The opening line of the Ian Slavitt novel Voyeur went, "A city is an act of faith." Of few cities can the this be truer, in both physical and metaphysical senses, than the ancient, eternal, and undivided city of Jerusalem.
A man born in London can claim to be born in England; someone living in New Delhi can rightly insist on being a resident of India; the embassy of the United States to Canada is located in Ottawa. Yet, someone who is born and has lived in Jerusalem all his life cannot claim to be Israeli, at least not according to the laws of most of the Western countries, never mind the Arab-Islamic ones. The embassies of the United States and those of the United Kingdom and the other European nations to Israel are not located in Israel?s seat of government.
Once again, the United States Congress has attempted to change this silly state of affairs by requesting that the American administration move the US embassy to Jerusalem and requiring the official machinery to concede in its documentation that Jerusalem is actually a part of Israel. The discomfort of the administration at this move by Congress is quite understandable. As a keen student of American politics, I cannot but sympathize with President Bush?s spokesmen when they correctly insist that Congress?s latest move regarding Jerusalem is an encroachment on the time-honored historical prerogative of the executive branch to conduct foreign policy with maximum discretion and minimum legislative interference.
That agreement with the principle of the executive?s jurisdiction of foreign policy does not, however, change the fundamental reality about the city of Jerusalem. It is the capital of a sovereign state whose status is disputed on the basis of historical, political, and religious considerations that are themselves subject to dispute to say the least.
The claim that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) lays to the city is said to be historical. Historical? There has been no State of Palestine in recorded history, let alone with Jerusalem as its capital. The only time that an indigenous people have used the city as the seat of government has been during the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judaea in biblical times. Even when Islamic empires, Arab and Turk, ruled that stretch of land, the regional capital was in Damascus. Transjordan?s King Abdullah I, the first post-Ottoman Muslim ruler of parts of Jerusalem, kept his government in Amman while crowning himself as ?King of Jerusalem?. In fact, with the exception of the colonial British Mandatory regime, no other contemporary entity than the State of Israel established a capital in Jerusalem. That, too, was more of a re-establishment, in direct lineage from the ancient Hebrew kingdoms of King David?s descendants.
It is more viably a novel political claim that the PLO can make over Jerusalem?s eastern part. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Arabs in 1967, the Arab League and Islamic Conference retooled the outfit known as the PLO, bestowed on it the title of the ?sole representative?, and blessed its task of ?reclaiming? Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital-to-be. Whether it was the emotive appeal of the ?al-Quds? terminology or the embarrassment over losing the Dome of the Rock to the Jews, the Arab-Islamic bloc set up the PLO to create a new reality.
The fact of the matter is that, in religious terms, the Haram a-Sharif (Temple Mount) was not lost to the Jews or anyone else. The mosques, the religious courts, the muftis, and the sprawling waqf endowments continued their vibrant existance after 1967, unhindered by Israel?s civil authorities. Jordanians continued to be their paymasters and the Hashemite monarch?s portrait was still in the offices of qadis until the PLO, not Israel, replaced the neat arrangement. Israel after 1967 had an international and moral obligation to guarantee access to the shrines of Jerusalem to adherents of all faiths. Uniquely, of all the recorded rulers of the Holy City, the State of Israel has guaranteed and actually protected the equal access of adherents of all three faiths to the shrines in question. Both the pagan Romans and the Christian Crusaders of antiquity made it a matter of policy to physically harass pilgrims of different faiths. The Arab and Turkish rulers, while allowing for generous rules of access, levied special taxes and imposed quotas on Christian and Jewish worshippers.
In marked contrast, over the years, Israel has quietly welcomed thousands of foreign Muslims who wanted to visit the shrines in Jerusalem, but whose passports were stamped ?not valid for Israel?. Instead of putting a dangerous Star of David on the passports, the Israelis recorded these visits on separate entry/exit documents. Acutely sensitive to its image, Israel bent over backwards to be religiously neutral in the affairs of the Old City. What else would describe the hundreds of thousands spent from the government?s exchequer to constantly renovate Muslim and Christian places of worship? Or the fact that in the Jewish homeland, observant Jews are regularly asked by the government to be careful not to hurt the sensitivities of Muslims worshipping next door to the Wall. Thanks to the zealous tolerance inherent in Israel?s ?occupation?, the Friday sermons at the mosques in the heart of Israel?s capital are liberally leavened with words of sedition and anti-Semitism.
