[justiceseeker93]

Please ping to your respective ping lists!

[angkor]

Looks lie they're up and running:

http://www.antiquities.org.il/home_eng.asp

BTW, why is it that the Moos claim "ownership" to an area which has been sacred to Christians and Jews for 2,000 and 4,000 years respectively?

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

----------------------------

Webcam here

Middle of the night, they're not doing a thing. But you can watch.

[Fred Nerks]

MOSLEM CLAIM TO JERUSALEM RESTS ON WOBBLY VERSE


From Arutz-7 Thursday, Aug. 28, 2003 / Rosh Chodesh Elul 5763

A commentator in the official Egyptian government weekly, of all places,
writes this week that the entire Moslem claim on Jerusalem and El-Aksa is based on a mistaken reading of one chapter of the Quran. Ahmed Mahmad Oufa wrote that the verse that mentions a night journey by Muhammed to a mosque has nothing to do with Jerusalem, as is generally claimed, but with a mosque near the holy Moslem city of Medina.

Prof. Moshe Sharon, Middle Eastern expert in the Hebrew University, expressed
great surprise at the fact that such an article would be published in Arabic and in an Arabic-speaking country. Speaking with Arutz-7 today, he said, "All in all, this is not a new claim. We must remember that Jerusalem is not mentioned at all in the Quran [though it is mentioned hundreds of time in the Bible - ed. note]. The verse in question is in Sura [chapter] 17, which states that Muhammad was brought at night from one mosque to a "more distant" - aktsa, in Arabic - mosque. The first Moslem commentators did not explain this as referring to Jerusalem at all, of course, but rather as a miraculous night journey or night vision or some such.

In the beginning of the 8th century, however, they began associating this with Jerusalem, because they had a need to start giving sanctity to Jerusalem, and so they started connecting this verse with Jerusalem... Originally, however, the Moslems recognized the area of the Dome of the Rock as holy because of the Jewish Temple of King Solomon."

This last point may be borne out, Nissan Ratzlav-Katz notes, by the fact that
the modern Arabic name for Jerusalem, Al-Quds, is adapted from the original
Arabic name for the Temple Mount: Bayt al-Maqdis - or Beit HaMikdash [Hebrew
for Holy Temple].

It should further be noted that the Al Aksa mosque was built on the Temple
Mount 621 years after Mohammed's death.

[Fred Nerks]

...a mural which appears to depict Mohammed (sixth picture down) on a contemporary building in Iran. The mural shows Buraq (the animal that carried Mohammed on his Night Voyage, described as being white and having the face of a woman and the tail of a peacock, which this creature is and does) carrying a figure who could therefore only be Mohammed. A word-for-word transliteration of the Farsi caption to that picture is (according to this automated translation site), "The Messenger mounted mainland shiny door village (yzdlaan) (kvyry) village blinds to ascension wine river," which obviously doesn't translate well but which does make mention of "The Messenger," a traditional epithet for Mohammed (as the messenger of Allah). Note: this image is hosted on the Web site of the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri, which is sponsoring a contest of cartoons about the Holocaust as an outraged reponse to the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in the West. Yet the newspaper itself is currently displaying this depiction of Mohammed. (This image also on the newspaper's site appears to be a contemporary image of Mohammed as well.)

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full/

[Brad’s Gramma]

BTTT!!

[SunkenCiv]

I'm at work (no, really), but I plan to ping this later. Figured you'd like a look first. :')

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)