TheTemple.
TheTemple.Israel News photo: (Temple Institute)

Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the Northern Wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, believes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will try to rebuild the Jewish Temple.

Speaking at a conference organized by website Islam Online in Doha, Qatar, Salah stated his belief that Netanyahu may try to build the Jewish Temple – which the Islamic preacher called “the false temple” – during his current term after allegedly failing to do so in his first term as Prime Minister in the late 1990s.

“I ask that those with the power to make the political decision hear me,” Salah exhorted his audience. “Netanyahu is about to build the false Temple, and when the Jews build the Temple they will do so upon the ruins of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque].”

Immediate danger

The danger to Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque is “tangible and immediate,” Salah said, echoing similar dramatic statements he has made over the years. “I warn, I ask for aid and I call out,” he said. “We should expect deadly surprises that could hurt Jerusalem in general and Al Aqsa in particular,” he said. “We live in years that will determine if Jerusalem survives and in Al Aqsa will remain standing,” he added.

Salah said that in an effort to prepare world opinion for the realization of its goals in Jerusalem, Israel sends tourists to the Al Aqsa mosque and tells them that it was built upon the ruins of the Jewish Temple.

The solution to “the threat against Jerusalem,” according to Salah, is a complete mobilization of the Arab world, including the religious imams, who need to act and “recruit the masses.” He asked Muslim scholars to pronounce edicts that will force “the Muslim nation and its leaders to confront their duty towards the problem of Jerusalem and Al Aqsa.”

“A thousand politicians can talk without changing a thing,” Salah said. ‘One religious sage can do what the politicians cannot carry out."

The Jewish Temple was first built by King Solomon (Shlomo) about 3,000 years ago. It served as the spiritual center of the Hebrew nation and as a place of national pilgrimage and sacrifice. Serviced by the priestly class (Kohanim) and Levites, the Temple contained the Seven-Branched Menorah and housed the golden Holy Ark within a room known as the Holy of Holies.

Coming soon: the Third Temple

The First Temple was razed by Babylonian conquerors, rebuilt by Jews by permission of a Persian emperor, defiled by Greeks and then re-consecrated by the Hasmoneans, and burnt down again by Romans.

Jewish religion commands the Jews to rebuild the Temple as part of a Divine plan for the salvation of the Jewish people and the entire world, but Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is not considered observant, never has associated himself with efforts by Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.