Occasionally, it seems that the fierce dispute between the schools of Islam on the question of whether it is permissible to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque overshadows the corresponding heated debate between Jewish arbitrators on the question of whether it is permissible to go up to the Temple Mount, where Solomon’s Temple’s ruins lie.
Recently, the Al-Jazeera network presented a survey according to which 63 percent of respondents oppose visits to Al-Aqsa, and only 37 percent support them. In the studio after representing the data, a debate broke out on where the majority of the Muslim scholars stand.
The opposers of the Al-Aqsa visits claim that Muhammad's journey and ascension to heaven from Al-Aqsa, which is assumed to be in Jerusalem regardless of the fact that Israel's capital was never mentioned in the Quaran and at the time, it was a Byzantine stronghold, were supernatural events from which nothing can be deduced about the current political reality on the Temple Mount.
Why does nobody know that real #AlAqsa mosque is in #SaudiArabia? Identification of Quranic Al Aqsa Mosque with mosque on #TempleMount has been the centerpiece of claim that #Jerusalem is holy to #Muslims. pic.twitter.com/QblhNbrF71
— Eli Dror (@edrormba) April 7, 2023
A Palestinian Islamic judge by the name of Hassam Al-Din Afana claimed that if one focuses on the Hadith, the Islamic oral traditions, one discovers that there is no religious obligation to visit Al-Aqsa and that it is only a desirable act, which under the current circumstances may have to be banned. Many in the Muslim world are angry with images of Palestinian youth playing soccer in the Mosque, blockading themselves and innocent worshippers while they use the facility as a staging ground to launch fireworks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces.
Palestinians shoot fireworks inside Al Aqsa every single year, as well as throw Molotov cocktails from within the mosque or outside the mosque and over the Western Wall at Jews, and use the mosque to store machine guns. Then Israel gets blamed for arresting the perpetrators https://t.co/wVKPZTapBR pic.twitter.com/eZpTkMt53H
— Max✡️𓂆🤍⚣🍁 (@lilbuddymax) April 5, 2023
Just like among Jews who deny going to the Temple Mount due to its holiness, Muslims who oppose visiting Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem are also heard calling to obey the "great judges" who forbid it. Islamic arbiter Hatim Al-Awni from the Saudi Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca claimed that the visits to Jerusalem create "a rift in the Islamic nation." According to him, the visit to Jerusalem is allowed in principle, but based on profit and loss calculations at this time, one must align with the opinion of the majority of the arbitrators, which excludes it.
Another local voice of the Jerusalem journalist Muhammad Tzadek also claims that the visit of non-Palestinian-local Muslims to Al-Aqsa would eventually lead Israel to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Abd al-Bari Attoan, a native of Deir Al-Balah in Gaza who now lives in England, claimed in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arab newspaper that "the Israelis would not have approved these visits if they thought that this would lead to opposition to their plans to Judaize the city, destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild on the ruins of Solomon's Temple. The Israeli officers are not that stupid."
Dr. Anis Mustafa Al-Qassem, a former member of the Palestinian People's Council, claimed that in order to bring visitors to Al-Aqsa Mosque in the early days of Islam, the Muslims had to conquer it first from the Byzantines, making a point that as long as the city is under Jewish rule, there is no reason to visit the mosque.
