Religious Freedom

"I read about the Temple Mount and I wanted to go there. I had the opportunity and privilege to be able to go and I think that opportunity should be open to others ... we believe in freedom of religion and allowing people to practise their faith, free from restrictions, free from any type of discrimination."
Canadian Minister of State for Multiculturalism Tim Uppal

Minister Uppal, it could be said, has a good heart. He has recently returned from Israel to take part in the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Yad Vashem, the country's memorial for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. While in Israel, he visited Jerusalem's Temple Mount. It is an ancient site where Israelites worshipped in a great temple built by King Solomon in 957 BCE. The original temple had been ransacked and burnt to the ground by the Babylonians 400 years after it was built.


A Second Temple was raised in its place after Jews returned from exile and bondage in ancient Babylon. The Second Temple of Solomon had been destroyed by the Romans as a result of Jewish insurrection against Roman rule.All that was left was one wall, now called the Wailing Wall, and it represents the most sacred religious artefact of Judaic history. There, pious Jews go to pray and to leave written messages to Jahweh in the cracks of the stone wall.
 
As so often happens, on the ruins of the ancient temple, when Jerusalem was invaded by Islamic hordes, a building dedicated to Islam was built on the place Jews called the Temple Mount and where Muslims worship the Noble Sanctuary, believing that the Prophet Mohammed had ascended to heaven from that point, mounted on a horse. The original building was added to, and there is now also a mosque in place on the Noble Sanctuary which is the ancient Temple Mount.

After the British Mandate when Jordan moved to take possession of Palestine and East Jerusalem Jews were not permitted entry, and could not worship at the site. When, in 1967 during the Six-
Day War, Israel won possession of East Jerusalem, Jews were able to pray at the wall for the first time in decades. But Israel, in a move of sensitive diplomacy allowed the Muslim religious authority, the Islamic Waqf, to administer the Temple Mount. They disallow Jews from entering the Holy Sanctuary claiming it entirely for Islam.

Only Muslims may pray on the Temple Mount where the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands. When Jews who are forbidden to kneel, or appear to pray there, attempt to do so, violent riots take place, with stone-throwing Palestinians materializing to denigrate and threaten presumptuous Jews feeling they too have a historic religious right to worship. The site is precious to Christians, Jews and Muslims; for Muslims it represents the third most sacred site in Islam.

"Just as in Israel itself there is religious freedom for all groups, so the Temple Mount must be a reflection of the religious freedoms that exist throughout Israel."
"The more the world learns of the restrictions that the Muslims have put on other faiths like the Jews, like the Christians, and especially on the holiest Jewish site, I think it will wake up the spirit of people to say this is not justifiable."
Frank Dimant head, B'Nai Brith Canada

In the realm of wishful thinking, that Islamic clerics would anytime soon give equal access to Jews to worship at their ancient Temple site -- from his lips to God's ear -- eminently unlikely, alas.

Model of Herod's Temple (a renovation of the Second Temple) in the Israel Museum. It is unknown what the Second Temple looked like before this major renovation.