What is behind Iran’s obsession with Jerusalem? With the al-Aqsa mosque?
What is behind Iran’s obsession with Jerusalem? With the al-Aqsa mosque?
In January, 2020, a US drone fired a rocket that killed Qasem Solemani, a general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). (Iran being a rare country that does not puts its own name on its main army unit.) Solemani had for many years headed the “al-Quds” force or simply the “Quds”, division, responsible for Iran’s fights abroad in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen and more recently in Lebanon and Gaza. Solemani was a hero to terrorists throughout the Middle East and his portrait is ubiquitous is Shia islam communities.
“Quds” is a word for Jerusalem in Arabic. Why would this man Solemani head the “Quds” force, as he went about directing murders and bombings in places like Syria and Iraq? Where does Jerusalem fit into his terror? As a notorious and wanted man, it was brazen of Solemani to just blithely show up at the Baghdad International Airport in 2020, and his arrogance finally got him killed; but he’d led the Quds Corps for probably 25 years and provided bombs, weapons, and even the troops to fire the weapons and plant the bombs that have killed and injured thousands of US troops, Israelis, not to mention perhaps tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis. He was a religious fanatic in addition to being a military many and was in awe of “martyrs”.
When Hamas launched their invasion of Israel on October 7th, 2023, the operation was titled “Operation al-Aqsa Flood”, with al-Aqsa the name of a mosque in Jerusalem, or Quds. Since the invading force was far too small to reach Jerusalem - was in fact designed as a terror and kidnapping exercise - then the name al-Aqsa Flood is symbolic, sharing a symbolism or aspiration even with Iran’s “Quds”, none of whose troops have ever set foot in Jerusalem.
Is the al-Aqua Mosque so significant?
The importance of the al-Asqa mosque and nearly adjacent Dome of the Rock are rooted in an incredible tale. The present al-Asqa mosque is on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, likely the site of Israel’s ancient Second Temple, perhaps the First Temple as well, where Moses’ Ten Commandments tablet were believed stored. There are also various legends about the rock in the mosque/temple: that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac there, other such tales. There is nothing explicitly in the Quran about Mohammed going to Jerusalem, though one Sura (chapter) describes his flight (Irsa’ is the word for flight, coincidentally) from Mecca to perhaps the rock near what is now the al-Aqsa on the back of a winged horse. He then allegedly met the various prophets there (Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus), and later was speaking with them in heaven as well, where he was meeting with God/Allah. Tales then get a little vague, since later post-Quran Islamic writings, the “Hadith”, are not considered the words of the Prophet, but among these other writings and commentary, some say that Muhammed went to the al-Aqsa Mosque on the flight, which sounds odd since there was, as yet, no Islam or mosques.
Anyhow, there’s little historical or contemporaneous evidence that Muhammed ever went to Jerusalem. Being an agnostic on many subjects, I think a good policy is: the more fantastical a tale the more skeptical one should be, whether it is parting of the Red Sea, or walking on water. Suffice it to say, regardless of where he went in his travels, Muhammed returned to Medina and to Mecca and founded Islam. The Two Holy Mosques of Islam are in Mecca and Medina (Muhammed is buried in Medina). They are thus the “Two Holy Cities”. Various Arab leaders including the Saudis, the (now) Jordanian royals, and some Egypt-based caliphs have vied for the title of “Keeper of the (Two) Holy Cities” throughout history. Jerusalem became the third holiest city probably because it was already a holy city – to Jews and to Christians.
As described by a (Shiite) scholar based in London[1], the al-Asqa Mosque was built around 692 CE by Marwan, a later relative of Muhammed, as the caliphate colonized the area around the eastern Mediterranean, and his sons controlled the area after his death:
During the ruling period of Abdul Malik, son of Marwan, there was a special focus on Jerusalem. He wanted to turn people away from making the pilgrimage to Mecca so that they would not be influenced by Abdullah, son of al-Zubair, who had declared himself a caliph and therefore posed a challenge to the son of Marwan. As a result, many fabricated narrations were spread regarding the significance of Jerusalem by the followers of Abdul Malik, son of Marwan, as an attempt to attract people to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem instead of Mecca! Abdul Malik, son of Marwan, built the Dome of the Rock and claimed that Allah, the Most Exalted, had made it His footstool on earth and that the Prophet (peace be upon him and his pure family) had ascended from it to the heavens!.
