Dr. Sari Nuseibeh

Islam’s Jerusalem

One often hears the statement that al-Quds, Jerusalem, is the third holiest site for Islam. The reference is in particular to al-Aqsa and al–Haram al– Sharif in contrast to the Ka’ba and Medina mosques. The prophet is said to have said “The ultimate pilgrimage can only be to three mosques: the Ka’ba, my mosque in Medina, and al–Aqsa.” In some versions, the hadith places the Medina mosque at the beginning of the sentence.

However, is al– Haram al – Sharif truly the third holiest site for Islam, and in what sense is this so? If we simply depend on the hadith for this interpretation, it can be argued that the lineuistic sequence dose not by itself warrant such a prioritisation. The statement could have straightforwardly made such a prioritisation, but it dose not. As it stands, one could as easily and even more readily understand by it that these three mosques are equally important. Indeed, the indifference with which the tow versions of the hadith with regard to the sequence are reported detracts from the argument that the sequence has a special significance.

Yet, current Muslim understanding dose indeed place al–Quds as the third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina. The explanation for this is, of course, the hajj, or pilgrimage, and the qiblah, the direction of prayer. The Muslims’ pilgrimage, is to Mecca and the direction of prayer is also therefore towards Mecca. Historically, the origins of the Islamic faith are rooted in the environs of Mecca and Medina. Indeed, as far as we know, the prophet did not move much beyond that geographic area. All of these factors seem to strengthen the conviction that the Mecca/Medina axis is indeed more significant

Religiously than al–Quds. Nevertheless, the acclaimed fact is that the prophet turned towards al–Quds for prayer for the first sixteen months of his calling; that for some time during the Ummayyad period it was the Dome of The Rock (or the rock of God, as it is sometimes called in the literature) to which Muslims made their pilgrimage; or, finally, that for many Muslims, pilgrimage to Mecca is not felt to be complete without a visit to al–Quds.

Paradoxically, however, these latter facts only seem to blur the issue rather than explain it. If pressed, a Muslim asked why turn to Jerusalem at all, might answer that it all has to do with al–isra’ and al–mi’raj, in which the prophet miraculously journeyed from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from there, from the rock of God itself, was received unto the heavens. It was during this journey, furthermore, that Muhammad received the specifically Muslim traditions and rites of worship, met and led the other prophets in prayer, and was graced with the divine vision.

I say these facts only seem to blur the issue because it dose not yet address the question: why al–Quds in the first place? Why did Muhammad initially have to turn to Jerusalem in prayer? And why was it necessary for him to ascend to heaven from the divine rock in Jerusalem rather than from Mecca or from Mount Arafat? Why, in other words, dose divine contact through ascension need to be located elsewhere than where divine contact through revelation takes place? Furthermore, how is it that direct divine vision, as well as communion with the rest of the prophets, takes place in al–Quds rather than Mecca; whereas God’s contact with his prophet in Mecca is only through an intermediary, the angel Gabriel?

These are, I believe, a set of quite challenging and bewildering questions to a Muslim, ostensibly at least. How can Mecca be more symbolically significant, or be more holy, given these facts? For it would seem, by pure unbiased logic, that of the two locations, it is really al–Quds that is the official gateway to the divine. The envents seem to suggest that God can reach man anywhere on earth, but man’s route to God must be through Jerusalem. At this juncture, it may be retorted that religious symbolism notwithstanding, Muslim practice is simply such that Jerusalem is deemed less holy (or third holiest). After all, the prophet did quite categorically call upon Muslims to turn towards Mecca for prayer, thus relegating Jerusalem to a secondary station in his religion. Furthermore, we must not forget that another important event mentioned by the holy Qur’an, namely, that the Ka’ba in Mecca was built by the first true Muslim in history, Abraham himself, father of Ishmael and Isaac.

