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In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the
Most Merciful
Glorified be He who took His servant, (Muhammed), for a journey by
night from Al-Masjid
Al
Haram, (at Mecca), to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, (in Jerusalem), the
neighborhood whereof
We
have blessed, in order that We might show him some of Our signs.
Verily, He is the
All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.
The
Holy Qur’an 17:1
Jerusalem is one of the three holiest cities for Muslims, next to
Mecca and Al-Madinah. It is
the
city where many of the prophets of Islam including Abraham and
Jesus, preached and
respected Jerusalem, Palestine, was the first “Qibla”, (direction to
which Muslims faced
when
praying), during the entire Meccan period and the first 16 months of
the Madeenah
period. Muslims consider prayers in Jerusalem’s Masjid Al-Aqsa to
be equivalent to 500
prayers in any other ordinary mosque.
With
the eternal verses in the Holy Qur’an, God stated the never
diminishing significance of
Al-Aqsa
Mosque, to where Prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings upon him, (pbuh),
journeyed at night on the winged horse, Al-Buraq, from Mecca. At
Al-Aqsa Mosque,
Prophet Muhammed, (pbuh), led all of the prophets of God that came
before him in the
submission of prayer, then ascended to Heaven to receive God’s
command to the Muslims
to
pray 5 times a day. This miraculous journey is known as Al-Israa
wal Mi’raaj.
Another point in the importance of Palestine to Muslims is that it
also contains the Dome of
the
Rock to which the ascension to Heaven began and ended.
Prophet Muhammed, (pbuh), said: “travel for
pilgrimage and worship are restricted to
three mosques: Al-Haram al-Sharif, in Mecca, my Mosque in Al-Madeenah,
and
Al-Aqsa
Mosque, Jerusalem. The person who starts procedure for pilgrimage
or umra
from
Al-Aqsa Mosque shall have all his/her sins forgiven. Jerusalem is
the land of the
ingathering…go to it and worship in it, for one act of worship
therein is equivalent to
1,000 acts of worship elsewhere.”
Jerusalem
is extremely important to Muslims and they will never accept for it
to be occupied
by
military force. The tradition in Islam states that the area of
Jerusalem and of Mecca will
be
connected together at the end of time, the Day of Judgment. The
Holy Lands will be the
special point of proximity to Heaven on this future date. Prophet
Muhammed, (pbuh),
stated, “whoever dies in the sanctuary of Jerusalem
is as if he/she attained paradise, and
for the person who dies close by, it is as if he/she
had died in the City.”
Occupation, burning, successive aggression, closures and martyrdom
have become the
story of Jerusalem since 1916. This is a deep wound in the hearts
the good Muslims,
Christians, & Jews worldwide.
The
teachings of the prophets of the three God fearing religions have
branded Jerusalem
in
the hearts of the faithful. Jerusalem shall live forever in
tangible existence and with love
in the souls and minds of the followers of Islam.
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