Israel today is suffering from a culture increasingly dominated by an orthodox Islamic interpretation of history. According to this interpretation, the Temple in Jerusalem has nothing to do with the Jews, the Bible was re-written to contradict Islam, the Jews are descendants of monkey and pigs, America is engaged in a crusade to destroy Islam, while Muslim jihad is a purely spiritual concept, and so forth. 

No one really believes any of these things, which are all nothing but a self-serving pack of lies. But for many Muslims that does not matter. Sincerity and religious belief do not necessarily go together. Just ask the millions of innocent non-Muslims who were forced to utter the Muslim creed and whose resulting forced conversions were considered valid by Muslim law. What is important here is what you say, not what you believe. So we should beware of humoring our Muslim friends by acquiescing in their lies under threat of violence. 

Chief among the lies is that Mohammed visited Jerusalem, and that this single mythological visit transformed the city from the eternal center of the Jewish faith into a Muslim suburb. Together with that goes the denial that there is anything Jewish about Jerusalem or that the Temple of Solomon ever stood on the Temple Mount. Yet, in 1935, the Moslem religious authority administering the Mount, the Wakf, itself issued a pamphlet describing the Temple Mount as the site of Solomon’s temple, so they seem to know it perfectly well. Yet, in our increasingly medieval world, we are all supposed to just pretend and go along with it, all in order to avoid threats of violence. 

The latest travesty in this regard concerns the slow, steady destruction of the remains of the Temple site, right under our eyes. Innumerable Christian and Jewish sites in Arab countries have been destroyed in recent years, as they were in the past by the eternal march of victorious Islam. Who today remembers that Medina, the second most holy city to Islam, was a predominately Jewish city before Mohammed came on the scene? Who remembers the murders he committed in order to cleanse that city of its ancient inhabitants? You won’t find any Jewish groups claiming rights to Medina today. We don’t want it and we don’t need it. But isn’t the Temple of Solomon a different story? 

The massive construction work being done on the Temple Mount has led to a predictable result: the imminent collapse of one of the Temple Mount walls. When Israel decided, in what turns out to have been a foolish act of generosity, to leave this holy site in the hands of Muslims, she never thought that this prerogative would be used to destroy the very walls of the Mount. If Jews would not be able to visit the site of the Temple, it was hoped, at least, that they would be able to continue to pray, as they have for centuries, at the outside retaining walls. But of course once the walls collapse that will be difficult to do. 

The structural damage is serious. It is no longer enough to talk about halting the destruction, now we need to repair it. Easier said than done. In an act of outrageous anti-Semitism, the Wakf refuses even to allow Israeli engineers to inspect the damage or assist in repairing it and has warned of violence if Israelis take any part. Instead they have turned to Jordanian engineers, who have recommended dismantling part of the wall and replacing its stones. Are we really going to allow Jordanian engineers and Palestinian workers to dismantle the walls of the Temple Mount and permanently alter the heritage of King Solomon? What will we answer afterwards when the Muslims inform us that now there is surely nothing Jewish about the site, since the original stones have been replaced by good Muslim hands? 

In a sense, the efforts to transform the Temple Mount is another proof that the Wakf knows exactly whose Temple it is. There would be no reason to make major structural changes in the site, if the goal were not to destroy the remnants of pre-Islamic Judaism and convert the site, for the first time, into a genuinely Muslim site. 

Let’s try a little mental exercise. Muslims have been in control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on-and-off for over 1,200 years. Maybe it is time to give someone else a chance. We don’t want to hurt any feelings, so let’s try to make the most reasonable proposal possible. How about this: Muslims get the place Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. They deserve it for being such good sports. The Jews will get it only on Saturday and the Christians only on Sunday. That is not really fair at all, since there is nothing Muslim about the place. It is not fair at all, since this site is the only holy site in Judaism. But let’s just continue bending over backwards for a while. Now, how will the tolerant Muslims react to that absurdly pro-Muslim compromise? Who wants to wager that they won’t scream bloody murder? How dare ‘infidels’ imagine that our rights are worth one fifth of theirs? How dare we imagine that the true history of the Temple merits any consideration in comparison with the false history invented by the Muslims? 

Maybe it is time for us to stop living in a world of make-believe. There is a limit to how long we can continue giving away all of our historical possessions on the basis of deceitful stories. Some Muslims seem to understand the power of lies very well, and they know that if we act as though it is true, eventually we may just come to believe that it is true. And then what will become of the Jewish and Christian religions? 

It is nice to imagine that Islam is a tolerant religion, but it would be even nicer if there were any good grounds for such imagination. Is it really reasonable for us just to pretend that everybody and everything is tolerant even when they aren’t? Will pretending really change anything? Religious toleration is a very nice and truly important thing, but by the same token, religious intolerance is not. Is tolerating intolerance a contribution to world peace? Is indulging wild fabrications really an incentive to compromise?