Let us pause here for a moment. The symbolic significance of the Ka’ba, on this account, is predicated on two essential articles of faith that Abraham himself was the first to build the Ka’ba, and that Abraham was truly a Muslim, rather than anything else. The first of these two articles of faith seems to address itself to the then lingering pagan habit of paying homage to the Ka’ba. These pre-Islamic pagan pilgrimages, important both as a socio-religious tradition as well as a trade or business practice, obviously needed a monotheistic interpretation if they were to continue. The recourse in this context to Abraham, as the father of the monotheistic faith, would thus seem to be wholly logical, regardless of the facts of the case. But as for the second article of faith, that Abraham was truly a Muslim-indeed that he was the first Muslim – there is clearly something in this assertion that, together with the first assertion, takes us back to Jerusalem, and posits before us Islam’s view of Judaism, and of itself.

There is something of a mystery about Abraham, especially with regard to his sons Ishmael and Isaac. According to the Bible, Abraham’s monotheistic descendant and inheritor is Isaac and through him, eventually, the twelve tribes. Ishmael on the other hand, son of an Egyptian concubine, is something of a black sheep.

Indeed, he will multiply and become a great nation, but in spite of being oldest, he is clearly not the genetic favorite, and it is not through his seed that monotheism will survive. And now the mystery: while on the one hand Islam reveres all the Jewish prophets descended from Isaac and places them on a par with one another, nonetheless it is Ishmael whom Muslim exegesists tend to claim to have been the object of his father’s attempted sacrifice, and thus the medium therefore through which Abraham receives God’s grace. The act of the attempted sacrifice is pivotal in Islamic thinking, since it epitomises the total surrender of man to God, the pure expression of the essence of Islam. It might seem strange, therefore, and perhaps especially significant, that there is but one reference to it in the Qur’an, a reference which, while contextually implying that Ishamael was the intended son in the sacrificial attempt, leaves the door open for suspecting that it might have been Isaac after all. The ambiguity, perhaps purposely, allows us to go beyond the question of the son’s identity to something far more essential in the story- indeed, to something which is the essence of the story-namely, the essence of Islam as the submission of both father and son to the will of God. In this beautiful Qur’anic verse, both father and son surrender their will (a derivative of “Islam” is used) to that of God, and thus receive God’s grace.

On the other hand, the contextual weighting on Ishmael rather than on Isaac does not seem to have a symbolic significance, especially given the avowed reverence of Isaac and his descendant prophets- unless, that is, we are to assume that Ishmael is posited as the genetic ancestor of the Arabs living at that time in the Mecca environs (because he is clearly not a genetic ancestor of the Arab peoples as a whole). In such a case, the significance may have to do with a movement of monotheistic revivalism which at that time, and given the way Judaism had evolved and was being practised in those days, could not have taken place except outside the “genetically” closed Jewish circle. Against this background, the significance would as much as amount to the positing of a human link to be compounded to the spiritual link being posited between the Abrahamic and Muhammadan messages, and between “genetically closed” set and the wider human race. At all events, Islam’s claim on Abraham is left in no doubt.

But given Abraham’s pivotal role and the religious significance of the attempted sacrifice, what does Islam have to say about the site of this attempt, and about God’s intervention? Does Islam, in other words, view the holy rock of Jerusalem as being that site?

In attempting to answer this question one finds oneself answering questions not only having to do with site or location but more importantly with the foundations themselves of the Islamic religion. To return to the questions we earlier described as bewildering and challenging, we can now posit our main question in this context in the following way: Is Muhammad transferred to the holy rock, and from thence to the heavens, in acknowledgment of the prior holiness of this rock endowed upon it by the sacrificial act and the divine intervention, or does Islam endow the rock with holiness as a consequence of the nocturnal miracle? Which comes first?. If one goes by later Islamic interpretations, and modern-day beliefs, one is led to the conclusion that it must be the nocturnal journey, or some undetermined prior even, which endowed the rock with holiness, simply because Abraham’s sacrificial attempt most likely occurred in the Mecca environs. But if one goes by earlier Islamic interpretations and trends, including the primacy of Jerusalem as the qiblah site, one is led to the belief that Muhammad looked upon Jerusalem, as upon Abraham, and upon the monotheism espoused by the early Jewish prophets, as constituting the physical and spiritual source of his faith. Indeed, the holy Qur’an is categorical in the way it emphasizes Islam’s continuity with early Judaism–not as a particularly practised Judaism, but as the monotheistic message first espoused by Abramham