There is no proof found to validate such claims. This rock has no significance in Islam; it was originally sanctified by the Jews who were able to, cunningly, persuade Muslims to sanctify it too! The intention of Abdul Malik, son of Marwan, for building the Dome of the Rock and encouraging people to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem was to persuade them to sanctify Jerusalem more than the Ka’bah and the Grand Sacred Mosque!
So, Marwan’s son wanted to make the al-Asqa an attraction. Now, as a reminder to readers, Iranians, north Yemenis (zaydis), and many arabs (Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Iraqis), and non-arabs are Shiites, while control of the Two Holy Cities has usually been vested in a) an Arab and b) a Sunni. I’m not suggesting that Shia Islam by itself has beat the drum for the fethishization of the al-Asqa (though it seems that way recently). Shiites (Persian Shiites) did, at one point in 930 CE, steal the black Rock from the inside Ka’ba (Grand Mosque) in Mecca and take it up into Iraq for about thirty years. But things sorted themselves out and what was left of the stone (it has been broken) is now encased in silver and viewed, and kisses, by millions of pilgrims to Mecca since its return. While the title Sharif of Mecca, or Keeper of the Two Holy Places has changed hands many times since the time of Saladin (about 1187 CE), there has been no doubt what the two holy places are and where they were. Owning the Two Holy Places is a source of honor and income for whomever controls them, since making the journey – the hadj - at least once in their lifetime is an obligation for any Muslim who can afford it.
When you hear, or are told, that Jerusalem and the al-Asqa mosque are hugely significant to Islam, you are being told a story that is littered with specious and wildly disagreed upon views – even amongst Muslims. The promotion of what I’ll call al-Asqa-ism began with the Mamluk caliphs, in Cairo, who controlled a vast swath of the Arab empire, including Jerusalem, Syria and only after a few hundred years, did they control the Hejaz, or the Two Holy cities. Modern al-Aqsa-ism is political and cultic, Jerusalem became “holy” because it was disputed. Initially, the Mamluks only had Jerusalem (with said Temple Mount) and Turks and Mamluks fought variously, against the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Orthodox Christians) and the Crusaders (Catholics, mostly from France and Italy). There were several Christian rulers of Jerusalem long after the time of Moslem conquest in the 7th century. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted, for example, over a hundred years (from about 1099 to 1187 CE). (The Knights Templar even made the al-Asqa their headquarters.) To put things into context, what I’ll call the greater Muslim Empire – of Arabs, Turks/Persians – did not completely control the middle east and what is now called Turkey until forty years before Christopher Columbus first sailed the Western hemisphere. But by that time, Islamism was pushed out of Spain, just as it was gaining power in a small bit of eastern Europe. And another clarification for readers, what I call “Islamism”, is not Islam and I’m not an “islamophobe”. Islamism is the notion that Islam should be the paramount faith among all others, and that those who do not defer to it or pay money (pay Jizya) to their Islamist government are subject to death. This has existed in the past and will exist again if certain groups have their way.
So where does Iran, or Persia, fit into all this? The Persians have been aspiring imperialists for several thousand years and in different times have been wildly successful. Since it happened before the time of the Prophet most Yemenis and Iranians are too ignorant to know about the Sasanian Empire, fifteen hundred years ago, but it is almost a macabre coincidence that Houthi Yemenis are again vassals of modern Iran. Persia was later a partner to the Ottoman Empire, and in the grand scheme of things has been much more of an offender than offended against. Still, Iran is a shadow of its former self. Europeans have largely left Iran/Persia to itself, although the Soviet Union and Britain did invade during World War II. The Shah of Iran’s father was at the time partial to the Nazis, and the British needed the oil. Modern Iran, the Islamic Republic, is really a modern-day religious experiment, a cult-led state.
