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Muslim Historians Confirm Jewish Ties to Jerusalem
(Israel Hayom) Nadav Shragai - Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount, by Prof. Yitzhak Reiter and Dvir Dimant, presents a comprehensive list of early Islamic sources that recognize the historical Jewish claim to Jerusalem. Canonical Muslim historical works that date back to the 7th century CE, a few decades after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, state that the very reason Islam came to regard the Foundation Stone situated in the center of the Dome of the Rock as holy is because of the knowledge that the Jewish Temple stood there. These early Muslim sources time and again describe history the same way that Jewish sources do. Islam's most respected historians emphasize that the reason Jerusalem and the Temple Mount came to be considered holy in Islam is that the sites were also regarded as sacred in Judaism and, in their view, Islam is a continuation of Judaism. The book shows that until the Balfour Declaration of 1917, not only did Muslim sources not deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, but they systematically pointed it out and confirmed it. The writer, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has documented Jerusalem for Ha'aretz and Israel Hayom for over 30 years.