Muslims only care about Jerusalem because the Jews have it

Here is one of Daniel Pipes’s useful columns, where he points out something you haven’t thought of before, and does it in an easily digestible, bite-sized package. Jewish Zionism—the devotion to Jerusalem as the holy city—has been a steady flame over the centuries. By contrast, the Muslim devotion to Jerusalem has been instrumental, waxing when it served Islamic power interests, waning and forgotten when it didn’t. Pipes traces this pattern over the past 1,400 years. Most telling is the fact that when Jerusalem came under Jordanian conrol following the 1948 war, the Jordanian Muslims (like the Ottoman Muslims before them) allowed Jerusalem to fall into decay, not making any particular deal about it. But as soon as the Israelis gained control over the whole city in the 1967 war, Jerusalem began to be constantly referred to as the third holiest city in Islam.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 07, 2006 11:48 AM | Send