Where is the real al Aqsa mosque?
According to Mordecai Kedar, it's not in Jerusalem:
A well known proverb says "liars need to have good memories." The reasoning is clear: a liar needs to remember his own lies and whom he told them to in order to avoid contradicting himself and revealing his mendacity. This rule applies to important issues as well. Jerusalem, for instance, whose holiness to Sunni Muslims is based on a late and political interpretation of a Koranic verse, while to Shiite Muslims it is only the third holiest city, ranked below Mecca and Medina (today the city of Najaf in southern Iraq).Read the rest to learn something eye-opening.
Early Islamic sources state that the "al Aqsa Mosque" (literal meaning: 'the farther mosque'), mentioned only once in the Koran, was one of two mosques located near Ji'irrana, a village located between Mecca and Taaf in the Arabian Peninsula (now Saudi Arabia.) One of the mosques was called "al-Masjid al-Adna," meaning the "closer mosque" and the other " al-Masjid al-Aqsa", the "farther mosque." When the Koran refers to the al Aqsa mosque while telling the myth of the Prophet Muhammad's night time journey from the "holy mosque" of Mecca to al Aqsa, that is, the "farther mosque," it is referring to the mosque in Ji'irrana.
Labels: anti-semitism, islam, Israel, Jerusalem
