JERUSALEM, SACRED TO WHOM REBUTTAL

 

I received an email from Fawaz AB requesting some "corrections" in this article.  I am answering his "corrections" here.

Peace been upon you (As-Salam Alaykom/Shalom Alaikhem)

I red some "Facts" that you made in :-JERUSALEM, SACRED TO WHOM? and I have some corrections:

1-To describe Jerusalem as the third most holy site in Islam is 20th century revisionist history and PLO/Arab propaganda.

Fawaz AB :Correction: -
Prophet Muhammad Said: - "No Visits (to mosques) are tend  (or to be managed) except to three (mosques) the Holy Mosque (or Haram) of Mecca, My Mosque (The Prophetic "Nabawi" Mosque in Madina) and Al-Aqsa
Mosque (with the GREY dome not the Golden one)"

Then Prophet Muhammad Limited "Harams" (Most Holy and Sacred Mosques) to three: Those of Mecca, Madina
and Jerusalem, and if We excepted the two Mosques of Mecca & Madina, Al-Aqsa Mosque is Holier & More Sacred Than all The Mosques of Earth.

REPLY:Your "correction" proves my point.  You listed the three most holy mosques.  

2- Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran.

Fawaz AB :And About Jerusalem in Quran (That's about 14 Centuries before PLO) in Sura17 Verse1 about Al-Aqsa Mosque "That we blessed its Surroundings" And that means East -or to be more specified- Old Jerusalem, so I Agree you in a Part of your Opinion, Not ALL Jerusalem are Sacred to Muslims except The old part of it.

REPLY: Actually, Sura 17: reads "Glory be to Him Who made His servant to go on a night from the Sacred Mosque to the remote mosque of which We have blessed the precincts, so that We may show to him some of Our signs; surely He is the Hearing, the Seeing."

I don't see where you get 'And that means East' from this Sura.  That is taking quite a stretch of imagination.  And it stretches out even further to say this refers to East Jerusalem.
 

3- "Mohammed did make a brief attempt to get people to pray towards Jerusalem in a vain effort to convert
Jews to his new religion. However, he soon reverted the direction of Moslem prayer back to Mecca"

Fawaz AB: A- it was not an Attempt but a Command from God and it lasted 16 to 17 Months.

Reply: A matter of semantics. A command or an attempt, the fact that it happened remains the same.

Fawaz AB: B- Converting Jews is not a bad deed, All Religion followers like others to Convert to their Religion, because every Believer thinks that his/her Religion the The Best among All.

REPLY: You better sit down.  I agree with you about 'all religion followers like others to convert to their religion'.  The use of the word 'vain' in the original article means that this effort by Mohammed failed in his attempt.

Fawaz AB: C- Sura 2 Verses 142-143 Commanded Muhammad to Revert "Qibla" Direction of Prayer to Mecca's Mosque, because it's (In Islam) the House buile by Abraham & Ishmael.

REPLY: [Sura 2.142-143] The fools among the people will say: What has turned them from their qiblah which they had? Say: The East and the West belong only to Allah; He guides whom He likes to the right path.
[2.143] And thus We have made you a medium (just) nation that you may be the bearers of witness to the people and (that) the Apostle may be a bearer of witness to you; and We did not make that which you would have to be the qiblah but that We might distinguish him who follows the Apostle from him who turns back upon his heels, and this was surely hard except for those whom Allah has guided aright; and Allah was not going to make your faith to be fruitless; most surely Allah is Affectionate, Merciful to the people.

The fact remains that Mohammed did revert the direction of prayer back to Mecca, which further substantiates this article.

4-" and in most cases actually turn their backs on Jerusalem"

Fawaz AB:Come On! It's not a case of facing something or running back on other things.  For example when any Muslim prays in his/her house he/she's facing a wall and running his/her back to another one, that doesn't mean that the Faced wall is holier or better than the other one, they're just walls.

And if I accepted what you wrote, then every one in north of Al-Aqsa mosque or norther in the same
longitude (Approx.) will be facing both Al-Aqsa Mosque and Mecca's, but in Reality He/She intends to face The Holy Mosque of Mecca.

REPLY: I concede this point. I have recently had problems with this 'turning their backs on Jerusalem."

5- "The place of pilgrimage (haj) for Moslems, according to the Koran, is Mecca and its sister city,
Medina in Saudi Arabia, not Jerusalem. "

Fawaz AB: But if a Jew Prays facing the Western Wall that doesn't mean that Abraham and Sara's Tomb are not holy or Sacred got my point?

In Other Word, Muslims` Pilgrimage is to be made to the Holiest Place, and that doesn't mean that other
places (Madina & Al-Aqsa) are not Sacred

Moreover, visiting Al-Madina is not  a must, and Prophet Muhammad didn`t do it. It`s about visiting The
Prophetic Mosque and to send Peace to the prohet before his Tomb ther.

REPLY: Let me quote from your first correction, "and if We excepted the two Mosques of Mecca & Madina, Al-Aqsa Mosque is Holier & More Sacred Than all The Mosques of Earth." 

Now in this section you are saying that Mecca is the place for pilgrimage.  JERUSALEM,SACRED TO WHOM claims that all three mosques are claimed as sacred by Islam.  What is it?

6- "In contrast to the G-D of Israel, Allah has no personal name. The word, Allah, simply means "G-D" in
Arabic.,"

Fawaz AB: -Muslims believe that they (Muslims), Jews and Christians all worship the same god (G-D/God/Allah)

- Even the Jews and Christians in  Iraq, Tunisia or any other Arabic Spoken countries calls G-D as "Allah"
because it's a matter of Language

- "Personal Name" is something different in Islam, Allah Has more 99 names in Islam (i.e. Almighty,
Great, Merciful, Giver, Creator, most knower ...etc) each represent or praise one or more of Allah's
Power/Almightiness, But the Name "Allah" is the Universal Name.

