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AL-AQSA MOSQUE |
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AL-AQSA MOSQUE |
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al-Aqsa Mosque |
In the morning of August 21, 1969, a fire at Masjid al-Aqsa, the al-Aqsa Mosque opposite the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, gutted the southeastern wing of the mosque. The area is known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary. The location of the mosque has been venerated by Muslims for almost 1,300 years, as the reputed site of a visit by Mohammed on his winged horse, El-Baraq.
The fire destroyed a priceless one-thousand-year-old wood and ivory pulpit (minbar)that had been sent from Aleppo by Saladin. Damage to the mosque later was restored by contributions from Jordan at a cost of about $US9 million.
Immediately after the fire was discovered, stormy demonstrations broke out in the Arab sections of Jerusalem and in the territories. Police blocked all entrances to the Temple Mount and mobilized thousands of officers to deal with rioters. In the afternoon, a general curfew was declared in East Jerusalem. It was assumed by officials that the fire was caused by an electrical fault, and the fire was put out quickly, but rumors spread of Israeli responsibility.
The president of the Muslim Council claimed arson and charged deliberately slow response on the part of the fire brigades, although brigades from West and East Jerusalem fought the blaze together for four hours while an angry Muslim crowd chanted "Allahu Akbar" and "Down with Israel." The fire was put out by Israeli firemen, despite attacks upon them by Muslim bystanders, who also cut some of the fire hoses. Onlookers stoned Israeli fire trucks summoned to extinguish the fire, claiming they brought gasoline instead of water to the fire.
By the following day, it become apparent that a non-Jewish tourist from Australia was responsible for the blaze. On August 23, Dennis Michael Rohan was arrested for arson, suspected of starting the fire. Rohan was an Australian Protestant follower of an evangelical sect known as the Church of God. By his own admission, Rohan hoped to hasten the coming of the Messiah by burning down the al-Aqsa Mosque. Rohan told the court that he acted as "the Lord's emissary" on divine instructions, in accordance with the Book of Zechariah, and that he had tried to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to rebuild the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount. He was hospitalized in a mental institution, found to be insane and was later deported from Israel.
However, anti-Israel accusations persisted. The fire occurred within two years after the Temple Mount had returned to control of a Jewish state for the first time in two millennia, a result of the Six Day War. Arab leaders, stung by the Israeli victory, blamed the Jews for the fire in protests and riots that erupted throughout the world. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia seized on the charges of Israeli culpability to rally Muslim heads of state, convening a first-ever Islamic Summit in Rabat, Morocco in September 1969, leading to the creation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The fire has been regularly commemorated with attacks on Israelis. For example, on August 19, 1993 nine Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon. A statement issued by Hezbollah announced the assault was timed to mark the anniversary. After an August 21, 1995 bus bombing in Jerusalem, Syrian radio aired statements by Fayiz Qabdil in a "Palestine Broadcast" segment linking the bus attack to commemoration of the al-Aqsa fire. Qabdil said:
Even Muslim spokesmen in the United States repeated this calumny. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle published a letter on June 13, 1996, from Ahmed Ibrahim Lobad asserting that:
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in The Washington Post, October 16, 1996, includes "the 1969 arson attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque" in a list of alleged Israeli violations of the sanctity of Islamic sites in Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority teaches through its schoolbooks and through its leaders that Israel stood behind the fire as part of its war against Islam. During a special program that commemorated the burning of the mosque, Sheik Ikrima Sabri, the Mufti (Islamic religious leader) of Jerusalem said:
Even the Wall Street Journal, as late as November 13, 2000, erroneously claimed that Rohan was Israeli, burning the al-Aqsa on "what Jews call the Temple Mount." The Journal ran a correction on November 15, 2000.
Ironically, it is not the Jews but rather Muslim authorities who control the immediate area of the Temple Mount. As a result of the Six-Day War in 1967, when Jerusalem once again became a united city, the Israeli Knesset passed an amendment to the Law and Administration Ordinance, which extended Israeli sovereignty to the eastern part of the City of Jerusalem, including the Old City where the Temple Mount stands. At the same time, the Knesset also passed the Safeguarding of the Holy Places Law, which states:
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