March 6, 2024
Dispelling the myths regarding Ramadan
‘Sacred’ myths of Palestine from Al-Buraq to Ramadan
Yisrael Medad, Jerusalem Post, March 6, 2024
Jerusalem, declared Sir Mark Sykes, is “inflammable ground” the New York Times reported on December 12, 1917. Sykes, of the Cairo Arab Bureau fame, had spoken in Manchester three days earlier at a Zionist assembly called to thank Britain’s government for the Balfour Declaration. Sykes noted the city “throbbed with history” and “a careless word or gesture might set half a continent aflame”.
Sykes further explained that Jerusalem called for more than “diplomacy, tact, virtue or the delicacy of the drawing-room politician”, even more than “toleration”. What was required was “sympathy, understanding and sacrifice”. For whom was that “sympathy”? It was “to the Moslem for whom the Mosque of Omar is the most sacred spot on earth”.
This might be the first time that the warning that the Temple Mount possesses a most incendiary potential was sounded. It also contained, incidentally, all the misrepresentation – historically and religiously – the matter has come to assume in today’s politics, providing the Arabs, gratis, with all the combustible material they need. No match need be lighted; just a hint of the threat is enough. Sykes had fashioned a political myth.
Chaim Weizmann, present at that Manchester rally, was to learn very quickly what Sykes meant. In April 1918, he needed to visit the Sultan of Egypt to dispel rumours that the Zionists had received British permission to destroy the Mosque of Omar and rebuild the Temple. In 1922, High Commissioner Herbert Samuel had to deny rumours that Moslem possession of the Haram A-Sharif was threatened. But the myth had been implanted and became quite a potent tool.
During 1922-1924, the Mufti Amin Al-Husseini dispatched a delegation to tour Moslem countries that churned out those rumours from Saudi Arabia to India and beyond. He nurtured the myth and politicized it.
Ever since non-Moslems were prohibited from entering the sacred compound following the signing of the 1229 Treaty of Jaffa until the mid-19th century, the exclusiveness of the site was accepted by all. That treaty assured that the Temple Mount area would remain under the control of the Moslem religious authorities. It created another myth, one at the foundation of today’s “status quo”. That myth-cum-policy subjected Jews to a discriminatory denial of their national and religious rights.
During the early Mandate period, the Supreme Moslem Council enlarged the myth and worked to delegitimize not only rights of Jews to the Western Wall but at the Wall also. Following the mechitza removal incident of 1928, Al-Husseini began his “Defend Al-Buraq” campaign claiming Jews wanted to take over the Haram compound.
Buraq was the name of a mythical flying creature that had transported the Prophet Muhammed to Jerusalem and that was tied near the Wall. This myth supplied an Islamic sanctity to the Western Wall courtyard which the Mufti managed to convince the British was superior to the Jewish claim to pray at the Wall.
No matter how much official Jewish institutions denied the assertion, it was to no avail. Following the murderous August 1929 riots that the Mufti instigated, the decision of the International Commission appointed by the British was that the sole ownership of the Western Wall belongs to the Moslems as well as the pavement in front of it. It’s all Waqf property even if outside the Haram.
The pattern had been thus set. First, establish an unassailable right or presumed privilege, one that dare not be challenged or considered inauthentic. Secondly, assert that any Jewish competing claim is invalid. Thirdly, in a menacing fashion, contend that the Jews are actively involved in acting to undermine and harm Moslem interests. Fourth, express aggression, in words and deeds, in an assumed righteous anger, while blaming the Jews and browbeating any supporting opposition. That’s how their myths are constructed.
In post-1967 Israel, that policy was applied with great success, first by Yasser Arafat on behalf of the “Palestinian people” and then by Northern Islamic head Sheikh Raed Salah and others, with assistance from Arab MKs and their Jewish extreme left colleagues.
A history of a Jewish Jerusalem was denied. Entrance of Jews even in a most restricted manner to the Haram precincts was termed “storming’. And the Ramadan month became sacrosanct in a most scurrilous way.
Riots at the Temple Mount became regular which led to terror attacks. The Haram compound became a site of rallies and chanting of nationalist slogans while flags and pennants of various terror groups were unfurled. A march of Jews was exploited to fire rockets from Gaza at the city. And all the while, Israel’s security services adopted a cowering position of blaming and punishing Jews for Arab aggression. Their slogan was ‘the situation is explosive’.
According to Muslim tradition, as the MEMRI site explains, during Ramadan Allah grants the Muslims glorious victories. The great battles of Islam, from Badr in 624, the conquest of Mecca in 630 to the October 6, 1973 “War of Ramadan” fought by Egypt against Israel, all occurred during Ramadan. Ramadan in Israel has been marked in recent years by many terrorist attacks.
Prominent Islamic religious leaders, in their sermons, stress that Ramadan is the month of jihad, conquest, and victory in Islam. This outlook is also found in books for school pupils. The result of this is a Jewish media clamoring for Jewish surrender to Moslem sensibilities.
Is there another approach?
One recent example occurred in Saudi Arabia. There, after a woman raised a flag of Palestine at the Ka’aba in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, one of the imams of the Grand Mosque, stressed that the holy site is a place of worship where only religious slogans and chants should be heard. I would suggest that neither is the Temple Mount the place to unfurl Hamas banners.
Whatever action is proposed to counter Islamic violence, let us dispel another myth. Ramadan violence is not the fault of the Jews.
^
MEDAD'S WORDS 