Islamists are playing a cynical game in Jerusalem
by Daniel Ben-Ami, spiked:
The violent clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian rioters at Jerusalem’s holy sites erupted over Easter and flared up once again on Friday.
These ‘riots’ have been routinely portrayed as religiously motivated. But this portrait is misleading. Although those involved often use a religious idiom, harnessing the language and symbolism of religion, these holy-site conflicts are entirely political.
Islamists, in particular, cynically use the language of Islam and the symbolism of Jerusalem’s holy sites to further their war against secularism and modernity. To them, any separation between religion and the state is an abomination. Their goal in relation to any fighting at Jerusalem’s holy sites is to win support among the world’s two billion Muslims.
There is little doubt that many of the those involved in the violence were activists associated with Islamist organisations, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They weren’t rioters, since there was nothing spontaneous about their actions. In fact, the activists came carefully prepared for violence with stockpiles of slabs, stones and fireworks.
The Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews, has long been a site of religious conflict. For Muslims, the site is known as the Haram-al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary, and it includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (an Islamic shrine). They are built on the site of the first and second Jewish temples, which were destroyed by the Babylonians and Romans respectively. In other words, the Muslim holy places were literally built on top of the holy Jewish sites after they had already been destroyed by earlier pre-Muslim empires.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