If the issue is the religious dimension of Jerusalem?s Old City, who are we kidding by trying to get the Israelis to go? The PLO could not even provide for the complete safety of the church in Bethlehem two Christmases ago; Syrians have a penchant for demolishing mosques with bulldozers; and the Iranians do not allow Sunni Muslims to build communal prayer houses in Tehran. The Saudis, those great custodians of Islam?s Holiest of the Holies, will promptly jail or deport any Shiite Muslim who organizes public prayers in the kingdom outside of the Hajj.
Which brings us to the matter of this strange phrase ?Islam?s Third Holiest City?. While my late grandparents prayed five times a day facing the Ka?ba at Mecca, the concept of a sanctified geographical ground is quite alien to classical Islamic theology, which held all of God?s created landmass as a gift to humankind, without differentiating between various points on the map. The directive to face the Ka?ba while making ritual prayers was in honor of the Patriarch Abraham?s proximity to the Creator, not Mecca?s municipal charms. As for Medina, the supposedly number two in the Islamic pantheon of holy cities, its claim to fame is the fact that Prophet Mohammad founded his first commonwealth there and was later laid to rest there. Iconoclastic to the core, the Qur?an makes no list of holy cities except to proclaim that the immediate vicinity of the Ka?ba is a Protected Sanctuary.
Even for fundamentalist Islam, the entire idea of a list of neatly graduated holy cities is a contemporary one. Many cities across the Middle East and beyond have tombs to saints and famous religious monuments. Largely Hindu India?s desert city of Ajmer is home to the tomb of Turkish Sufi Moinuddin Chishti and draws millions of devotees each month from around the globe. Neighboring Muslim Pakistan?s city of Lahore hosts what is considered the second and third most important shrines of the Sikhs. The birthplace of Lord Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, is believed to be in Nepal. Now, do the Europeans and the United Nations expect the Islamic Conference to be handed over Ajmer, the Indians given Lahore, and the Japanese presented with the Himalayas?
Then why this hubbub about Jerusalem being divvied up and a parcel thereof given to the Palestinians because of the city being the supposed third holy site of Islam?
There is no question that Jerusalem is a city with deep spiritual significance to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Dotted amidst the hills of this near-mythical city are monuments that strike a powerful chord in the hearts of the faithful. As such, any political overlord of this patch of multichromatic earth has certain obligations to the international community. Foremost amongst these obligations is to guarantee the access to and physical safety of the holy shrines of all faith communities. In that sense, the Jewish State is the trustee of the world. So far, of all the other trustees in the land?s history, Israel has done by far the most equitable job. Why take the risk of creating a new upheaval and change what has worked fairly well?
If the ?third holiest? line of reasoning is followed, established frontiers become bones of dispute and long-settled territorial disputes are re-ignited at the behest of the petty merchants of religion and megalomaniac dictators. The current international system, based on the concept of the nation-state, had mercifully replaced the idea of transnational religious empires that were Islamic, Orthodox, Catholic, or Taoist. Allowing the loudest sermonizers of any religion to claim cities and rivers as temporal benefices of a particular faith opens up a Pandora?s box for similar claims by every preacher with a congregation. Such nonsense, going against the foundations of the nation-state system, can be a latent danger to the legitimacy of many regimes, including more than a few Arab, Asian, and Islamic ones.
What makes the Saudis think that if ?Al-Quds? is turned over to someone on the basis of Islam, Iranians may not want Mecca and Medina to come under their concept of a real Muslim (read Shiite) sovereign?
