From Mecca to Jerusalem

In the beginning, there was the Prophet Muhammad's night journey in the sky and ascent into the heavens, and some say it was nothing more than a dream. But the dispute that is now rocking the Muslim world is not about whether that famous night journey occurred or was dreamt. The current debate, which is intertwined with political, religious, and nationalist motivations, has to do with the question of where Al-Aqsa ("the farthest") Mosque, from whence – according to Muslim tradition – Muhammad set off on his way into the heavens, is located.

Widespread Muslim belief backed by religious literature says that the angel Gabriel was revealed to Muhammad in Mecca, riding a winged beast named al-Buraq. Muhammad took the angel up on his invitation to ride it into the sky, but made an important stop at Al-Aqsa. Only after that did they rise into the sky together, where Muhammad received the commandment to pray that requires Muslims to worship five times a day and the direction of prayer – toward Mecca.

Now, some 1,400 years after the Muslim belief that the Quranic Al-Aqsa sits on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem took root, an old debate from the early days of Islam has resurfaced: Where is Al-Aqsa? Is it in Jerusalem, as the vast majority of Muslims believe it to be? Or, as Saudi researcher Osama Yamani claims in the Saudi establishment paper Okaz, near Mecca on the Arabia Peninsula?

According to Yamani, the mosque Muhammad visited is actually located in Al-Ju'ranah in Saudi Arabia's Makkah Province.

Since his article was published, Arab social media has been aflutter. Yamani is accused of spreading "perverse nonsense that contradicts the Quran and Sunni Islam." A few claimed he is "sick" or "insane." Some, like the Turkish television station TRT, claim that his remarks were designed to serve the Zionist agenda and attempts by Jewish Middle East scholars to deny that Al-Aqsa is located in Jerusalem and Muhammad's miraculous night flight. Others say the article was published for political reasons – an attempts to pave the way for Saudi normalization with Israel.

The article infuriated several officials in the Palestinian Authority. Mohammad Habash, the PA's highest-ranking Sharia judge, thinks the article was designed to serve "enemies of the nation." Dr. Ali Abu Al-Awar, a Palestinian who wrote his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard, calls Osama Yamani a "highwayman."

'The Umayyads invented a story'

Yamani, it should be noted, is not the first to question the identification of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem as the Quranic Al-Aqsa. The Egyptian intellectual Dr. Youssef Ziedan did so in 2015, as did Jordanian researcher Dr. Suleiman al-Tarawneh in 2017, and one Israeli researcher, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, who has been expounding the theory for 12 years. They all refer to ancient historians like Al-Waqidi (at the end of the eighth century CE) or Al-Azraqi (ninth century CE), both of whom wrote similar arguments over 1,000 years ago.

Kedar sums up this dissenting version: "Fifty years after the death of Muhammad in 682 CE, Abd Allah Ibn al-Zubayr, who was the bully of Mecca, revolted against the Umayyad Dynasty that ruled in Damascus. He closed the roads and prevented Damascus residents from making the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Having no other choice, the Umayyads chose Jerusalem as an alternative Haj destination, which is one of the five fundamental commandments of Islam. To entrench their choice of Jerusalem, they invented the story that the Al-Aqsa Mosque mentioned in the Quran wasn't in Ju'ranah, but in Jerusalem. They linked the story to the Quran myth about Muhammad's night flight to Al-Aqsa Mosque by inventing a number of hadiths that are essentially rewritten history."

According to Kedar, this led to the Sunni Muslim belief that Jerusalem is the third-holiest city in Islam.

"I didn't invent these arguments," Kedar says. "They were made 1,000 years ago by the great Ibn Taymiyyah and Al-Waqidi, who cannot be suspected of Judaism or Zionism. They looked for the truth and they knew about the industry of falsified hadiths that operated in the seventh and eighth centuries."

Unlike Kedar, Middle East scholar Professor Yitzhak Reiter, author of From Jerusalem, to Mecca and Back – The Islamic Consolidation of Jerusalem, and a former advisor to three prime ministers – Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Shimon Peres – is by no means "right-wing," but in terms of history, Reiter agrees with Kedar.

Reiter thinks that the debate around the question of where Al-Aqsa Mosque is located erupted now because of the normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and the improved ties between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

"This is a transparent attempt to reduce the weight of the Palestinian issue in relations between the Arab world and Israel," Reiter thinks. "In other words, this is part of an attempt to say that the holy places on the Arabian Peninsula – Mecca, Medina, and now many Al-Aqsa – are much more significant, and that Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is less worthy of a place in the center of that normalization," he explains.

However, Reiter – like Kedar – notes that the argument in Israel about the holiness of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa goes back to the dawn of Islam and that "In effect, we have sources like Al-Waqidi from the ninth century and others who argue that the original mosque is located in Ju'ranah in the Makkah Province."

