kaaba. 

So now he has his followers, Muslims. Eventually when he gets the power he will go in and destroy all the idols, but he will keep the Kaaba, and he has them praying toward an idol temple, this supposed new religion, but the Christians and Jews wouldn’t go along with that.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, what about Jerusalem though? I mean, isn’t it sacred to Islam? And what does the Qur’an have to say? The other thing I was thinking about - anytime we see a picture of Jerusalem, what do we see? The Dome of the Rock. So that alone gives them a lot of PR related to its supposed holiness to Islam.

Dave: Yeah, Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Qur’an. It was never a holy site, and of course the Muslims had control of it for centuries. The Ottoman Turkish Empire had it for 400 years. There weren’t any great Muslim leaders going to Jerusalem making pilgrimages there. The Dome of the Rock was built by Abd al-Malik around 690. Why? Because he got chased out of Mecca by a rival, so he thought, “Well, I’ll get the Muslim pilgrims to come to Jerusalem,” so he built it for that purpose. But then 692, I think, thereabouts, he retook Mecca. See, the Muslims fight one another, have always…the Muslims have literally killed millions of Muslims along with many more millions of Christians and Jews.

Tom: Well, we see it today in Iraq, Sunnis killing Shiites.

Dave: Exactly, exactly, or in Afghanistan. The warlords are all Muslims, but they would kill one another if we weren’t there to prevent it. Sunnis and Shiites are killing one another, and that goes back - we explain all of that in the book, how that began. 

Anyway, Jerusalem was never a holy place to the Muslims. They invented that recently in order to make a claim on it. It’s not mentioned, as I said, in the Qur’an at all. 

Now, Hezbollah, which means, “the party of Allah,” the terrorist organization headquartered in Damascus, they have the Dome of the Rock on their promotional material, claiming that this belongs to them. The PLO, of course, in its 1968 constitution, said that Jerusalem was the seat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and it attempted to establish that fraudulent claim with setting up its headquarters in the Orient House in Jerusalem, having peace activists, so-called, coming there. Israel allowed it for a short while, and then they said, “We can’t let this go on.” This is in violation of the Oslo Accords for one thing, and they’re trying to establish themselves as the owners of Jerusalem, so Israel drove them out of the Orient House. But it’s just a total fraud, Tom, and yet the world embraces - the world accepts these frauds, the re-writing of history, and they let the so-called Palestinians do it, and this becomes the basis for peace. It’s maddening, really!

Tom: And, Dave, among the Muslims themselves, every day people, you have King Fahd of Saudi Arabia calling on them to - I’m quoting him: “…the holy city that belongs to all Muslims across the world.” Now, when somebody like that says it, what are the people to think, except, “Well, okay, it must be the way it is.”

Dave: They’ve re-written history, and this is a lie, it’s a fraud, but the world accepts it, and that is what really angers me. That the Muslims would accept it, that the so-called Palestinians would accept it, that’s understandable; this is what they want, this is their ambition, their desire. But that the world would allow this phony re-write of history, that really angers me. 

You can go back - you have Palestinian Authority publicity, they want to get tourists in there, and they explain in the 60s that the Temple Mount was where the temple had been. It’s still called the temple - you can’t explain that away; everybody calls it the Temple Mount, even the Muslims. But the Muslims don’t worship in temples, they worship in mosques, and in the early days the Muslims acknowledged this is where the Jewish temple was, and the Dome of the Rock was built to commemorate that. But now they deny that there ever was a Jewish temple there, and “This belongs to us and the Jews are usurping our territory; they’re taking it away from us. This is terrible. All people who love the truth ought to sympathize with these poor Palestinians who are being so badly mistreated by these Jews that stole our land,” and so forth. That the world would believe this lie? Tom, it is maddening.

Tom: Dave, if our listeners are thinking maybe we’re pushing the envelope a little bit, we haven’t even began to scratch the surface here. But there’s one item that’s just unbelievable. In 1995, the Palestinian Authority, so-called, okay - Palestinian, we’ve been over that a lot - they take possession of Bethlehem just before Christmas; Arafat’s helicoptered in, triumphantly addresses the wildly cheering mob of tens of thousands, and he says, “This is the birthplace of our Lord the Messiah, the Palestinian! Jesus Christ, the first Palestinian!”

