Article by CB Sashenka:

The area known as the Temple Mount at the top of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, was the site where the First Jewish Temple was built over 3,000 years ago (957 BC) by King David’s son King Solomon. King David made Jerusalem the capital of Israel in 1003 BC. The Temple was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians, was rebuilt in 516 BC, and destroyed again in 70 AD by the Romans.

Since 70 AD, the first mass Jewish pilgrimage near the mount was allowed to take place after the Six-Day War in 1967 (a war that Israel fought in self-defense and won against the neighbouring states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, all preparing to obliterate Israel), when Israel took back its holiest site, the 36-acre Temple Mount in East Jerusalem (Israel’s ancient capital) from Jordan. Not only did Israel allow Muslims to worship there (as opposed to the Muslims who forbade Jews to worship there when the Temple Mount was under Muslim control), but then-Israeli Defense Minister Dayan entrusted administrative control of the Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf (the Islamic authority in Jerusalem). Overall security control of the area was maintained by Israel.

In the First and Second Jewish Temples, the holiest spot was the “Holy of Holies”, built around the “Foundation Stone” where the binding of Isaac by Abraham to sacrifice him to God, and other religious events in Judaism, were believed to have taken place. This is where the Ark of the Convenant (containing the 10 Commandments) was placed in the First Temple.

Over the centuries, Muslims who eventually took control of Christian Jerusalem (and who neither made Jerusalem a capital of a Muslim area nor a province of a Muslim empire) built a shrine, the gold-topped Dome of the Rock in 691 AD, less than 60 years after Mohammed’s death, on the site where Solomon’s Temple once stood, over the Holy of Holies. The Al Aqsa mosque was also built (705 AD) on the Temple Mount.

It is a common Islamic custom to build mosques on the sites of other people’s sacred places after being conquered, in order to emphasize the superiority of Islam over other religions, and to give the city an Islamic identity. Many churches, synagogues, and Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian temples have been converted into mosques.

The fact that The Dome of the Rock was built in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount and over the Holy of Holies, asserts that Islam has replaced Judaism. And the 600-foot inscription in the dome that consists of several koranic passages challenging the Christian belief in the trinity and the divinity of Christ, asserts that Islam has also replaced Christianity:

“People of the Book (the Bible), overstep not bounds in your religion and of God, speak only truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God and His word which He conveyed to Mary and a Spirit proceeding from Him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles and say not ‘Three.’ It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from His glory that He should have a son. His is whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And God is a sufficient Guardian. The Messiah does not disdain being a servant of God nor do the angels who are near Him. And all who disdain His service are filled with pride. God will gather them all to Himself” (64:1, 33:54, 4:169-171).

Part of one of the verses inscribed says: “the true religion of God is with Islam” (3:16-17).

Around three years ago, the Dome of the Rock area became inaccessible to non-Muslims. And the Israeli government currently enforces a ban on non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount to accommodate Islam. Non-Muslims who are observed praying on the site are subject to expulsion by the police.

Notice how, in the aerial view below of the Temple Mount area, the Dome of the Rock stands out. It was meant to stand out, to dwarf or obliterate any trace of other religious structures, just as the Waqf’s archaeological excavations at Judaism’s holiest site are destroying ancient Jewish antiquities and artifacts – in other words, destroying all evidence of an ancient Jewish presence in Jerusalem.

In the same way, the Taliban erased the Buddhist past of Afghanistan in 2001 by blowing up the world’s two largest standing sandstone Buddhas carved into the hillside 1700 years ago (one of them 165 feet high). Palestinians desecrated and vandalized Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem/Nablus many times, attempting to rebuild it as a mosque, and still refer to Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem as a mosque. Turkey’s Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Spain’s Cordoba Cathedral, and Greece’s Parthenon in Athens were converted into mosques. The intention is to erase every sign, remnant, and memory of a pre-Islamic past.