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Sunday, October 11, 2015

Muslims upset that Wikipedia has a "Temple Mount" entry in English

There have been a few articles this weekend from angry Muslims who realized that the non-Arabic Wikipedia entries on The Temple Mount are called "The Temple Mount" - and that it mentions anything besides Islamic legends about the area.

Someone seems to have started a rumor that the page has only recently been renamed "Temple Mount" and that it was formerly entitled The Noble Sanctuary or Al Haram al Sharif. The Jews, of course, are the culprits.

Dr. Aida Al-Najjar of Jordan swallowed this rumor whole, and rails againat those Jews, saying "Not only did the Zionists to kill all the Palestinians in cold blood, they also reinforce what they are doing by feigning objectivity and science concerning the conflict over al-Aqsa mosque....Wikipedia's information is based on incorrect and unscientific and inaccurate Jewish myths for distribution in foreign languages. As can be seen, Zionism replaced "the Haram al-Sharif" with "the Temple Mount." This indicates that [Wikipedia] is working in order to please the Jews who rely on their networks and contribute to change the facts.

Other articles say that the Wikipedia entry in English only refers to the sanctity of the place from the Jewish perspective while the text does not mention its religious significance for Muslims, except for one sentence that says that Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, and it was the site of Mohammed's trip to heaven.

A quick perusal of the actual Wikipedia entry on the Temple Mount shows that this is quite a lie.

The discussions behind the page show some pathetic attempts by Muslims to erase history. For example, it indicates that many people tried to change the name of the article. Here is one comment:
"please change Temple Mount to AL-aksa mosque because its disrespectful to the feelings of one billion muslims in the whole world, and tha Temple Mount is just a myth in the heads of zionests "
Another would-be editor referenced the absurd NYT article from last week as evidence that no Temple ever existed:
The article discusses the religious presumption of the existence of the first and second temples on the Temple Mount as a given and a considerable amount of space is dedicated to discussing the numerous archeological digs which have taken place in order to try to locate some evidence of the existence of the temples on the Mount, however, the article does not state that so far no compelling evidence has been located to prove that the Temple Mount is the actual location of the destroyed temples, assuming that they ever actually existed, since we are talking about something that has disappeared more than 2000 years ago. There is ample independent reporting of the lack of concrete evidence of the existence of remains of the temple on the Temple Mount, see for example http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/historical-certainty-proves-elusive-at-jerusalems-holiest-place.html?_r=0 and http://www.haaretz.com/life/archaeology/.premium-1.627324
The Arabic entry for Al Haram al Qudsi a-Sharif has no such issues. It doesn't mention the Temples, or even Judaism. There is no controversy in its pages. The entire entry is a straight reading of the myth of Mohammed and his flying donkey, and then goes in detail on the various structures there today.

The thing is, in a few years the French Wikipedia entry will likely resemble the Arabic one, and the English one may follow soon after.