Keeping Israeli sovereignty over a united Jerusalem is a matter of principle. It is also a matter of delicate practicality, not to mention long-term stability.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Esam Sohail writes from Kansas, in the United States.
A man born in London can claim to be born in England; someone living in New Delhi can rightly insist on being a resident of India; the embassy of the United States to Canada is located in Ottawa. Yet, someone who is born and has lived in Jerusalem all his life cannot claim to be Israeli, at least not according to the laws of most of the Western countries, never mind the Arab-Islamic ones. The embassies of the United States and those of the United Kingdom and the other European nations to Israel are not located in Israel?s seat of government.
Once again, the United States Congress has attempted to change this silly state of affairs by requesting that the American administration move the US embassy to Jerusalem and requiring the official machinery to concede in its documentation that Jerusalem is actually a part of Israel. The discomfort of the administration at this move by Congress is quite understandable. As a keen student of American politics, I cannot but sympathize with President Bush?s spokesmen when they correctly insist that Congress?s latest move regarding Jerusalem is an encroachment on the time-honored historical prerogative of the executive branch to conduct foreign policy with maximum discretion and minimum legislative interference.
That agreement with the principle of the executive?s jurisdiction of foreign policy does not, however, change the fundamental reality about the city of Jerusalem. It is the capital of a sovereign state whose status is disputed on the basis of historical, political, and religious considerations that are themselves subject to dispute to say the least.
The claim that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) lays to the city is said to be historical. Historical? There has been no State of Palestine in recorded history, let alone with Jerusalem as its capital. The only time that an indigenous people have used the city as the seat of government has been during the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judaea in biblical times. Even when Islamic empires, Arab and Turk, ruled that stretch of land, the regional capital was in Damascus. Transjordan?s King Abdullah I, the first post-Ottoman Muslim ruler of parts of Jerusalem, kept his government in Amman while crowning himself as ?King of Jerusalem?. In fact, with the exception of the colonial British Mandatory regime, no other contemporary entity than the State of Israel established a capital in Jerusalem. That, too, was more of a re-establishment, in direct lineage from the ancient Hebrew kingdoms of King David?s descendants.
It is more viably a novel political claim that the PLO can make over Jerusalem?s eastern part. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Arabs in 1967, the Arab League and Islamic Conference retooled the outfit known as the PLO, bestowed on it the title of the ?sole representative?, and blessed its task of ?reclaiming? Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital-to-be. Whether it was the emotive appeal of the ?al-Quds? terminology or the embarrassment over losing the Dome of the Rock to the Jews, the Arab-Islamic bloc set up the PLO to create a new reality.
The fact of the matter is that, in religious terms, the Haram a-Sharif (Temple Mount) was not lost to the Jews or anyone else. The mosques, the religious courts, the muftis, and the sprawling waqf endowments continued their vibrant existance after 1967, unhindered by Israel?s civil authorities. Jordanians continued to be their paymasters and the Hashemite monarch?s portrait was still in the offices of qadis until the PLO, not Israel, replaced the neat arrangement. Israel after 1967 had an international and moral obligation to guarantee access to the shrines of Jerusalem to adherents of all faiths. Uniquely, of all the recorded rulers of the Holy City, the State of Israel has guaranteed and actually protected the equal access of adherents of all three faiths to the shrines in question. Both the pagan Romans and the Christian Crusaders of antiquity made it a matter of policy to physically harass pilgrims of different faiths. The Arab and Turkish rulers, while allowing for generous rules of access, levied special taxes and imposed quotas on Christian and Jewish worshippers.
In marked contrast, over the years, Israel has quietly welcomed thousands of foreign Muslims who wanted to visit the shrines in Jerusalem, but whose passports were stamped ?not valid for Israel?. Instead of putting a dangerous Star of David on the passports, the Israelis recorded these visits on separate entry/exit documents. Acutely sensitive to its image, Israel bent over backwards to be religiously neutral in the affairs of the Old City. What else would describe the hundreds of thousands spent from the government?s exchequer to constantly renovate Muslim and Christian places of worship? Or the fact that in the Jewish homeland, observant Jews are regularly asked by the government to be careful not to hurt the sensitivities of Muslims worshipping next door to the Wall. Thanks to the zealous tolerance inherent in Israel?s ?occupation?, the Friday sermons at the mosques in the heart of Israel?s capital are liberally leavened with words of sedition and anti-Semitism.
