Posted on 11/16/2001 1:08:51 PM PST by veronica
JERUSALEM - Working under cover of darkness, Muslims in Jesus' boyhood town of Nazareth have begun constructing a mosque alongside the Basilica of the Annunciation, despite protests by the Vatican and Israeli authorities.
The Vatican, in a statement issued in Rome, called on the Israeli government to stop "Muslim extremists" from building the mosque next to the church marking the site where Christians believe the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus.
"Building the mosque here will in effect put this holy place in a state of permanent siege and make its gate a gathering place for the most hostile elements," the statement said, according to the Vatican news service Fides.
Israeli authorities charged today that the work constituted a provocation and threatened to stop the construction by force, even as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins. Local Christians warned the work could re-ignite the interreligious violence that erupted at the site last year.
Construction on the mosque began Monday, without the necessary permits, but the Israeli Lands Authority ordered it halted. The Wakf, or Islamic Trust, stopped the work today but said it will start again if it does not get the necessary permits within a week.
Witnesses said crews were working at the site Monday and Tuesday nights in an apparent attempt to keep the construction secret.
A lawyer for the Muslims, Dan Shafrir, said the construction had been going on day and night. The Israeli Lands Authority promised to help the Islamic Trust obtain the permits for the Muslim-owned land if the construction was stopped, Shafrir said.
"We're not hiding anything from anyone," Shafrir said. "Whether or not we get the permits, we will continue construction in a week."
The construction was halted only temporarily, and steel beams arrived at the site today, said Ahmed Saleh Hamudeh, the head of the Islamic Trust in Nazareth.
Christians are a minority in Nazareth, and tensions over the mosque have been running high between the Christian community and the Muslim majority in the city of 70,000. Nazareth is the largest Arab city in Israel.
Under pressure from Christian leaders, including the Vatican, the previous Israeli government worked out a compromise in 1999 to defuse a tense situation in which Muslims were praying in a large tent a few meters from the church, as a planned millennium visit by Pope John Paul II neared. The Vatican had hinted the issue could force the cancellation of the pope's visit, which took place as scheduled in March 2000.
According to the agreement, the tent was removed, and a mosque would be built on one third of the 2,000-square-meter plot, but only after the millennium year.
Church leaders in the Holy Land complain that Israel made excessive concessions to the Muslims, while ignoring promises made to Christian leaders, including the pope.
Despite the pledges of the previous government, Israeli officials are indicating that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will not allow construction of the mosque.
"A decision on the matter will be made by the government" due to the sensitivity of the issue, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said. "We are absolutely against the work going on at the moment."
Israel believes that starting construction days before the start of Ramadan is a cynical use of the holiday by the Muslims, with the hope authorities will not act to stop the work, a government official said on condition of anonymity.
The authorities will forcibly halt the work if necessary, the official said.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, himself a Muslim, sided with the Christians in the dispute, saying in December 1999 that the Muslims should not build the mosque so close to the church.
The Muslims say a Crusader-era sage is buried at the site, and they hoped to build a large mosque there. Church leaders wanted the plot for a plaza to accommodate millennium pilgrims.
want to site some examples please? I don't know of any Christian holding a knife to your neck saying convert or die, as some moslem do.
Why don't you invite them to construct a mosque on the site of the WTC rubble? /sarcasm!
Good grief, the spot they have chosen is considered Holy Ground by two major religions. I don't care how Muslims are in this world, they have no right encroaching on other people's Holy sites. Why don't you invite the Scientologists to construct a meeting hall there?
Last Palm Sunday, hearing these words in a Trinitarian sense for the first time, I was filled with a holy dread that I still can't describe. Especially when I think of St. Andrei Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity (which Fr. Klores mentioned in last Sunday's sermon), the classic depiction of the Trinity's perfect order, unity, and accord, to imagine the Son cut off and forsaken from the order of that perfect symmetry -- to imagine the Trinity's very existence, and with it all-that-Is, perched on the edge of chaos -- the suffering and death of the Son transcend mere grief, and become a fearful thing.
The primal war between God and the rebel angels who stands for confusion and eternal death thus emerges as a foreshadowing and prophecy of this supreme and everlasting triumph over death.
I'm not a Buddhist. And -to be honest- I don't believe that Buddhists are on the 'right track', religion-wise, so I'm not here to carry their water.
But their shrines were there first, LONG before the tali-whackos ever dragged their gutter-cult 'religion' into that area. Those village-idiot moslems had no reason (other than their ingrained desire to vandalize everything around them) to destroy them like that.
Islamazombies are like wild dogs that ravage every creature within their reach, killing more than they can possibly eat and pissing on what's left over.
What are they afraid of, going cut into the trinket sales?
Why hello, Jack Chick. Would you mind listing some actual history instead of propaganda?
I guess you right.
Now let's all go back to 22 A.D. when one of the Apostles threatened to slap some non-Christian with a reed of palms if he wouldn't "convert." Those Apostles -- what Christian extremists they were...
Any small mention that Israel should maybe also stop Muslim extremists from killing Jews- without the Vatican condemning "excessive" Israeli actions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.