And Personal Name to Allah in Islam is different again, because Allah is Allah not a "Personal Name",
and if we call something Great, full of knowledge, Merciful ... etc Allah is More and so on.

- Muslims Have what is called "The Greatest Name" (similar to the "personal")  and that Name is not know to everyone, it moved from a generation to the next (like the "Mishnah") and this name is the name that Allah likes most to be asked with.

REPLY:  (from http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/jerusalem/jerusalem60.html)
That "allah" of Islam IS NOT another name for "Jehovah" of the Holy Bible? We don't worship THE SAME GOD, they call Him "allah," we call Him "Jehovah." 
That Muslims believe in "Jesus." They even believe that He was born of a virgin! But only believe He was a great prophet,and a mere slave of allah and emphatically state that "allah has no son" 

Surah 23.91] Never did Allah take to Himself a son, and never was there with him any (other) god-- in that case would each god have certainly taken away what he created, and some of them would certainly have overpowered others; glory be to Allah above what they describe!

From Who is Allah? III&E Brochure Series; No. 2  (published by The Institute of Islamic Information and Education (III&E):"It is a known fact that every language has one or more terms that are used in reference to God and sometimes to lesser deities. This is not the case with Allah. Allah is the personal name of the One true God. Nothing else can be called Allah. The term has no plural or gender. This shows its uniqueness when compared with the word god which can be made plural, gods, or feminine, goddess."

This says that Allah is the personal Islamic name for god. This makes us both partially right and wrong.

7- " Furthermore, when you study the history of Islam, you discover that when Mohammed went to Mecca, 365
G-Ds were worshipped. He destroyed the altars to these various G-Ds, except one, who became THE Allah,"

Fawaz AB: I Think you must re-examine the Arab History before Islam and in Muhammad`s era - what was worshiped in Mecca were not "G-Ds" but Idols, Arab's Religion was Idolism, They Thought that those Idols are a tie between them and "Allah", but Islam made a new conception to them, in Quran Sura2 Verse186 about Asking Allah "I'm indeed near I respond to the invocations (prayers) of the supplicant when he/she calls on me", that means that there's no need to worship Idols to deliver your Prayers to Allah/G-D, but worship him Directly, and that what (according to Quran) all Heavenly Religions` Followers (Jews,
Christians & Muslims) do
- There was no Single Idol in Mecca called "ALLAH"! Maybe you're confused between Al-Lat (an Idol) &
Allah, and there's a difference. Their most sacred Idols were:  Al-Izza, Al-Lat (they called them daughters of Allah) and Hubal

REPLY: 360 gods or idols were worshipped in Mecca. (http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-moon-god-hubal.htm).  They are both false gods.  From this same page "What is quite certain is that the Pagan Arabs in Mecca worshipped a moon god called Hubal at the Kabah. Hubal was the Lord of the Kabah, being the highest ranking god of the 360 gods worshipped in the Kabah. Now here is the amazing thing. Allah was also worshipped as the Lord of the Kabah. Yet, Allah was never represented by any idol of physical nature. To suggest the polytheistic Arabs never created an idol to represent Allah is simply unreasonable and unbelievable. We suggest rather, that Hubal was who the Pagan Arabs addressed their prayers to Allah through. In other words, Allah was Hubal. Muhammad came along and smashed the idol of Hubal and now the Arabs had no idol of Allah to pray through any more and Hubal was forgotten. There are stories in the Sira of pagan Meccan praying to Allah while standing beside the image of Hubal. (Muhammad's Mecca, W. Montgomery Watt, Chapter 3: Religion In Pre-Islamic Arabia, p26-45) We suggest that Arabs stood beside Hubal and prayed to him, referring to him as Allah".

8- " This Allah was connected with the worship of the moon, thus the crescent seen on the top of all
mosques. He also had three daughter G-Ddesses, who were conveniently forgotten"

Fawaz AB: About the latter part, I Think I made it clear,  The 3 G-Ddesses that you wrote about: -
A- They WERE 2 not 3
B- they WERE Idols
C- they weren't G-Ddesses but Daughters of G-D
D- more important they were worshipped by Arabs before Islam and not Muslims

Allah is not connected with the worship of Moon; Moon is the indicator of Lunar Months that's it! And The Crescents on the top of all Mosques` "manara"s and domes are not connected to Islam itself but to its
history, How? The Ottomans made the Crescent their sign, and as they think that they are "the protectors of Islam" they placed  crescents above manaras and domes on top of the mosques, Moreover, not all Mosques have Crescents on their top.

REPLY: Visit Allah - the Moon God  This rather extensive article refutes this argument and shows allah to be the moon god.

9- " The "new and improved" Allah of Islam is a remade G-D of the desert. Yes, Islam is monotheistic, but the G-D worshipped is not the G-D of the Bible - the Lord G-D of Israel"

Fawaz AB: About the same G-d matter I think I clarified it above: "but worship him directly, and that what
(according to Quran) all Heavenly Religions` Followers (Jews, Christians & Muslims) do"
And please from where did you get that: new and improved, Allah of Islam is a remade G-D of the desert
-STUFF!?

REPLY: And I also showed how the G-D of the Bible is NOT allah.  As for where did I get this remade g-d of the desert, I got it from here "In 1255 B.C.. the Hebrew tribes had stopped for a forty-year period in Sinai and the Nufud on their trek from Egypt to Palestine. Tradition recounts the marriage of Moses to an Arabian woman who worshipped an austere desert-god named Yahu, later called Jehovah. This Arabian woman instructed Moses in the ways of her god and may have started, thereby, a chain of events that links Christianity, Judaism and Islam."

I need a reply please

Yours,
Fawaz AB