Tag Archive for: Qur’anic doctrine

Afghanistan: Taliban’s Supreme Leader says ‘We will flog women in public, we will stone them to death in public’

Stoning adulterers is not “extremist”; it is Islamic law. The caliph Umar, one of Muhammad’s closest companions, supposedly even maintained that it was originally in the Qur’an:

‘Umar said, “I am afraid that after a long time has passed, people may say, “We do not find the Verses of the Rajam (stoning to death) in the Holy Book,” and consequently they may go astray by leaving an obligation that Allah has revealed. Lo! I confirm that the penalty of Rajam be inflicted on him who commits illegal sexual intercourse, if he is already married and the crime is proved by witnesses or pregnancy or confession.” Sufyan added, “I have memorized this narration in this way.” ‘Umar added, “Surely Allah’s Apostle carried out the penalty of Rajam, and so did we after him.” (Bukhari, vol. 8, bk. 82, no. 816)

“Allah’s Apostle” is, of course, Muhammad, who according to canonical ahadith did indeed carry out stonings. Here is the hadith in which he challenges the rabbis about stoning, and in which there is amidst the barbarism and brutality a final act of love and compassion:

The Jews came to Allah’s Apostle and told him that a man and a woman from amongst them had committed illegal sexual intercourse. Allah’s Apostle said to them, “What do you find in the Torah (old Testament) about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?” They replied, (But) we announce their crime and lash them.” Abdullah bin Salam said, “You are telling a lie; Torah contains the order of Rajm.” They brought and opened the Torah and one of them solaced his hand on the Verse of Rajm and read the verses preceding and following it. Abdullah bin Salam said to him, “Lift your hand.” When he lifted his hand, the Verse of Rajm was written there. They said, “Muhammad has told the truth; the Torah has the Verse of Rajm. The Prophet then gave the order that both of them should be stoned to death. (‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said, “I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones.” (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 56, no. 829)

Even the monkeys practiced stoning, according to another hadith:

During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them. (Bukhari, vol. 5, bk. 58, no. 188)

Muhammad’s example is, of course, normative for Islamic behavior: “Indeed in the messenger of Allah you have an excellent example for him who looks to Allah and the last day, and remembers Allah a great deal.” (Qur’an 33:21)

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Islam is a Grand Delusion

“We are our beliefs,” it is said. Beliefs steer people in life. Some beliefs are harmless, some are the motive force for good, and yet others are delusional, misguided, and even outright dangerous. Every version of the belief called “Islam” ranges from the delusional to the dangerous.

Islam is a Grand Delusion, birthed by Muhammad’s hallucination, which he relayed to his first wife and employer, Khadija. Greatly frightened, he told Khadija that he had been visited by a jinn (devil) in the Hira cave. Khadija comforted the distraught man by assuring him that the episode was Allah’s way of choosing him as his messenger. Muhammad believed his rich wife-employer, who was 15 years his senior, and the delusion became a belief—Islam.

Remarkably enough, under the early tutelage of Khadija, Muhammad succeeded in attracting a number of influential followers. Before long, the movement gathered more and more power through violent campaigns, and faith was taken in new people and alien lands. This grand delusion, Islam, presently has in its stranglehold over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims.

Islam is rooted in the primitive tribal mentality of “We against Them,” “We the righteous against the heathens,” and “We the servants submissive of the Great Allah against the rebellious enemies of Allah.” Islam is a polarizer. Islam is an enemy-maker. To Islam, a non-Muslim is a combatant against Allah, and he is fair game to be subjugated and killed.

When some billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching order of life, the rest of humanity can ignore the threat only at its own peril.

Once again, a resurgent Islam is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of life-in-hand foot-solider fanatical Muslims are striving to kill and get killed. All they want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulse on their way to Allah’s promised glorious paradise. In the background, the foot soldiers’ wishes are granted by their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs. Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death, what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.

