JERUSALEM IN THE QUR’AN
By Imran N. Hosein
PART ONE
Chapter 6
DIVINE
EXPULSIONS OF THE JEWS FROM THE
HOLY LAND
BECAUSE OF VIOLATIONS OF THE
CONDITIONS OF
INHERITANCE
“And We gave
warning to Banu Israil through revelation, that twice would they corrupt the (Holy)
Land and be elated with mighty arrogance (and twice would they be
punished)! When the first of the
warnings came to pass, We sent against you Our servants who were capable of terrible
warfare. They entered the very inmost parts of your homes, and it was a warning
fulfilled. And after a time We allowed
you to prevail against them once again, and aided you with wealth and
offspring, and made you more numerous.
If
you persevere in doing good you will do so for your own good; whereas if you
commit evil you will (yourself) bear the consequences.
And so when the prediction of the second (period of wickedness) came
true, (We raised new enemies against you and allowed them) to disgrace you
utterly, and to enter the Temple as (their forerunners) had entered it once
before, and to destroy with utter destruction all that they had conquered.”
(Qur’an, Banu Israil,
17:4-7)
Surah Banu Israil
of the Qur’an (Surah No. 17) records the history of Jerusalem
that exposes the following fraudulent statement in the Torah:
“Know therefore that it is not because of your
righteousness that the Lord, your God has given you this good land to possess
it; for you are a stiff-necked people.”
(Deuteronomy , 9:6)
The statement is fraudulent because it establishes the
foundation for the belief that the Divine grant of the Holy Land to the Jews
was unconditional. In other words, it allows a Jew to argue that the Holy Land
would still belong to the Jews even if they were not righteous in their conduct
since righteousness was not a condition for their inheritance of that Holy
Land. The Jew would argue that Abraham (‘alaihi al-Salaam) was righteous
and, in consequence of his righteousness, the Land was given to him and to his
progeny! Thereafter no violation of the standard of righteous conduct by the Jewish
people could invalidate their right to the Holy Land. After all, the Torah was quite
plain and clear on the subject:
“Therefore impress these My words upon your very
heart: bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your
forehead, and teach them to your children reciting them when you stay at home
and when you are away, and when you lie down and when you get up; and inscribe
them on the door posts of your house and on your gates to the end that you and your
children may endure, in the Land (i.e., Holy Land) that the Lord swore to your
fathers to give to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth. If you
faithfully keep all the instructions that I command you, loving the Lord your
God, walking in His ways, and holding fast to Him, the Lord will dislodge
before you all these nations: you will dispossess nations greater and more
numerous than you. Every spot on which your foot treads shall be yours; your territory
shall extend from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River Euphrates to
the Western Sea. No man shall stand up to you: the Lord your God will put the
dread and the fear of you over the whole land in which you set foot, as He
promised you.”
(Deuteronomy , 11:18-25)
(The article by Michael Avi-Yonah in the Jewish
Encyclopeadia declares that “David (‘alaihi alSalaam), in the course of
his conquests, made Jerusalem the center of an empire extending from Egypt to
the Euphrates, although it was only in the reign of his successor, Solomon,
that full advantage was taken of this fact.”)
But Deuteronomy 9:6 as well as
11:18-25 are false in so far as they exclude righteousness and faith
as conditions for inheritance of the Holy Land! The Qur’an not only reaffirmed
‘righteousness’ as the condition for such inheritance (Surah alAnbiyah, 21:105), but went on to direct
attention to the historical evidence that violation of that condition always
resulted in Divine expulsion from the (Holy) Land. The Surah recounted
(at least) two occasions when the Israelite people so betrayed the religion of
Abraham (‘alaihi al-Salaam) and the standard of righteous conduct that
Allah Most High expelled them from the Holy Land.
On the first occasion in 587 BCE, a Babylonian army led by
Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, then burned the city, murdered its
inhabitants, destroyed the Masjid built by Solomon (‘alaihi
al-Salaam), and carried the cream of the Jewish population into slavery in
Babylon. The Prophet Jeremiah had warned them that this would happen (Jeremiah: 32:36),
exactly as Allah, the Supreme, had declared in the Qur’an that He never
destroys a people before sending a warning to them (Qur’an, Banu Israil, 17:15-16).
They were so punished because, among other things, they
changed the Torah to make Halal (permissible) that which Allah, the
Supreme, had made Haram (prohibited). They rewrote the Torah to make it
permissible for them to lend money on interest to those who were not Jews while
yet prohibiting such in intra-Jewish transactions:
“Thou shalt not lend on interest to thy brother
(Jew); whether it be lending money on interest, or lending commodities on
interest (because commodities were sometimes used as money) or lending on
interest anything which is lent on interest (i.e., anything which functions as
money). Unto a stranger (i.e., one who is not a Jew) you may lend on interest…”
(Deuteronomy , 23:19-20)
On the second occasion they were again expelled from the
Holy Land because of their killing of the Prophets of Allah (see, for example, Qur’an, al-Baqarah,
2:61). They killed
Zakariah (‘alaihi al-Salaam) in the Masjid. John (‘alaihi
al-Salaam), his son, was killed by deception. Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salaam)
referred to this killing of the Prophets, and he minced no words in his fierce
condemnation of this heinous crime:
“This is why the wisdom of God said: I will send
them Prophets and Messengers. Some they will kill and some they will persecute.