If the issue is the religious dimension of Jerusalem?s Old City, who are we kidding by trying to get the Israelis to go? The PLO could not even provide for the complete safety of the church in Bethlehem two Christmases ago; Syrians have a penchant for demolishing mosques with bulldozers; and the Iranians do not allow Sunni Muslims to build communal prayer houses in Tehran. The Saudis, those great custodians of Islam?s Holiest of the Holies, will promptly jail or deport any Shiite Muslim who organizes public prayers in the kingdom outside of the Hajj.
Which brings us to the matter of this strange phrase ?Islam?s Third Holiest City?. While my late grandparents prayed five times a day facing the Ka?ba at Mecca, the concept of a sanctified geographical ground is quite alien to classical Islamic theology, which held all of God?s created landmass as a gift to humankind, without differentiating between various points on the map. The directive to face the Ka?ba while making ritual prayers was in honor of the Patriarch Abraham?s proximity to the Creator, not Mecca?s municipal charms. As for Medina, the supposedly number two in the Islamic pantheon of holy cities, its claim to fame is the fact that Prophet Mohammad founded his first commonwealth there and was later laid to rest there. Iconoclastic to the core, the Qur?an makes no list of holy cities except to proclaim that the immediate vicinity of the Ka?ba is a Protected Sanctuary.
Even for fundamentalist Islam, the entire idea of a list of neatly graduated holy cities is a contemporary one. Many cities across the Middle East and beyond have tombs to saints and famous religious monuments. Largely Hindu India?s desert city of Ajmer is home to the tomb of Turkish Sufi Moinuddin Chishti and draws millions of devotees each month from around the globe. Neighboring Muslim Pakistan?s city of Lahore hosts what is considered the second and third most important shrines of the Sikhs. The birthplace of Lord Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, is believed to be in Nepal. Now, do the Europeans and the United Nations expect the Islamic Conference to be handed over Ajmer, the Indians given Lahore, and the Japanese presented with the Himalayas?
Then why this hubbub about Jerusalem being divvied up and a parcel thereof given to the Palestinians because of the city being the supposed third holy site of Islam?
There is no question that Jerusalem is a city with deep spiritual significance to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Dotted amidst the hills of this near-mythical city are monuments that strike a powerful chord in the hearts of the faithful. As such, any political overlord of this patch of multichromatic earth has certain obligations to the international community. Foremost amongst these obligations is to guarantee the access to and physical safety of the holy shrines of all faith communities. In that sense, the Jewish State is the trustee of the world. So far, of all the other trustees in the land?s history, Israel has done by far the most equitable job. Why take the risk of creating a new upheaval and change what has worked fairly well?
If the ?third holiest? line of reasoning is followed, established frontiers become bones of dispute and long-settled territorial disputes are re-ignited at the behest of the petty merchants of religion and megalomaniac dictators. The current international system, based on the concept of the nation-state, had mercifully replaced the idea of transnational religious empires that were Islamic, Orthodox, Catholic, or Taoist. Allowing the loudest sermonizers of any religion to claim cities and rivers as temporal benefices of a particular faith opens up a Pandora?s box for similar claims by every preacher with a congregation. Such nonsense, going against the foundations of the nation-state system, can be a latent danger to the legitimacy of many regimes, including more than a few Arab, Asian, and Islamic ones.
What makes the Saudis think that if ?Al-Quds? is turned over to someone on the basis of Islam, Iranians may not want Mecca and Medina to come under their concept of a real Muslim (read Shiite) sovereign?
Keeping Israeli sovereignty over a united Jerusalem is a matter of principle. It is also a matter of delicate practicality, not to mention long-term stability.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Esam Sohail writes from Kansas, in the United States.