The campaign of death waged by the Islamist jihadist, be he a puppet or a puppeteer, is energized by the belief in delectable rewards that await the faithful implementer of Allah’s dictates. Through highly effective indoctrination, the jihadist has come to believe firmly in Islam’s grand delusion. He believes that Allah is the one and only supreme creator of earth and heavens, that it is his duty and privilege to abide by Allah’s will and carry out his plans at all costs; he believes firmly in a gloriously wonderful immortal afterlife in paradise, for which a martyr’s death is the surest quickest admission. Although the dominating theme of the delusion is quasi-spiritual, the promised rewards of the afterlife awaiting the martyr are sensual and material. All the things and activities that the jihadist desires and cannot attain or practice and rejects in his earthly life will be purified and proffered to him in the paradise of the next life. Thus goes the delusion.

It is important to understand that the human mind is not a perfect discerner of objective reality. In actuality, reality is in the mind of the beholder. The outside world supplies bits and pieces of raw material that the mind combines to form its reality. Depending on the type and amount of bits and pieces a given mind receives, its reality can be very different from that of another.

The more prescribed and homogeneous a group, the greater its consensual reality, since the members share much in common experiential input and reinforce each other’s mindset. Thus, members of a given religious order, for instance, tend to think much more similarly to one another than to members of other groups with different experiential histories.

Therefore, various approximations of objective reality rule the mind. The degree to which these approximations deviate from the larger group’s consensual reality determines the extent and severity of the delusions.

A cocaine mainliner, for instance, under the influence of the drug, may become convinced that a bug is burrowing under his skin. In his absolute, although false, certitude of the reality of his perception, cocaine users are known to take a knife to their own body to dig the burrowing bug out before it has penetrated too deeply.

A methamphetamine user’s reality is often distorted differently. Under the influence of the drug, an intense paranoia overtakes him. His reality is dominated by the belief that one or more people are lurking about to harm or kill him. He may wield a deadly weapon, going from room to room, from closet to closet, in search of the assailants.

If you believe a bug is camping deeply inside your body, you might try to dig out the non-existent bug. If you believe that people are lurking around the house to harm or kill you, you go after them before they get you. If you believe that all the troubles of the world are due to the evil-doings of the non-Muslims who war against Allah, then you do all you can to fight and kill them, particularly since Allah tells you to do so in the Quran.

The drug-induced delusions are hallucinations. They are dramatic and usually transitory, while religiously-based implantation of ideas program the mind with lasting delusions.

Delusions, even when they are at great variance from the objective reality, can rule the mind without the need for drugs or as a result of neurological dysfunctions or other factors. The young and the less-educated are most vulnerable to believe the claims of charlatans, con artists, and cunning clerics as truth and reality.

A tragic example of the young’s susceptibility to induced delusion is the case of thousands of Iranian children who were used as human minesweepers in the last Iran-Iraq war. The mullahs issued made-in-China plastic keys for paradise to children as an enticement to go forward and clear the minefield with their bodies ahead of the military’s armored vehicles. The children believed the murderers and rushed to their deaths, thinking that they were headed for Islam’s glorious paradise.

The repeated, intense indoctrination of the children even changed the perception of some of the charlatan mullahs so that they, themselves, believed their own lies, took their own keys to Allah’s paradise, and rushed to their deaths, clinging to the plastic trinkets. Hence, some of the puppeteers, in this instance, became puppets themselves. Such are the follies and fallibilities of the human mind.

It is, therefore, understandable that many of the higher-up Islamic puppeteers, who are usually brainwashed from early childhood, devote their fortunes and persons to the implementation of their deeply engrained delusions.

Deluded by the threats and promises of Islam, Muslims, poor or rich, vie with one another to further the violent cause of Allah.

Many non-Muslims are also victims of a different, yet just as deadly, delusion. They believe that Islam is a religion of peace, that only a small minority of Muslims are jihadists, and that Muslims can be reasoned to abandon the Quran-mandated elimination of the non-believers. These well-meaning simpletons are just as deluded as the fanatic jihadists by refusing to acknowledge the fact that one cannot be a Muslim and not abide by the dictates of the Quran.