It was that the blood of all the Prophets shed from the foundation of the world
might be charged upon this generation (of Jews), from the blood of Abel down to
the blood of Zakariah, who was slain between the altar and the House of God - yes,
I tell you, it will all be charged upon this generation….”
(Luke, 11:49-51)
Finally they boasted of how they killed the Messiah, Jesus,
the son of Mary (but Allah, the All-Powerful, saved him from death):
“That they said (in boast): We killed the Messiah, Jesus the son
of Mary, the Messenger of Allah; but they killed him not, nor crucified him,
but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of
doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a
surety they killed him not.”
(Qur’an, al-Nisa, 4:157)
It was after this that Allah Most High punished them for the
second time. A Roman army led by General Titus besieged Jerusalem in 70CE.
Titus destroyed the city of Jerusalem, murdered the inhabitants and expelled
the remnant of Jews from the Holy Land. The Masjid was again destroyed
and soldiers tore it apart, stone by stone, in search of melted gold exactly as
Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salaam) had warned and prophesied "not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown
down." (See Qur’an, Banu Israil, 17:4-7):
“And We gave (clear)
warning to Banu Israil through revelation, that twice would they corrupt the
(Holy) Land and be elated with mighty arrogance (and twice would they be
punished)!”
“When the first of the
warnings came to pass, We sent against you Our servants capable of terrible
warfare.” “They entered the very inmost parts of your homes; and it was a
warning (completely) fulfilled.”
“And after a time We allowed you to prevail against them once
again, and aided you with wealth and offspring, and made you more numerous
(than ever).”
“(And We said) “If you persevere in doing good you will but be
doing good to yourselves; and if you do evil it will be done to yourselves.”
And so when the prediction of the second (period of iniquity) came true, (We
raised new enemies against you and allowed them) to disgrace you utterly, and
to enter the Temple as (their forerunners) had entered it once before, and to
destroy with utter destruction all that they had conquered.”
(Qur’an, Banu Israil, 17:4-7)
“….soon shall I show you the homes of the wicked (how they lie
desolate).”
(Qur’an, al-‘Araf, 7:145)
The Qur’an referred to the Temple that was twice
destroyed, as ‘al-Masjid’. But just before doing so it described the
miraculous journey of Prophet Muhammad (‘alaihi alSalaam) (i.e., al-Isra
and Mi’raj) as a journey from al-Masjid al-Haram (in Makkah) to
al-Masjid al-Aqsa (i.e. the distant Temple):
“Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by
night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did
bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who
hears and sees (all things).”
(Qur’an, Banu Israil, 17:1)
The Masjid of the Qur’anic verse, which was twice
destroyed, could not have been any other than the Masjid built by
Solomon (‘alaihi al-Salaam) in Jerusalem. The Prophet (‘alaihi
al-Salaam) himself confirmed this. It is this same Masjid that is
described above as Masjid al-Aqsa to which the Prophet (‘alaihi
al-Salaam) was taken by night on a miraculous journey. The Qur’an
explained that he was taken there in order to be shown some of the ‘Signs’ of
Allah, Most High. More than anything else those ‘Signs’ related to the destiny
of Jerusalem.
After punishing the Jews for a second time by expelling them
from the Holy Land, Allah Most High declared His intention to keep on punishing
them (and expelling them) if they kept on desecrating the Holy Land with
violations of the condition of faith and righteous conduct:
“….but if ye revert (to
your violation of the condition imposed for inheritance of the Holy Land) We
shall revert (to Our punishments. i.e., you will be expelled again and again)….”
(Qur’an, Banu Israil, 17:8)
The destiny of Jerusalem is plainly written in the above
warning and firm declaration in the Qur’an. This remains so regardless
of any, or all, or the following:
Ø agreements negotiated in Camp David or elsewhere between the
secular nationalist representatives of the Palestinian people and the secular
nationalist European Jewry who presume to represent Banu Israil, or
Ø resolutions of the US Senate and House of Representatives
which have replaced the British Parliament as the Ultimate Patron and Protector
of the Jewish State, or
Ø resolutions of the UN Security Council or General Assembly
which assume the status of world government,
The destiny of Jerusalem is plainly visible in the context
of the awesome godlessness, decadence and oppression, which now pollutes the
Holy Land. Some of this has been described in subsequent chapters of this book
in the analysis of the political Shirk
of the State of Israel and the Riba of its economy. It is Israel’s
destiny that it will be subjected to the same divine punishment that it
experienced twice before. The first divine punishment came in the form of a
Babylonian army that destroyed Israel. The second time it was a Roman army. And
the third and last time it would be a Muslim army which would destroy the
Jewish State.
The Divine ‘Signs’ that were shown to Prophet Muhammad (‘alaihi
al-Salaam) during his miraculous visit to Jerusalem were ‘Signs’ which,
among other things, revealed to him the destiny of Jerusalem. This matter seems
to have escaped the attention of Daniel Pipes.
The Last Prophet (‘alaihi al-Salaam) saw the Last
Age. He saw with his spiritual eyes the return of the Jews in that age to the
Holy Land. He saw the creation of the Impostor State of Israel, and the
godlessness, decadence and awesome oppression that it would visit upon the Holy
Land. He saw the return of Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salaam), the son of Mary,
and the destruction of Israel by a Muslim army. And he saw the Truth, Justice
and Righteousness in the religion of Abraham (‘alaihi al-Salaam) that
the ‘true’ Messiah will restore to the Holy Land when he returns.
to be continued....
