HOW DEEP THE BLOOD? Part One: A Religious and Historical Perspective

I gave fair warning that I might write about religion and/or global politics. I write now in the wake of the Paris massacre of November 13, 2015. The following Part One examines the religious and historical background of the foundational circumstances whereby moslems wage holy war against the West. I fear that the carnage of Paris will soon visit the USA.

The image above of the Western Wall adjacent to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and Islam’s Dome of the Rock (a/k/a Noble Sanctuary) bears witness to a major aspect of world conflict that defies any peaceful resolution. The saga begins with Abraham and his sons Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham’s wife Sarah bore Isaac while Sarah’s Egyptian servant Hagar bore Ishmael. Through his son Jacob (a/k/a Israel) Isaac was grandfather to the twelve brothers who fathered the twelve tribes of the jews. It had been promised that Ishmael would also father a great nation, and adherents of Islam trace their genetic and/or religious lineage to Ishmael.

Despite having Abraham as their common patriarch, jews and moslems have a history of insoluble conflict including but transcending religious ideology. If you ask a jew who was the “only son” that Abraham nearly killed for a sacrifice, he will say “Isaac.” Put the same question to a moslem and he will say “Ishmael.”

It was King David who angered God by (of all things) conducting a census without prior divine permission. An avenging angel sent by God began killing the jews of Jerusalem by the thousands until a penitent David implored God to end the carnage. God heard, relented, and stayed the angel’s hand on a hill called Moriah. David promised God that he would build a temple there. David acquired the land and began the foundation work before his death. David’s son Solomon completed the First Temple on what became known as the Temple Mount. Long after the First Temple was laid waste a Second Temple was built on the same sacred site. It was the Second Temple from which Jesus chased the money-changers. Circa 70 A.D. the Roman occupiers destroyed the Second Temple. A jew will tell you that to this day God has no temple on earth and will have no temple until it is built on the Temple Mount.

The problem with building God’s Temple on the Temple Mount is that the location is the third most revered site in Islam. The real estate that the jewish world desires more than anything else will never be ceded by the moslem world, at least not without unthinkable bloodshed. Complicating this jewish/moslem impasse is the circumstance that many Christians hold that prophecy of the end times cannot be fulfilled without both a jewish state (which there is) and a Third Temple (which there is not). Most of those same Christians acknowledge a religious imperative to support Israel against its abundant enemies.

The claim of the moslem world to the Temple Mount is best explained in historical context. The “Roman Exile” of circa 70 A.D. involved the removal of many jews from the ravaged city of Jerusalem. Following another suppressed revolt by jews against their (pagan) Roman occupiers, in 135 A.D. there came a ban of jews from all of Judea. The resulting diaspora found many jews spread throughout the Roman Empire outside of Judea. As we know, many jews migrated to Europe and prospered despite persecution and the occasional “pogrom.” For an example of Christian Europe’s unease with jews, consider Shakespeare’s depiction of Iago from Othello.

Meanwhile, Mohammed was born in 570 A.D. and founded Islam around the age of forty in the early 7^th Century. He regarded the faith as nothing new but rather a restoration of the religion of Abraham and of his ancestors all the way back to Adam. Ere long the Ottoman Turks from the East and Moors from the West were invading Europe, while Christendom sent Crusaders to free the Holy Land from moslem rule.

In the latter 19^th Century Zionism spread among European jews who longed for their lost homeland and resented continuing persecution in Europe. A seminal moment arrived in 1917 with the British government’s Balfour Declaration supporting establishment of a jewish homeland in Palestine. Then came Hitler’s holocaust and World War II followed in 1947 by the United Nations’ Palestine Partition Plan for a jewish homeland in parts of modern Israel, but not including Jerusalem. Migration, revolts and wars ensued to establish the State of Israel and its current contested borders. A portion of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount) remains with the Palestinians, who were understandably grieved by their displacement from most of their historic homeland.

Mohammed died in 632 A.D. Moslems believe that he ascended to heaven from the rock on Mount Moriah (a/k/a the Temple Mount). It is also held by moslems and some Christians and jews that the rock is the site of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son. Palestinians now hold the area. Will they surrender it so that a (jewish) Third Temple can rise? Will the jews abandon their religious imperative to build a Third Temple where the First and Second Temples stood?

Even if a “two-state solution” or some such device of diplomacy purchases a few years of relative peace, competing claims to the Temple Mount will persist and continue to defy any bloodless resolution.