©2024. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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The Islamic Transformation of Ohio in One Video

Open borders is just the first step. This is the next step.

If you’re wondering why they’re wearing blue, that’s the color of the Somali flag.

Rep. Ismail Mohamed was one of the state legislators whom the Freedom Center covered in our Election Jihad report.

In Ohio, newly elected Rep. Munira Abdullahi, who had been employed and backed by the Muslim American Society, an organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood with ties to Hamas, and appeared with an MAS figure who had promoted Hamas, was elected and became the only one to vote against a state resolution in support of Israel after the Oct 7 Hamas attacks.

The Somali Islamist politician accused Israel of “genocide” and “apartheid”, and demanded an end to foreign aid to the Jewish State. She then helped spread false claims that Israel is “the biggest child-killer in the world” and promoted a hate crime hoax spread by CAIR that a driver shouting “long Live Israel” had tried to run over a Muslim.

Rep. Abdullahi along with Rep. Ismail Mohamed were two new Muslim representatives elected to the Ohio State House. Both had been backed by the Muslims for Ohio PAC.

Like many local Islamist political groups, Muslims for Ohio PAC is interwoven with a local community group that receives government funding: MY Project USA. Zerqa Abid founded MY Project USA, which receives government grants from, among others, the federal government and the city of Columbus, and Abid is also a founding member of Muslims for Ohio PAC.

While My Project USA works on voter registration, Muslims for Ohio PAC promotes candidates. “Collaborators” for a My Project USA conference included Muslims for Ohio PAC, the local chapter of CAIR and the Ohio State University’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association with sponsorship from the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus.

This is how Ohio and America are being transformed at the state level. Open borders is just the first step.

Our Election Jihad report shows how the next step works. Refugee resettlement nonprofits and aid groups sponsor and set up community groups for the new arrivals. Those groups transition into political and voter turnout operations meant to elect Democrats. The process takes much less time than you might think.

And the consequences are catastrophic.

(Note the Somali flag in the background.)

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The U.S. State Department is Playing to an Empty House

The idea of a two-state solution being pushed by the U.S. State Department does not attract the Palestinian Arabs. They are not interested in the benefits Arabs have in Israel as opposed to in the surrounding states.

So why did the Palestinian Arabs sign the Oslo Accords?

Signatures on documents do not mean much in Arab culture. Two weeks after the signing of the Oslo Agreement, PLO leader Yasser Arafat spoke at a mosque in South Africa. He told his listeners he had not signed a peace agreement with Israel, but rather a truce. He compared the Oslo Accords to the 10-year truce the Islamic prophet Muhammad signed at Hudaybiya (near Mecca) with his enemies, the Qureysh.

Two years later, when Muhammad realized he was stronger than his enemies, he attacked and conquered Mecca—so much for the 10-year truce with his enemy. Similarly, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and Iran saw Israel as divided and weak. But they miscalculated because this wasn’t Hudaybiya. They did not understand Israel’s internal fortitude.

But all is not lost when it comes to Israel-Arab relations.

Muslims can sign agreements with their opponents which—unlike the Hudaybiya truce—can be periodically renewed when they believe it is in their interests. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew that once they needed what Israel had to offer—such as hi-tech, security, and investments—the Arabs would be the ones reaching out for an agreement.

This is the reason why the Abraham Accords were signed.

Moreover, Muslims respect power. When President Donald Trump killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, Iran became relatively quiet, except for some small probing attacks. We saw this also in Iran’s reaction to President Ronald Reagan before he came into office. Forty-five minutes before Reagan took the oath of office, Iran put U.S. hostages on a plane to freedom. Iran saw Reagan as a cowboy who would destroy them.

You can make things happen once you understand the Muslim respect for power.

In comparison, a compromise is a blot on your honor. In the Muslim world, compromise is a sign of weakness, encouraging others to strike you even harder. You cannot give in. The Americans have not yet learned the Muslim concept of compromise.

Concepts are not the same as words. Anybody can look up a word in a dictionary and translate it the way one likes. We assume a concept means the same thing in every language. But cultures don’t communicate—they clash.

