Professor Moshe Sharon, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, took part on Sunday in the Holy Temple Conferences held by the Movement for Temple Renewal with the participation of leading temple-oriented organizations.
During the conference, which took place in the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, Prof. Sharon warned against Islamic revisionist history, and explained the Islamic worldview of history and geography.
“The basic attitude [of Islam] is that all history is, in fact, Islamic history,” Sharon told Arutz Sheva. “That means that all the major figures of history are Muslims, from Adam down to our own time.”
Sharon said that this attitude assumes that any Jewish or Christian religious figure, be it the Jewish Kings David or Solomon and even the Christian Jesus, is in fact a Muslim figure, a fact that essentially dismisses any Jewish or Christian claim that is faith-based and, of course, ignores the incontrovertible fact that Islam began in the 7th century C.E with Mohammed and simply did not exist before that.
According to the Muslims, says Sharon, “Since the creation of the world there has been only one religion and that is the religion of Islam. So if anybody says, for example, that there is a place connected with Solomon and that’s the place where Solomon’s Temple stood, a true Muslim would tell you: ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right, but don’t forget that Solomon was a Muslim.’”
He added, “You can understand that through Islamization of history you’ve got Islamization of geography. Anywhere that was connected with these prophets, who were all Muslims [according to Islamic imagination], becomes Muslim territory.”
Sharon said that from Islam’s point of view, their appearance in history was that of a liberator, that is to liberate all the Muslim areas, according to their belief, that Jews or Christians had taken over.
Islam, to them, was revealed by Mohammed, but was the true religion from Creation on. Theologians and historians,however, define Islam and Christianity as "daughter religions" of Judaism, whose adherents claim that Judaism's role is over and they have taken Judaism's place.
“There is no Islamic occupation,” he said. “If somebody occupied anything, it will always be somebody else, not the Muslims. There’s no Islamic occupation, there’s only Islamic liberation.”