The grand mufti of Jerusalem, the Muslim cleric in charge of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, said Sunday that there has never been a Jewish temple atop the Temple Mount, and that the site has been home to a mosque “since the creation of the world.”This latest, egregious example of Palestinian Jewish-Temple denial borders on Islamic-fundamentalist creationism. This is not the first time the current Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has indulged in Temple denial (see here). And his predecessor, Dr. Ekrima Sabri, has done likewise (see here). But it's certainly been a while, if ever, since I have seen it on this jaw-dropping scale. The closest I can find to it is here, where it was claimed that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was built more than a thousand years before Solomon.
Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein said in an Arabic interview with Israel’s Channel 2 that the site, considered the third holiest in Islam and the holiest to Jews, was a mosque “3,000 years ago, and 30,000 years ago” and has been “since the creation of the world.”
“This is the Al-Aqsa Mosque that Adam, peace be upon him, or during his time, the angels built,” the mufti said of the 8th-century structure commissioned by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
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Recent background on the ancient Jewish temples on the Temple Mount and denial of them in Palestinian propaganda, sometimes enabled by the Western media, is here and links.