Iran became the late twentieth century nemesis of Saudi Arabia; not simply because Iran is the de facto seat of the Shia and the Saudi’s of the Sunni, and of Islam. They are rivals in the oil business, in control of the “Persian Gulf” and the “Arabian Sea” and rivals for influence in countries like Yemen, Syria, what is called Palestine. Just as a cow will never be a horse even if it lives among horses, Iran will never control the Two Holy Places. Iran wants what it can get however. When I speak of Iran, I am speaking of the actions that animate the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A government can be very different from a people and a society. There are probably millions, maybe tens of millions, of Iranians who despise their current government, which is a vicious and fanatical regime that kills and impoverishes its’ own people to pursue ideological goals elsewhere.
Iran, and the IRGC, were very active in the later stages of the Lebanese civil war which began in 1975. The Lebanese Civil War was initially a war to drive the Palestinians, in the form of the PLO, out of Lebanon. The subsequent Lebanese Civil War raged for over ten years and included intervention by Israeli troops and even US “peacekeeper” troops. The IRGC send about 1,300 Iranian troops into the Bekka valley of northern Lebanon to train what became Hezbollah, a Shiite paramilitary that has since taken over control of Lebanon. When you go to Israel’s northern border on the Mediterranean (at Rosh Ha’Nikran) you see the Hezbollah flag, not the Lebanese flag on the other side of the border. The Hezbollah flag looks a lot like the IRGC flag, the same upward thrust arm, the same AK-47.
The Iranians, the IRGC, have also armed and trained Houthi Yemen. The “Houthis” are a tribe of Zaydi Shiites from a very poor and backward country. Yemen has in the last ten of so years been the scene of the civil war and among the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. 350,000 dead, imagine. The Iranians have armed the Shiites in Yemen and the Saudis and Gulf states get arms from the West, from the US. Where has the outrage been? Where was the outrage when 400,000 died in Syria as Hezbollah, Iran and Russia propped up the Assad regime.
Now, of course, the Houthis, who’ve taken over part of Yemen, are firing at ships in the Red Sea.
I lived in North Yemen as a child, there was a civil war there in the 1960s between the Zaydi ex-royals and an Arab Nationalist government. Hard to believe, but the Saudis (Sunnis) backed the Zaydi royal family (Shiites), but that was then, this is now. Things change, but Yemen is still a dirt-poor country, again at war with itself. North Yemen is a playground for Iran. In 2022, the UN said that 420,000 Yemeni children were severely malnourished requiring medical intervention
Are the Iranians bringing food to the Shia children of Yemen? No, of course not. They are giving Houthis missiles to fire at any ship they can hit – supposedly in support of Hamas. Iran has created this “Axis of Resistance” around Israel. They have propped up the most despicable people: Hezbollah who have destroyed Lebanon; Assad who has destroyed half his own country Syria; the Houthis who could not care less if their own children are starving, let alone Gaza’s; and yes, Hamas, Iran’s baby, the scum of the earth. On April 2, Israel (apparently) killed four senior IRGC officers in Syria, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who is head of the “Quds” force of the IRGC for Syria and Lebanon, and presumably for Hamas. The IRGC, the Quds force, is really stage-managing the entire show. On April 5th, Iran mounted a show of force, and naval vessels, in the Persian Gulf, in observance of “International Quds Day”. Who invented International Quds Day? Well, it was first celebrated in Iran in 1979, after the Islamists seized power. They invented it you might say, but I imagine it is celebrated on many US campuses now.
People are being taken in by what is, probably, from soup to nuts, an Iranian campaign to take Jerusalem. Former US official John Bolton, a hawkish antagonist of Iran (who was apparently a target of an Iranian assassination plot) has stated[2] that the Hamas attacks October 7th were basically the start of an Iranian war against Israel. It would seem foolish of Iran to take that on, even using proxies, but it has been long-planned and – as we see from the seething anti-semites and pro-Houthi demonstrators in the streets of North America and Europe - many people will be foolishly cheering on Iran and not even know it.
[1] Sheik Al-Habib, www.alhabib.org
[2] April 4, 2024, CNBC