I once asked an Arab friend how he would translate the word “compromise.” He thought about it for a week and came back to me. He said the closest he could get to it in Arabic was a word with the root N-Z-L. We both laughed because in Hebrew that root means “a runny nose.” In Arabic, it means to get off your camel—the common idea being to go down; that you humiliate yourself. That is what the Western concept of compromise means in Arabic.

Compromise means humiliation.

That is why there can be no two-state solution. At best, it would be a temporary solution, but it will be like Gaza: they will take what you give them and then use it against you. An agreement might be renewed over and over, but it is not designed to last and there is always the possibility it will fall apart. There may be others who will be better allies, especially if they are also Arabs and in the same clan. It is not a nice way to live, but then again, there is no such thing as peace.

That doesn’t mean we cannot have long periods of quiet.

Originally published by Elder of Ziyon.

©2024. Harold Rhode. All rights reserved.

The conclusion of a series of interviews with Harold Rhode. The first two interviews in the series are available here and here.

This is Not About Israel, It’s About Islam

We can stand together or fight and die alone.


This war was declared over 1,000 years ago.

Flying planes into skyscrapers, running over French pedestrians with a truck, massacring Indian families, and Israeli concertgoers is the same war.

Islamic terrorists and their allies try to make every attack about the specific context of a situation in a particular corner of the world.

That’s a lie that too many fall for.

Even countries that are the victims of Islamic terrorism often draw lines between the “good” and “bad” Islamic terrorism. We do it ourselves. But there is no such line. Whether a country is good or bad makes no difference. Islamic terrorists come for every country eventually. There is no major nation that has not faced Islamic terrorist attacks as long as it has a significant Muslim population within or near its borders.

America, India, Canada, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil (a planned Olympic massacre) are just a few of the examples. The smaller countries that have come under attack are nearly endless. If you exist, you’re a target.

Hamas is just an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which is a global operation. Its Al Qaeda splinter group has carried out attacks all over the world.

What happened in Israel is not about Israel: it’s about Islam.

It’s all too easy to nod along with the propaganda, the claims about “Palestinian oppression”, and ignore the historical context of over 1,000 years of Islamic violence against non-Muslims that follow the same exact model, or the global reach of Islamic terrorism today.  The pattern is easy to spot and so people have to be indoctrinated into ignoring it.

So many have been told that they’re ‘Islamophobes’ if they notice Islamic terrorism, let alone condemn it. The politically correct alternative is to condemn the targets of Islamic terrorism instead. It’s easy and it’s safe to condemn Israel. And then to pretend that every country being attacked somehow had it coming. The only group that doesn’t have it coming are the Islamic terrorists.

The world has to break out of this Stockholm Syndrome before it’s too late.

9/11 wasn’t just about America. The Westgate Mall attack wasn’t just about Kenya. The Mumbai attack wasn’t just about India. The Bastille Day attack wasn’t just about France. The attacks in Israel now aren’t just about the Jewish State.

The world has a choice. We can stand together or fight and die alone.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Merkel’s Muslim ‘Rapefugees’ Firestorm

Geert Wilders, Leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) and PVV Parliamentarian Machiel de Graff introduced a new Arabic term epitomizing the vicious misogyny of Sharia culture, taharrush, in an Op Ed in the Dutch daily, The Post reprinted by The Gatestone Institute, “Give Women the rights to protect themselves.” The term taharrush represents a permissive form of male  group sexual assault that we  first saw in the virtual rape of South African CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Larson surrounded by a crowd of 200 men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the heady days of the Arab Spring in February 2011.

geert wilders Source Gatestone Institute

Geert Wilders. Source: Gatestone Institute

Wilders and de Graff in The Post op ed explain the Sharia underpinnings of this barbaric practice:

Taharrush is the Arabic word for the phenomenon whereby women are encircled by groups of men and sexually harassed, assaulted, groped, and raped. After the Cologne taharrush on New Year’s Eve, many German women bought pepper spray. Who can blame them?