Dave: Yeah, he makes it sound as though Jesus was a Palestinian freedom fighter against the Jews, and the pope accepts this. Arafat invites him to come to Bethlehem to remember “our” Jesus Christ. I guess I can’t remember, Tom, what we’ve said, but I’m sure we must have told what the Qur’an says about Jesus - He’s not God, He’s not the Son of God, He’s not divine, He didn’t even die for our sins, someone died in His place so, of course, there is no resurrection. He’s got to come back - there’s another coming of Jesus, but He comes back to get married and live as an ordinary man and die, and so forth. Our Jesus Christ! And the pope kisses the Qur’an, he embraces Arafat, he has received Arafat at least ten times - that is, Pope John Paul II, to his palace at the Vatican - and never a word of complaint, never pointing out anything. They brought a special Qur’an as a gift to the pope from Iraq, actually - some high Muslim leaders - and the pope kisses it, accepts it, and “Isn’t this wonderful?” It is an abomination! It denies what the Bible teaches; it calls for the death of Christians and Jews.

Tom: But, Dave, the pope says that we’re worshipping the same God. So what could be wrong with that?

Dave: Yeah, Tom, again, I will try to refrain from saying I get angry, but it’s very difficult not to. This is Vatican II, of course. Vatican II talks about the God of the Bible and that the Muslims worship the one true God. In fact, it says, “Chief among those, other than Catholics who worship the one true God, are the Muslims.” It doesn’t even mention the Jews. 

Tom, I put a lot of study into this book Judgment Day, and I can tell you it’s staggering. It’s incomprehensible how everything has been twisted, the truth has been turned into a lie, and the lie has been promoted as the truth. And the United Nations, the European Union, the world accepts this lie that the so-called Palestinians come up with, which in itself is a fraud, and Israel is forced to acknowledge this. Well, they don’t acknowledge it, but they’re forced to make so-called peace on the basis of this fraud. You could say, “Well, why does Israel do it?” Because in Judgment Day, the book, we point out Israel is going to be punished as well. The whole world is defying God. This is His land, and the world is going to be punished, but so is Israel, because they have gone along with this. And you could say, “Well, Israel doesn’t really have a choice. Most of their - what? - $15 billion a year they sell to Europe, and Europe could cut them off, bankrupt them, so they are under heavy pressure from the world.” Nevertheless, they should not have gone along with this. They should have said, “We will trust the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Tragically, most of them don’t believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Tom: Right. From the War of Independence to the Yom Kippur War when they should have lost, they should have been overrun, yet God stepped in by His mercy - by His grace protected them. 

Dave, I think of all the chapters in here, the one that reflects so much - I mean, it just breaks your heart; it grieves you so much about turning the truth and twisting the truth. Chapter 5 is titled, “The Truth About Refugees.” What’s on the mind of the world today? Well, it’s the Palestinian refugee problem. But we don’t hear one word about the Jewish refugees. From the Holocaust on to - you know, we talked about the War of Independence - all those who were displaced from Arab lands, close to a million Jews displaced…or was it 800,000 - right around there, right? What about that?

Dave: Well, Tom, we give the statistics, the simple facts. We tell you how many Jews were in each Muslim country, because I don’t think this is Arab against Jew.

Tom: Well, as we pointed out over and over again, they’re not Arab, they’re Persian, Babylonian, Syrian, on and on; they’re not Arabs. 

Dave: So what’s going on the Middle East is a battle between Allah, the false god of the Muslims or the Qur’an, and Yahweh, the true God, the God of the Bible, the God of Israel. We probably keep reminding people 203 times He is called the God of Israel, 9 times the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; never is He called the God of the Arabs or of Ishmael or of the Americans or anyone else, and this is the problem. This is what’s happening. So when Islam came into being and the Muslims began conquering these lands - the Muslims conquered Egypt, they conquered Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia…of course, those countries didn’t exist at that time, but they took over that entire area. Then the Jews were in dire straits. It was Islam that began to persecute the Jews. They were slaughtered, and we give you the documentation, again, in the book. Six thousand Jews in one massacre in Fez, Morocco along with many thousands… And, Tom, the lives that these Jews lived, you couldn’t ride a donkey, much less a horse; you had to pass on the left side of the Muslims; in places they couldn’t wear proper shoes, they couldn’t wear proper clothes, they had to dress in rags, they were just…

Tom: Had to pay tax.