Let us in this connection pause for a moment before the surah of the Isra’, so–called in reference to the nocturnal journey, and the miracle of Muhammad’s ascension. The surah, as we know, begins with the well-known direct reference to that event. However, rather than continuing, as one might rationally expect, with a more elaborate explication of the spiritual significance of the miracle, the Qur’an immediately invokes a reference to the Israelites, beginning specifically with Moses, who was a recipient of “God’s Book”.

One cannot help in this context noting the direct connection between the journey and the Israelite presence–and their predicament–in Jerusalem. Even were this only a sequential connection, nonetheless it consolidated the general impression conveyed by the Qur’an that the religious roots of the Muhammadan message emanate from the Jewish prophets, and that the journey is in a sense a confirmation of this religious heritage. Rather astoundingly, in laying out the Israelite predicament (whether, once supported by God’s grace, they will conduct themselves well) the Qur’an states that, in the second of two forewarned assaults of the city, the invaders will enter the masjid as they had done before, and will demolish that construction.

The use of the term masjid in this context, normally preserved for Muslim rather than Jewish houses of worship, re-invokes the use of that same term in the first ayah of this same surah, where the prophet Muhammad is stated to have been conveyed from al-masjid al-Haram in Mecca, to al-Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, a journey which takes place before the present al-Aqsa was built. So naturally the question presents itself: was the Jewish house of worship (temple) in Jerusalem conceived as the first Muslim masjid in the city? Does the significance of the isra’’ to Jerusalem emanate from this perception? And was the Haram in Jerusalem built, allegedly on the same spot as the temple (notwithstanding present–day political sensitivities associated with the subject), in affirmation of Islam’s legitimate inheritance of the Abrahamic message and heritage?

Let me now move on to the Galiph “ Umar and his entry into Jerusalem in the year 15AH. Early traditions relate that, upon arrival in Jerusalem, “ Umar called for a Jewish rabbi to help him locate the place of the rock, presumably since he was well aware that this was also an area in which the Jewish temple was located. We are also told that, having determined its location and cleaned it, he performed a prayer. Indeed, ‘Umar did not seem to feel the kind of compunction or hesitation about praying in an area he presumably knew or believed to be the site of a Jewish temple the way he did in the Holy Sepulchre, where he was hosted by Bishop Sephronious. Quite the contrary, ‘Umar prayed and gave instructions to build a mosque. Later on, the Dome of the Rock was built as a self-contained prayer site, that is architecturally as a focus of prayer rather than as a mosque facing Ka’ba as the qiblah.

What happened after those events is history: the Ummayyads at one stage were said to have been driven by a politically competitive impulse against the Abbasids when they instituted the Dome of the Rock as a site of pilgrimage. But even if and when they did so, however, to us the same question poses itself as before, namely, what was it about the Diving Rock that lent itself in the first place to be a qiblah?

In due course, Muslim sights slowly turned towards Mecca, and, perhaps more significantly, they also turned away from the Jewish as well as the Christian spiritual heritage. Nowadays, as one scans the monotheistic faiths, one comes across three different and distinct monotheistic religions, Islam being one of them. Even modern-day Muslims tend to perceive matters in this way–that theirs is one of three religions, the last, and therefore the one whose rulings supersede those of the previous two. In Muhammad’s eyes, as revealed upon him, there really was never such a distinction: the monotheistic message is one, not three; the prophets are of one Good; religion is one. This religion is Islam from the beginning, not from Muhammad's time, and Muhammad’s role was simply conceived as a revivalist and a correctionist continuation of the same tradition.

