Jerusalem, City of God, but God where art thou?
Jerusalem and religion
To an outsider, there is nothing remarkable about this land. Located in the Judean Mountains between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, the 125 kilometre square piece of land called Jerusalem, unlike the natural resources rich countries surrounding it, does not boast so much resources. However, this narrow strip of land, especially the Old City that makes up 0.9 square kilometre inside the modern Jerusalem, holds the greatest symbolic significance for the three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is considered as the place ‘where God resided’, the city of God. It is their Holy Land. For Judaism, Jerusalem has always been at the heart of their Judaist faith while for Christianity, whose main difference from Judaism is in the fact that it accepts Jesus as the Messiah, it is, among other things, the city where Jesus walked, was crucified and resurrected. In Islam, which calls the city Al Quds, it is the third most sacred city after Mecca and Medina, and Prophet Muhammad’s accession place to Heaven. The Old City of Jerusalem, surrounded by walls, has within its bound important holy sites to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These holy places, most notably Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque are within short distance with one another. Most remarkably, Temple Mount is sacred to all three.
Peace does not dwell in the Holy Land. Jerusalem, whose name comes from the Hebrew word ‘Yerushalayim’, means, ironically, the ‘foundation of peace’, but it has not known peace for a long time. Instead, thick cloud of tensions among and about these faiths has cloaked the city, often erupting into violent conflicts. While these tensions, rivalry, and clashes are concerning God and His ways, where does God stand in all these? By God I mean the moral conscience that guides these religions. How has their respective ‘God’ handled these tensions?
The religious tensions and clashes in Jerusalem has its beginning with the birth of a baby called Jesus. That marked the beginning of animosity between Judaism and Christianity. The Jews sought to thwart Christianity from its birth. The Holy Land, of all the lands of Israel, oversaw the most extreme hostilities towards Jesus Christ: it was in Jerusalem he was tortured and crucified. The reason given for his Crucifixion in the New Testament is his proclamation that he was the Son of God, the Messiah prophesied in the Torah. However, the real reason is because the religious leaders of that time felt their position and privilege was threatened by increasing people’s acceptance of Jesus. Thus, they pushed aside their moral conscience, the God within themselves, took up the Judaist-religion card and incited the masses and turned them against him. This came to haunt them for the rest of their existence. They were branded as the people who killed Jesus and the hatred and wrath of the Christian world was upon them. (After Jesus’ resurrection, his disciples and the first Christians were also persecuted in the hands of Jews). This hatred culminated into the nightmare known as the Holocaust where about six million Jews were exterminated.
Around four decades after its birth, in 638 C.E., Islam came to the Holy Land through the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem. This later on led to one of the greatest religious wars known as the Crusades. The Crusades were a series of religious wars the Roman Catholic Christians of Europe waged against the Islamic Empire that controlled Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the bone of contention: freeing Jerusalem from the Muslims and making it safe for the Christian pilgrims was the ostensible purpose. This was their calling from God. Death for the cause guaranteed them a place in heaven. Religion was a camouflage though. The real reason was rather earthly: it lied in the political and economic aspirations of the people in power. The result was the occurrence of one of the bloodiest wars in the history of humanity. The Washington Post estimates that 1.7 million people died in a time when the world population was around only 300 million. (Michaelson, J. February 6, 2015) Other sources put the figure much higher. Robertson (1902) in A Short History of Christianity estimates that nine million people died in these wars. In any case, the crusades brought so much massacre in the name of religion. Historical sources testify that atrocities committed during the crusades were from both the Christian and Muslim sides.
Religion has become lethal by mixing with politics and found expression in the toxic ideologies of Zionism and Arabism. This became apparent when the idea of formation of the State of Israel began in 1917 with the Belfour Declaration. This development ushered in clashes between the Jews and Arabs which escalated into full blown series of wars with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 known as Arab-Israeli war. The surrounding Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, declared war against the new Israeli state. This was in essence battle for Jerusalem. Jerusalem has never known peace since. Hostility, war, suicidal bombings abound. Statistics given by Jewish Virtual Library titled Vital Statistics: Total Casualties, Arab-Israeli Conflict (1860 — present) puts the number of persons killed at 24,969 Jews and 91,105 Palestinians as well as 36,260 Jews and 78,038 Palestinians wounded to date (n.d).
One of the biggest problems bedeviling the world, disrupting its peace, is religious extremism, especially Islamic extremism such as IS and Al-Qaida. Although most of the attacks perpetrated by these groups are in the Muslim world away from Jerusalem and their root cause is to attain power (Cordesman, October 17, 2017), the City of God is central to the religious cover-up. As Chris Mitchel makes clear in the title of his book, Destination Jerusalem: ISIS, convert or die, Christian persecution and preparing for the days ahead, Jerusalem is the final goal of radical Islam. Zeidan (2006) states that the 1967 six-day Arab-Israeli war ‘was a catalyst for the development of what he calls ‘radical apocalyptic Islamic fundamentalism’. Hence, the unremarkable, small strip of land of the Old City of Jerusalem, has caused far greater bloodsheds of and about itself than any piece of land on the universe all the way from the Crusades, the Arab-Israeli-war to the wars and suicide bombings of radical Islamism that has been plaguing the world.
Today, Jerusalem is still as volatile as ever. Shootings and killings are the order of the day. Yesterday’s news on Aljazeera, for instance, reads Israel Army Kills Palestinian in Weekly Gaza protest: Ahmed al-Qarra was shot in the stomach by Israeli soldiers and succumbed to his wounds, Gaza’s health ministry says.
In the meantime, God has been driven out of Jerusalem. Consequently, Jerusalem has become a symbol of their deep-seated ego. God, the real God, the true universal moral conscience that binds all humanities, stands outside of the Holy Land, the Gate of Mercy shut to Him. The institutions of faith, which are meant to guide people to Him, have seemed to say, “This is not about You anymore. This has never been about You. This is about our pride!” In His place, these religions have created their own God in their own image, recreating the ‘moral’ conscience that suited their egoistic nature and justified their evil acts in the name of religion.
Bibliography
Aljazeera. (2019, July 27). Israel Army Kills Palestinian in Weekly Gaza protest. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/israeli-army-kills-palestinian-weekly-gaza-protest-190727082329747.html
Cordesman, A. (2017, October 17). Islam and the Patterns in Terrorism and Violent Extremism. Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved from https://www.csis.org/analysis/islam-and-patterns-terrorism-and-violent-extremism
Jewish Virtual Library. (n.d). Vital Statistics: Total Casualties, Arab-Israeli Conflict (1860 — present). Retrieved from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-casualties-arab-israeli-conflict
Michaelson, J. (2015, February 6). Was Obama right about the Crusades and Islamic Extremism? (Analysis). The Washington Post.
Mitchell, C. Destination Jerusalem: ISIS, convert or die, Christian persecution and preparing for the days ahead. (2015). C&L Publishing Llc.
Robertson, J.M. (1902). A Short History of Christianity. London: Watts & Co.
Zeidan, D. (2006). Jerusalem in Islamic fundamentalism. EQ, 78(3), 237–256. Retrieved from https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/2006-3_237.pdf