Dave: Oh, wow, they really taxed them heavily, but they had hardly any income because they were so beaten down. They would be pushed around on the street. You wouldn’t dare to defend yourself against a Muslim, because that would be the death penalty. So what the Jews endured for centuries in Muslim countries was far worse than anything Hitler imposed upon the Jews. Well, then as soon as Israel became a nation, declared its independence in 1948, they fled. Of course, in many Muslim countries they were expelled for their own good, or they would have been killed right there. So about 800,000 fled; probably 700,000 ended up in Israel. Now, there were 650,000 Israeli settlers who at that time lived in Israel. They managed to absorb a greater number than they were - 700,000. They somehow found jobs for them, built houses for them, and so forth. 

Now, about 450,000 Arabs fled. Israel begged them to stay, and we document that for you in the book. The placards that were posted on Arab property in those days by the Jews: “This is not ours. We didn’t want them to flee. We asked them to remain. Don’t anyone take this property,” and so forth.

Tom: “It will be here when you return just the way it is.”

Dave: Let me just quote a little bit here if I can, Tom, from the book. “On April 22, 1948 (that’s three weeks after Israel declared itself a nation), Aubrey Lippincot, US Consul-General in Haifa, stated, ‘Local mufti-dominated Arab leaders were urging all Arabs to leave the city, and large numbers did so.’ At about the same time, Haifa’s British police chief A.J. Bridmead, reported: “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab population to remain.” And here a foreign visitor reported: “In Tiberius I saw a placard affixed to a sealed Arab Mosque that read: ‘We did not dispossess them, and the day will come when the Arabs will return to their homes and property in this town. Let no citizen touch their property.’ It was signed by the Jewish Town Council of Tiberius.” 

So, we give you…for example, a New York Lebanese paper reported: “The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Assam Pasha, gave brotherly advice to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.” 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said declared: “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place where the Jews seek shelter. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down,” and so forth. We give you many quotes. 

The New York Times reported that, “The mass evacuation prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city,” and so forth. 

Now, what Israel said - “Look, stay! We can build a new country together.” The Arabs who stayed, they found that the Jews were good to their word. In contrast, no Jew could enter Saudi Arabia. You couldn’t be a citizen in Jordan, for example, or in Egypt, and in fact, you wouldn’t want to even try if you were a Jew. 

But let me just quote what the situation is in Israel: About 25 percent of the citizens - full citizenship rights on the part of the Arabs; about 25 percent of the voting citizens are Arabs in Israel today. Every Knesset, since the founding of the state in 1948, has had Arab and Druze members. All transactions in the Knesset are simultaneously translated into Arabic, and Arab members may address the Knesset in Arabic. Arabic is an official language in Israel, together with Hebrew. Israel’s Arabic press (more than twenty periodicals) is the most vibrant and independent of any country in the region, the whole Middle East. There are daily TV and radio programs in Arabic. Arabic is taught in Jewish secondary schools. There are nearly 1,000 Arab educational institutions in Israel, with about 300 thousand students. Israeli universities and technical institutions are freely available to the Arabs. About 5,000 Arab students attend such schools. Israeli Arabs are free to exercise their faith, to observe their own weekly day of rest and holidays. In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men. Israeli law grants women equal rights to vote, to be elected to public office, it prohibits polygamy, child marriage, and the barbarity of female sexual mutilation, which is practiced under Islam). Arabs are exempted from military duty to spare them conflicts of loyalty and conscience. In a recent poll, 70 percent of Israel’s Arabs declared that they would much prefer to live in Israel than in any other country in the region.” 

But, Tom, the world doesn’t know this, or they don’t want to. The United Nations doesn’t publicize this. You never point out the difference, never point out the freedoms that Arabs have in Israel. In contrast to the horror with which Jews would be treated - you can’t even enter Saudi Arabia, for example. Let a Jew try to get along in Syria today. There’s very few left, and they would all like to get out, but they’re not even allowed to leave now. They can’t remain in honor, they can’t leave…Tom, why doesn’t the world recognize the difference? Why don’t they give Israel credit for being the only democracy in the Middle East and the way they treat people? Shall I dare say it once more? It’s maddening! I get angry. It’s frustrating. That’s one of the reasons why I wrote this book. Let’s tell people the truth, and maybe they will pass it on and maybe it will have an effect in our world, hopefully.