A culture that has a specific word for sexual assaults of women by groups of men is a danger to all women. The existence of the word indicates that the phenomenon is widespread. Frau Merkel, Prime Minister Rutte and all the other open-door politicians could and should have known this.

The Islamic world is steeped in misogyny. The Koran explicitly states that a woman is worth only half a man (Suras 2: 228, 2: 282, 4:11), that women are unclean (5:6), and that a man can have sex with his wife whenever he wants (24:31). The Koran even says that men are allowed to have sex slaves (4:24), and that they have the right to rape women whom they have captured (24:31).

The hadiths, the descriptions of the life of Muhammad, the ideal human being whose example all the Islamic faithful must follow, confirm that women are sex objects, that they are inferior beings like dogs and donkeys, and that there is nothing wrong with sexual slavery and raping female prisoners.

Taharrush is quite common in Islamic countries. Women are frequently surrounded by men and subsequently abused. The Egyptian website Jadaliyya points out that it also happens to veiled women. Women are victims simply because they are women and not because they have provoked the men by their conduct or “provocative” clothing. It can happen in the streets, public transport, supermarkets, or during protest demonstrations.

merkel protester with card

Protester with “Merkel Must Go” card.

What erupted in Cologne, Germany and other major cities on New Year’s eve when a crowd of 1,000 North African and Arab appearing migrant young men surrounded young women was taharrush resulting in the filing of more than 553 claims by defenseless young women in Cologne, 45% of them for sexual assaults. The preponderance of assailants were migrants. Wilders and de Graaf in the immediate wake of the Cologne incidents confronted  Mark Rutte,  Dutch leader of the ruling coalition in the Hague Parliament and the Justice minister with a list of questions about what they were going to do to protect Dutch women from untoward group sexual assaults from  migrant men in Holland. See our Iconoclast post, “Geert Wilders on New Year’s Eve Sexual Assaults in Cologne Germany by Arab and North African men”.

Angela Merkel in the wake of multiple occurrences of group sexual assaults has had to face a veritable firestorm of criticism arising from the admittance of more than 1.1 million migrants and refugees, in the benighted belief that Germany’s acute demographic deficit and labor shortage might be solved. Instead of compliant asylees respectful of the laws and values of the welcoming German society, they witnessed ingratitude in riots in reception centers, attacks on German citizens and the multiple taharrush episodes.  On January 10th, a migrant from a German reception center was shot and killed in an attempted attack at a Paris police station. The BBC reported that a note found on his body indicated he pledged loyalty to  the Islamic State and perpetrated the attack  in reprisal  for French air attacks on the self-declared Caliphate.

The BBC reported that 2,000 protesters marched in Leipzig at a Legida rally, the local affiliate of  Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization  of the West (Pegida). They were  protesting the Merkel government admittance of the flood of asylees and migrants.  211 extremists at a separate demonstration in the section of Connewitz  were detained  by police for vandalism. The following day , German Justice Minister Hiko Mass announced relaxation of deportation rules:

Speaking days after Chancellor Angela Merkel said “clear signals” had to be sent to potential offenders, Mr. Maas tweeted that the core of the government’s reforms would be to ease extradition of foreign criminals and strip them of refugee status if they had committed particular offences.

Penalties for sexual offences would be appropriate “regardless of current events”, a government statement said (in German).

“We will tighten criminal law to make deportation easier,” Mr. Maas said, adding that binding agreements would be sought with offenders’ country of origin. But he stressed that migrants should not come under general suspicion.

Several women in Cologne were raped and the justice minister said the definition of the offence in German law was too narrow. “There’s no clear answer in law as to how much resistance a woman has to offer for an offence to constitute rape,” he said.

Wilders and DeGraaf in their  op ed responded to  the cavalier suggestion  by the Cologne Mayor about what might be done to protect women facing the fearsome threat of a  taharrush  attack by Muslim men:

Last week, the Mayor of Cologne advised her female citizens to keep strange men at an arm’s length. In Vienna, the head of the police said that in future women better not walk the streets alone. It seems that Austria will soon resemble Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed alone in the streets. Earlier, in the Netherlands, women from families hosting asylum seekers had already been advised to wear “appropriate” clothes (even indoors), “so no prom dress or bare shoulders,” and to ensure that they are never alone in the room with male asylum seekers.

