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Source: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD56403
Egyptian Challenges Sanctity of Jerusalem for Muslims
(MEMRI) - Ahmad Muhammad 'Arafa, a columnist for the Egyptian weekly Al-Qahira, published by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, wrote an article on August 5, 2003, rejecting the established Islamic belief that the Prophet Muhammad's celebrated "Night Journey" (Koran 17:1) took him from Mecca to Jerusalem. 'Arafa asserts that the miraculous journey referred to the Prophet's emigration from Mecca to Medina. The belief in Muhammad's journey to Jerusalem is the primary basis of the sanctity of Jerusalem for Muslims. "This text tells us that Allah took His Prophet from the Al-Haram Mosque [in Mecca] to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 'Al-Aqsa' is a form of superlative which means 'the most distant.'...But in Palestine during that time, there was no mosque at all that could have been the mosque 'most distant' from the Al-Haram Mosque. During that time, there were no people in [Palestine] who believed in Muhammad and would gather to pray in a specific place that served as a mosque. Most of the inhabitants of Palestine were Christians, and there was among them a Jewish minority....The construction of the mosque situated today in Jerusalem and known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque began only in the year 66 of the emigration of the Prophet....So much for the mosque."