If my reading of Muhammad is valid, then it becomes simple for me to understand why the nocturnal journey took place through the divine rock, why this was the qiblah for the first sixteen months of Muhammad’s message, and why “ Umar ordered the building of a mosque on the site of the ruined temple. The mosque, on this reading, was itself a revivication of the old Jewish temple, an instantiation of the unity with the Abrahamic message, an embodiment of the new temple yearned for and forecasted. And why should this seem strange when Muhammad himself, according to the Qura’n, was the very prophet expected and described in the “true” Jewish literature? I realize, of course, the political sensitivity of my remarks, especially in a context in which Muslims feel threatened by Jewish zealotry, and where such zealotry and exclusivity posits the Dome of the Rock Moseque as a “usurper” of a Jewish holy site, rather than as a legitimate celebration of that site.

Be that as it may, the centrality of Jerusalem to Islam cannot be underestimated or denied by any account. True, if one looks at Islam as one of three separate religions, and at Muhammad as Islam’s only prophet, one is bound to see or understand there to be far more sentimental attachment by Jews of Christians to Jerusalem If David’s Temple is associated only with Jews as a separate faith, and if the Holy Sepulchre or the Via Dolorosa only with Christians, and if, in general, a Muslim does not truly identify with all these events and prophets as the Qur’an commands, then one is bound as a Muslim to see one’s history in Jerusalem as starting only with the nocturnal journey. The history of Islam’s Jerusalem, in other words, would only begin with that journey. But if one had the universal vision of Islam, as Islam truly presents itself, then one’s sense of Islam’s Jerusalem would by far precede the event of the nocturnal journey, and the year 15 AH.

Before I close my remarks, I wish to turn to a political perspective. The holiness or sanctity of a city in Islam decreases rather than enhances that city’s political status or role. We have in Mecca and Riyadh a present-day example. I have always felt that the tradition of ‘Umar’s entry into Jerusalem also enhances this perspective: taking turns with his manservant one the camel as they made their long journey towards Jerusalem, we are taught of man’s humility before God and his city. Before God, we are taught by this story, all men are equal and even the highest religious or political office does not entitle one man to be privileged before God over another. And as the entry into Jerusalem is made, we are not told of a heroic story of battles fought and prizes won. Rather, ‘Umar enters the city peacefully, and on foot, as if to tell us that the city of God cannot be conquered by human force or military might. And as we go with Umar towards the Sepulchre but then out again to pray, we are taught that Islam tolerates the religion’s different rites and does not presume to impinge itself on them by demanding their replacement or cessation. And as we go with him to the Rock and we see him cleaning it with his own hands and robe, we learn from him that it is an honour and a privilege for any man to serve this holy site. To serve the city but by no means to ever dare pose oneself as its master. This, I believe, was ‘Umar’s message concerning a city of which the prophet said, “The rocks of Jerusalem are what the heavens are made out of.”

It is thus that Jerusalem, even under the Ummayyads, was never proclaimed the capital of the Muslim nation. For the capital of an earthy nation is an earthly capital, and one, which man can conquer and rule. But a divine capital is above men, and one whose holiness rules. So it is that throughout its history in Islam, the giant Muslim figures associated with the city would simply act as liberators, if they were military rulers, like Saladdin; or as supplicators on major spiritual quests, like Al-Ghazzali or Ibn Arabi. In this later period, unfortunately, we all seem to be blinded by politics as well as blind to our true religion. We all lay claim to the city as political parties and nations, and we make religions serve our respective political ends. And the more we see ourselves as belonging to different religions- the more monotheism is a tritheism–the harder the chances for reconciliation, and the more Jerusalem will be a potential source of diffusion and destruction. The more we lay possession of it, the more we will suffocate its significance. It will be a source of unity, on the other hand, and will shine as the true jewel it is, if it made us aware of the unity of our faith. If the unity of our faith is properly perceived as I have described, then our respective claims on Jerusalem as our political capitals can be regarded as a celebration of this unity, rather than as a point of selfish contention between two ethno–centric tribes.

Jerusalem, September 1995