But the behavior of women has nothing to do with it. Moreover, it is a disgrace that our women are advised to modify their behavior because the government has invited thousands of dangerous men into our country. When one imports Islam in the Netherlands, one also imports the misogynistic culture of Cairo, Damascus, and Riyadh into our cities. Next to headscarves, burkas, mosques, honor killings, and terrorism, we now have taharrush.

The solution is not that our women keep an arm’s length from the male barbarians, but that the government keeps these men thousands of kilometers away from us. Until that happens, other measures are needed. It is irresponsible to turn our country into a jungle and subsequently send women unarmed into the jungle. They must at least have the right to defend themselves. Contrary to countries such as Germany and France, in our country it is illegal to carry pepper spray. With the Netherlands now being overrun by men who see women as inferior sex tools, it is time to legalize pepper spray in the Netherlands as a weapon against taharrush.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

UNESCO: Muslims Own the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem

During  a panel discussion at Pensacola’s Brit Ahm Messianic Synagogue on June 27th following a showing of the APT documentary The J Street Challenge an audience member raised a question about the ancient Jewish claims to Jerusalem in the context of a recent Vatican declaration recognizing a Palestinian State. The panel spoke about the long term Vatican quest for internationalization of Israel’s eternal undivided capital of the Jewish nation that had protected the precincts if the world major faiths. Something that had not occurred during the 19 year occupation of Jordan until the liberation of the holy city by  the IDF on June 7, 1967. Panelist Mike Bates 1330amWEBY Talk Show Host and station  general manager discussed  the fictional Islamic doctrinal claims, based on the legend of Mohammed’s fabled night ride, to the Temple Mount including the  Western Wall –a revered Jewish site over two millennia. In our Iconoclast  post on the Pensacola event, we wrote:

That led to an exposition by Mike Bates about the realities concerning Muslims claims of control over Jerusalem. He noted the legend of the Prophet Mohammed’s dream of a night ride on the human headed horse to “the farthest Mosque” where he meets Jesus and rises to heaven to meet Abraham and other Jewish prophets all deemed Muslim. Bates pointed out that nowhere in the Qur’an is Jerusalem mentioned. Moreover, Muslims did not occupy Jerusalem until The Rash dun Caliphate conquest and submission to Caliph Umar bin –Khattab  in 637 C.E. Caliph  bin Khattab initiated the construction of what ultimately become  the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount and established a Dhimma or pct for governance of subjugated peoples of the book, Christians, Jews and others. Muslims claim any conquered land as a possession in perpetuity under a trust from their god Allah. Jews have lived in Jerusalem for more than 3,000 years.

We raise this because this week, a committee of UNESCO approved a resolution condoning these Muslim claims to the Western Wall based on Mohammed’s night legend, virtually excluding from consideration ancient Jewish historical claims and even Christian ones preceding the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem.  Patrick Goodenough  revealed the absurdity of the UN panel proposal in a CNS report, “UNESCO Backs Muslim Narrative on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount”:

A key committee of the United Nations cultural agency adopted a resolution this week whose language implicitly endorses the legend underpinning Islam’s claim to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount — the assertion that Mohammed tied his winged steed there while en route from Mecca to heaven.

Famed as a place of Jewish pilgrimage and prayer, the Western or “Wailing” Wall is the remnant of a retaining wall on the western flank of the platform that once housed the biblical Temples. As such it is the closest point observant Jews are usually able to get to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

But for Muslim leaders wanting to deny Jewish historical and religious claims to the site, it is dubbed the al-Buraq wall, and the area in front of it the al-Buraq plaza. This is based on the belief that the founder of Islam stopped there during his “night journey” from Mecca to heaven, and tethered his legendary steed, al-Buraq, there while he led prayers with a congregation of “Islamic prophets” including Adam, Noah and Joseph.

