Chuck Baldwin and Paul Craig Roberts (and some FReepers) are very sad.
Jordan gave up its claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1980s, when they expected that whole area would go to the Palestinian Arabs. Therefore the destroyed synagogues shouldn’t matter to the Jordanians now.
They need to blow up Al-Aqsa and rebuild Solomon’s Temple.
The Arab Muhammadans are entirely too eager to claim a site as “holy” to their religion, and then bring violence against anyone who disagrees. Travel much in Southwest Asia and you’ll find there are at least 10,000 oases the Muhammadans claim are holy to their religion because the prophet Abraham once watered his camels there. It’s the Muslim version of “George Washington slept here.” There’s no way to prove they’re wrong, and they’ll stone you to death if you argue the point, so there you are.
There is only one mention of “Mecca” in the Quran, but it isn’t spelled the same (even in the Arabic) as the modern city, so you only have their word to take for it that it’s the same place.
The Quran nowhere states that Muhammad lived in this “Bakkah,” nor does it state this was where he received his revelation from god (both of which now are enshrined in Muhammadan lore).
It further states the inhabitants of this place where Muhammad lived were farmers who grew grain and olives. By Arabian standards, that hints at a lush and verdant place. But in the time of Muhammad the area around Mecca was too dry and barren to support such agriculture.
Muhammadans always pray to the “qibla,” the direction to Mecca. All mosques have an apse oriented to the qibla, indicating to the worshipers in which direction to face when praying. The oldest mosques still in existence (all of which have fallen to ruin) are in northern Saudi Arabia, north of modern Mecca. In these oldest surviving relics of a mosque, the apse faces the east, toward the rising sun, not to the south, toward modern mecca.
The first Christian historians to record the habits of the Muhammadans stated that they always prayed while facing to the north, regardless where they might be.
So the early Muhammadans do not appear to have made up their minds where the holy city of Muhammad was. But at some point, and probably for politically-expeditious reasons, they settled on Mecca.
So the religious significance of Mecca is a complete fiction.
And if Mecca is a fiction, why would we expect the story of how Jerusalem’s Temple Mount became holy to the Muhammadans to be any better?
The First Temple of Solomon was built on that site sixteen centuries before Muhammad was born. The Muhammadan claims on the Temple Mount strike me as quite similar to the Soviet Union’s occupation of East Germany after WWII. The only legitimacy in their claim is in their ability to bring war if you object.
The Muhammadans have no legitimate claim to the Temple Mount. I would love to see the Israelis raze the Al-Aqsa and rebuild Solomon’s Temple where Solomon intended it should be.