By Adnan OktarIt is a known fact that devout Jews are prohibited from praying and have to pretend to be talking on the phone while saying their prayers on the Temple Mount. Many times I heard the problems inflicted on devout Jews who wished to pray on the Temple Mount, which was described by Rabbi Yehuda Glick.Rabbi Glick, who was a guest of honor at the iftar meals we hosted in Istanbul in recent years, described these matters in detail both in our private meetings and on broadcasts on A9 TV. It is a flagrant violation of human rights to try to prevent someone from praying in a place they consider “sacred.”Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of belief, opinion and religion and that this freedom includes the right to pray, whether alone or with others. It is as natural for a Jew to pray and worship at the Temple Mount as it is for a Muslim to pray at the Kaaba.Freedom of belief and worship is also one of the highest standards in Israeli law. For example, the 1948 Declaration of Independence states that freedom of belief is guaranteed in the State of Israel, and that religious speech and behavior are included within that freedom. In fact, Article 171 of the Israeli Penal Code refers to obstructing people gathering to pray as a crime.The claim that “Muslims are offended by non-Muslims worshiping on the Temple Mount,” the supposed justification for restricting the right of Jews to pray there, has no Quranic basis. Because the verses of the Quran do not say anything about being offended by the worship of the Jews. On the contrary, many verses of the Quran contain expressions praising the acts of worship of the People of the Book (Jews and Christians).They are not all the same. Among the people of the Writing Instruments There is an honest community: during the night, they recite the verses of Allah and prostrate themselves, they believe in Allah and the Last Day, they enjoin what is right, they forbid what is wrong, and they compete in good deeds. These are the righteous. (Quran, 3: 113-114).Furthermore, the Holy Land is a place where Jews, Muslims and Christians should live together in peace, worshiping freely as brothers. The Quran explicitly states that Jews have the right to live in the Holy Land. This is made explicit in verses 5:20, 17:104, 10:93 and 2:58. Therefore, for a Muslim, seeing the Jews in those lands and watching them worship is a source of joy.Furthermore, it is not only Muslims who deny Jews the right to pray on the Temple Mount, but also the Israeli people and official bodies. There are three main reasons for this reluctance:There are strict laws to follow when visiting certain sections of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. However, it is not possible to meet all of them under today’s conditions. On the other hand, there is a special section where the high priests used to communicate with God in the First and Second Temples. Only priests of the time were allowed in this section, which is completely closed to visitors. Furthermore, it is not even known for sure where this section is; The rabbis disagree among themselves on this matter. More liberal rabbis such as Yehuda Glick maintain that it is possible to know which areas of the Temple Mount are permitted and that therefore Jews should not be prohibited from praying on the Mount. Rabbi Glick says there are at least 300 rabbis who think alike.However, Jewish law prohibits Jews from entering there until the third temple is built. Just hours after Israel took control of the Temple Mount in 1967, Chief Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman and Yitzhak Nissim declared a religious ban on Jewish entry. The Chief Rabbinate Council ratified this. It was again confirmed by another statement published in 2005.The second reason is that the legal status of the Temple Mount prohibits non-Muslims from entering. The formula signed by the Ottoman Sultan Osman III in 1757 establishing how the holy places in Jerusalem were to be shared between religions is still recognized today by the State of Israel. This model, known as the “Ottoman status quo,” was maintained as it was by the Treaty of Paris of 1856, the Treaty of Berlin of 1878, the British Mandate of 1923-1948, the Jordanian Administration of 1948-1967, and the State. From Israel. It was confirmed once again under the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994. Therefore, international agreements to which Israel is a signatory and its 250-year-old legal status prevent Jews from praying there.The third reason is the security concerns of the State of Israel. It is true that some Muslims react very strongly against Jews praying on the Temple Mount. For these reasons, Prime Minister Netanyahu has emphasized many times that he will not change the traditional state and the Israeli Supreme Court has also rejected all requests to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount on the grounds of “public order.”It is necessary to make it clear that the protests of some Muslims against the Jews that take place there are not compatible with the spirit of peace of the Koran and Islam. The belief framework of some Muslims influenced by fanatical ideas causes such non-Quranic protests to occur. The only solution to this problem is education through the Quran.The way out of this impasse is love and reconciliation and the construction of the Third Temple on empty land on the Temple Mount without damaging the existing Islamic sites there. As I have said many times, Solomon’s Temple can be rebuilt, exactly as described in the Torah, on empty land at the northern end of the Temple Mount. We can open this glorious place of worship with the participation of high-level members of the three Abrahamic religions to the sound of bells, trumpets and the call to prayer, and thus we can make Jerusalem a “City of Peace” in line with the meaning Hebrew of the name.Both human rights and Islam require that Jews be able to pray freely on the Temple Mount in a place of worship to be built on suitable land there. The establishment of peace and love between Muslims and the People of the Book will be the main means by which this can be achieved.The writer is a Turkish Muslim, television commentator, who wrote more than 300 books on politics, religion and science that have been translated into 73 languages.Post navigation
