What if, rather than destroying it, we move it. It was sited there to obliterate the memory of the Temple, and the church too which stood near the site. You cite the destruction of the Buddhist shrines as a horror, which it was. But if the Taliban builds a Mosque at the site, you switch to their side. Buddhist's, if you are able don't move the Mosque and rebuild your shrines, you're a fanatic. It's easy to become a fanatic Ohioan. The Dome was sited there for a reason, the same reason the shrines were destroyed, the permanant destruction of a non Islamic religion. The Buddhist's might want to rebuild their shrines one day. Is that spiteful? Why is the desire to reconstruct the Temple spiteful?
...and above all, since some of you feel the need to preach, no way to reach any of the unconverted and bring them to your Faith.
I'm unclear who that is adressed to. I have no need to preach, and my religion doesn't encourage me to "reach any of the unconverted and bring them to your Faith". Not an issue.
Do you even stop to consider what sort of a precedent you are advocating? Perhaps the point you make made sense when Richard The Lion Hearted went off on an adventurous Crusade in the late 12th Century; but Saladin prevailed, and Jerusalem remained unquestionably a Muslem city for the next 700+ years. Surely, there becomes a time when some sort of right vests--don't your think? Do we even know what uses the Indians might have been making of the sites of some of our sacred shrines, 700 or 1300 years ago? Do we really care?
What if the Druids want to start reclaiming sacred shrines in England?
The idea that the location of the Mosque was somehow a hateful act, needs also to be laid to rest. Abraham, Moses and Jesus are next to Mohammed himself, recognized as the Great Prophets of Islam. You may disagree with their teachings about them, but you make a foolish argument when you suggest that they were somehow dishonoring them.
But the real point is what I began with. How can you suggest some wrong to Christians and Jews when the Moslems who honor the same historic figures, use a site that had been a ruin for over 600 years? Surely 600 years was long enough to see if anyone else, who claimed a right to it, was going to use it.
Of all the issues that need to be sorted out, that we not have a century of religious war--and we have had whole centuries of religious war in the past--surely this idea of yours has to be very near the bottom in importance. It reminds me, frankly (the reason for the Indian mention above) of the time when Dartmouth students started a movement to give New Hampshire back to the Indians. But then the Indians had been there only two centuries before. Nineteen would have been a bit much even for the Dartmouth "Liberal" crowd.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site