Now the World Heritage Committee of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has adopted a resolution which refers to the area below and to the west of the Temple Mount as the “Buraq plaza.”

The resolution, proposed by three Arab countries, Qatar, Algeria and Lebanon, refers to the Temple Mount itself as a “Muslim holy site,” with no reference to its importance to Jews.

It slams Israel for various actions in Jerusalem’s Old City, including construction and excavation work. A light railway system whose route passes near – but does not enter – the Old City is said to be damaging the “visual integrity and the authentic character of the site.”

The resolution’s introduction at the World Heritage Committee’s session in Bonn, Germany, brought criticism from Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold, who said it was “full of distortions and is totally disconnected from reality on the ground.”

Gold said in a statement the measure “deliberately ignores the historical connection between the Jewish people and their ancient capital,” and also does not acknowledge Christianity’s links to Jerusalem.

He accused the UNESCO committee of hypocrisy, at a time when jihadists were destroying ancient heritage sites across the region.

“As the historical heritage sites of this area are being systematically destroyed by jihadist forces, such as the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, UNESCO’s adoption of utterly false allegations about Israeli archeological practices is misplaced and hypocritical, at best,” Gold said.

UNESCO in 2011 became the first U.N. agency to admit “Palestine,” a decision that triggered a U.S. funding cutoff mandated by a 1990 law barring financial support for “the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.”

Goodenough noted the motivation for the UNESCO resolution:

The Palestinians want parts of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, as capital of a future independent state, and Palestinian and Islamic figures have long challenged Jewish historical and religious claims to the mount.

For instance, fatwas attributed to former grand mufti of Jerusalem Ikrama Sabri and former mufti of Egypt Nasr Farid Wasil, dispute Jewish claims to the Western Wall.

“Al-Buraq Wall is part of al-Aqsa Mosque and it is an Islamic endowment,” Wasil said. “Hence, it is not permissible in shari’a for any non-Islamic quarter to claim or possess it. The wall would remain part and parcel of Islamic heritage and endowment forever.”

“Al-Buraq Wall is part of al-Aqsa’s western wall and the whole walls of al-Aqsa are Islamic endowments,” said Sabri. “Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, had honored and blessed the place by tying al-Buraq to the wall, during his Night Journey and Ascension to the Heaven.”

“Hence al-Buraq Wall belongs to Muslims alone in the four corners of the earth and will remain so till Judgment Day. We neither admit nor acknowledge that Jews possess it (al-Buraq Wall) and, also we stress that there is no stone there dating back to Hebrew history.”

This UNESCO  al-Buraq (Western Wall) resolution  based on the fiction of Mohammed’s night ride to “the farthest Mosque” preceded Al Quds or Jerusalem  Day, July 10, 2015  observed during  the last Friday during Ramadan.   The Founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran, Ayatollah Khomenei  declared it as a religious duty for all Muslims to further the “liberation” of Jerusalem . Al Quds Day promotes the Palestinian assertion that Jerusalem should be its state capital reflecting the Muslim claims based on the Mohammed night ride legend.  Qur’anic doctrine and Shariah law considers all conquered territory, whether Jerusalem or Andalusia in Southern Spain, as a Waqf, or trust conveyed by Allah in perpetuity.  The Times of Israel  reported  Jerusalem  Day was celebrated in Tehran with millions marching shouting “Death to  America and Israel”, burning  US and Israeli flags, an effigies of Netanyahu and the Saudi King.  We note that the events in Tehran occurred in the midst of the P5+1 negotiation for a nuclear deal with Iran.

In our July 2015 NER interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld, we asked him about UN engaging in such delegitimization of Israel. He replied:

The UN is a major demonizer and hatemonger of Israel. That includes UN-associated bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Commission, UNESCO, UNWRA and many others agencies. The UN is supposed to be a moral body. When it comes to Israel its views reflect the extreme moral degradation of this largest supranational body. Hate expressions and double standards against Israel symbolize that.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem.