Thursday, October 29, 2015

Temple Denial

Dr. David R. ReaganPDFBy

Most people are familiar with Holocaust Denial — the assertion that the Holocaust is a myth conjured up by the Jews to create sympathy and support for the Jewish people. But few seem to be aware of a similar anti-Semitic concept called "Temple Denial." It is the claim that no Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.

This idea circulated among Muslims for many years, but it did not become well known until the year 2000 when Yasser Arafat proclaimed to President Clinton at the Camp David Summit Conference that "Solomon's Temple was not in Jerusalem, but Nablus."1 This bizarre claim was picked up by the press and was circulated worldwide. Two years later, Arafat again asserted that there was "not a single stone proving that the Temple of Solomon was there [in Jerusalem] because historically the Temple was not in Palestine at all."2 Then, to everyone's amazement, he claimed it was located in Yemen and that he had personally visited the site!



For example, Sura 17:1 in the Quran tells about a miraculous night journey of Mohammed from the "Sacred Mosque" in Mecca to the "Farthest Mosque," whose location is not identified. No mosque of any kind existed in Jerusalem during Mohammed's lifetime, yet over the years, Muslim commentators have claimed that it was located in Jerusalem. What is relevant to Temple Denial is the fact that an 11th Century Muslim historian and a 14th Century Iranian religious scholar both claimed in their writings that the mosque was the Al-Aqsa Mosque (which sits on the Temple Mount today) and that the mosque "was built on top of Solomon's Temple."3

Al-Haram Al-Sharif
The 1924 Islamic guidebook to the Temple Mount which affirms that the Jewish Temples were located on the Mount. "Al-Haram Al-Sharif" is the Islamic name for the Dome of the Rock. It means, "The Noble Sanctuary."





As far back as 1973, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia proclaimed on Radio Riyadh that "the Jews have no connection whatsoever with Jerusalem and have no sacraments there. They claim that the Temple of Solomon is there...[but] the Temple of Solomon does not exist in Jerusalem."6

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is both a Holocaust Denier and a Temple Denier. He had this to say about the Jewish Temple: "...they [the Jews] claim that 2,000 years ago they had a Temple. I challenge this assertion that there ever has been a Jewish Temple. But even if so, we do not accept it..."7 How's that for logic?

Walid Awad, former director of publications for the PLO, stated in December 1996 that the Jewish Temple was probably located in "Jericho or somewhere else."8 The Palestinian Authority's chief religious official, Taissir Tamimi, has stated, "I know of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, but I don't know of any Jewish holy sites in it."9

A Palestinian academic, Dr. Issam Sissalem, Professor of Middle East History at the Islamic University of Gaza, has asserted that Solomon's Temple never existed. He has further stated that the idea of such a Temple "is the biggest lie in history by those liars [the Jews]."10 A few years later, he added, "There is no historical text that proves the existence of Solomon's Temple, or that it has a real history, other than the Bible, and the Bible...was based on ancient legends."11

In November of 2014, the PLO's Department of National Affairs issued a warning to journalists not to use the term, "Temple Mount" when describing the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.12 The reason for this demand: "The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is not a disputed territory and all other terms, therefore, are null and void."




2) The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) “Interview with Yasir Arafat,” Special Dispatch Series, No. 428, October 11, 2002,


4) David Barnett, “The Mounting Problem of the Temple Denial,” August 29, 2011,, page 2.

5) Ibid.


7) Ibid., page 4.

8) Ibid.

9) Ibid., page 5.



1 comment:

Billy said...

I'm not surprised muslims are Holocaust and temple deniers. After all, they are deniers of Christ! The koran (or hooooooooleeeeee kourrrrrrrrraaaaan as Barak HUSSEIN Obama the Jew hating "Christian" says) states Jesus is not the Son of God.