Hadith as an early form of social media

Reiter stresses that Jerusalem became holy to Islam 60 years after Muhammad's death, when the Umayyad dynasty ruled the Land of Israel. They had no access to Islamic holy sites on the Arabian Peninsula after Al-Zybayr seized power there.

"Only then did the Umayyads start developing Jerusalem as a spiritual center. My interpretation is that they were very successful in the battle for hearts and minds. They had people write hadiths and traditions and disseminated them. In today's terms, we'd say that they controlled the media and social media by distributing and inculcating the hadiths, and the belief that Jerusalem is the third-holiest place to Islam and that Jerusalem is the first direction of prayer according to Muslim tradition.

"They also invented a tradition that Al-Aqsa Mosque was built 40 years after the Kaaba in Mecca by Abraham and Ismail. But the more important tradition they managed to instill attributes to Muhammad the decree that pilgrimage is permitted to three places – the holy mosque in Mecca, the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. That is the famous hadith about the three mosques, and it was invented in the Umayyad period to serve them," Reiter says.

Q: Are there any remains of an ancient mosque in Ju'ranah?

Reiter: "None that we know of."

Q: Will this renewed argument challenge the importance of Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem?

"In my opinion, no. You can't challenge a 1,300-year-old belief. This is a political trend, and even if it has a historical basis, it's designed to weaken the Palestinian position."

One of the people who returned fire against the renewed reports questioning the identity of Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem is Middle East scholar Eran Tzidkiyahu of the Forum for Regional Thinking. Tzidkiyahu even wrote a long Facebook post on the subject in which he claimed "a degree of hypocrisy, when one narrative, the Muslim one, is examined using critical scientific criteria, while the narrative of the other side, the Jewish one, is accepted as truth that is not only historically correct, but also gives modern-day political rights. The cancellation of the Muslim historical-religious narrative arose in order to justify the cancellation of political rights."

Tzidkiyahu observes that "academic research takes the existence of God out of the equation and looks at historical events. According to research, no god ever promised or sanctified the city of Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, to any nation or religion. The research assumed that all the processes of sanctification and politicization were creating as the result of human, religious, political, and social processes."

"Therefore, even if Jerusalem later became holy, whether it was because of kings who identified with the House of David in the eighth century BCE, or because of a Muslim dynasty that aspired to lead the Islamic world in the seventh century CE, it doesn't cancel 1,400 or 2,700 years of holiness and religious and political centrality, not for Jews and not for Muslims," he says.

Q: Who protects these places?

Tzidkiyahu stresses that the greatest researchers of Islam delved into the question of Jerusalem's holiness to Islam, poring over books, ancient manuscripts, ancient sources in classic Arabic, Latin, Greek, and Persian, and integrating sources and comparing texts.

"They published endless articles and books on the subject, but not one of the serious researchers thought to translate these historical commentaries into political statements. They focused on research."

This week, Israel Hayom asked Kedar about the practical meaning of the claims he has been making for over a decade now being made by Muslim researchers. Does he really expect that a historical truth of varying accuracy will prompt Muslims to drop a 1,300-year-old belief and adopt the view that Al-Aqsa is near Mecca, not in Jerusalem? Might this not be a "home goal," with challenges about historical truths also turning toward Bible stories?

Kedar: "Your question is influenced by the distance between post-modernism and modernism. Post-modernism claims that there is no absolute truth. Anyone who accepts that view accepts Jerusalem's holiness to Islam as a fact. I, as a realist, am looking for the absolute truth. A narrative is a collection of stories that I believe and expect everyone else to respect. That is how religious-national narratives are constructed, but as a researcher, I want to get to the truth, and understand how stories are created, how a narrative is created. Understand whether they have a historical basis, and now that I understand that, I say again, the so-called truth about the sources of Jerusalem's holiness to Islam is clear to many people now, not just me."

Q: The Muslim faithful connect to Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, even if the real Al-Aqsa isn't in Jerusalem, so what is the point of your arguments?

Kedar: "I research Islam, and people's motivation today to make up stories is no different from what motivated them 1,400 years ago. The story is a battle for power and control. Why do you think the Saudi king calls himself 'guardian of the holy sites' (Mecca and Medina)? The Saudi royal family comes from the Riyadh area. They made themselves into the guardians of the holy places to give their rule legitimacy. Now the Palestinians, particularly the Islamic Movement, have made Al-Aqsa their top priority in order to position Jerusalem as a central issue for the Muslim world. They more they succeed, the more the Saudis will claim that Al-Aqsa is located there."

Could the debate among Muslims about the location of Al-Aqsa spill over into violence and bloodshed? Reiter, Kedar, and Tzidkiyahu don't think so, but suggest that we wait and see whether the Saudi newspaper article signals a stance the Saudi royal family will adopt, or whether it was a shot in the dark. If that theory becomes more prevalent, Tzidkiyahu thinks, "there will be more potential for violence and bloodshed."  

Nadav Shragai