Cordoba is So Relevant for Jerusalem

Have you heard of The Tribunal de les Aigües de la Vega de Valéncia?

No?

I wasn't quite aware of it either.  As I learned, it

was most likely established during Roman times, but assumed its current form when the Caliphate of Cordoba reigned over the Iberian peninsula more than a millennium ago...Modeled on tribal councils, the court was tasked with resolving water disputes among farmers and maintaining peace in the community...During the Caliphate [i.e., the Muslim 8th century conquest and occupation of Spain - YM], water disagreements were resolved inside the main mosque, but with the arrival of Christian rule the mosque was destroyed and a cathedral erected in its place. For Muslims, who still made up the majority of the farming community, entering the cathedral was prohibited. To accommodate all claimants, the tribunal migrated to just outside the door.

Cordoba, as I have previously blogged, had a church,

a Catholic church built by the Visigoths...When Muslims conquered Spain in 711, the church was first divided into Muslim and Christian halves. This sharing arrangement of the site lasted until 784, when the Christian half was purchased by the Emir 'Abd al-Rahman I, who then proceeded to demolish the entire structure and build the grand mosque of Cordoba on its ground. After the Reconquista [aka, the liberation of the Spanish homeland - YM], it was converted to a Roman Catholic church, culminating in the insertion of a Renaissance cathedral nave in the 16th century. Since the early 2000s, Spanish Muslims have lobbied the Roman Catholic Church to allow them to pray in the cathedral. This Muslim campaign has been rejected on multiple occasions, both by the church authorities in Spain and by the Vatican.

But that Muslim campaign, oddly enough, sounds very much like what the Jews would wish to achieve on the Temple Mount.

And in April 2010, there was an "incident": 

two Muslim tourists were arrested at the Cathedral, after an incident in which two security guards were seriously injured. The incident occurred when the building was filled with tourists visiting the cathedral during Holy Week.

According to cathedral authorities, when half a dozen Austrian Muslims, who were part of a group of 118 people on an organized tour for young European Muslims, knelt to pray at the same time, security guards stepped in and "invited them to continue with their tour or leave the building". A fight took place between two of the tourists and the security guards. The security guards suffered serious injuries and had to be hospitalized and two Muslim men were detained.

Reflecting on this clash, someone said:

it was important to counter the theory of clash of civilizations, which he said was fueled by the extreme wings on all sides. He called on participants to find ways to ensure that "the spirit of tolerance"...reaches all levels of society.

"Our dialogue, our spirit of tolerance has not trickled down yet to the street, to the communities, to the clubs, to the little guy on the street anywhere in the Muslim or Christian world," he said.

"We will have to find ways and means in order for this spirit...to be felt among the masses: that we have to live together, that Islam and Christianity and all other religions, including Judaism, all of them worship God and there are no reasons for confrontation, but reasons for mutual respect and tolerance."

Who was the speaker?  Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League.

Well, well.

Mansur Escudero, a Spanish convert to Islam, is leading the movement that is pushing for the right of Muslims to pray at the Cordoba Cathedral. He has said

"I don't think it's important for Muslims. I think it's important for humankind," Escudero says. "We think this is a beautiful paradigm of tolerance, knowledge, culture. People of different religions living together."...

and Escudero continued:

this is not about winning a victory for one religion or the other.  He said: "They pretend that we are trying to conquer the mosque again. That's not the intention at all. We want it to be a place where anyone -- whether Muslim, Christian or Jew -- can do his meditation or his internal way of worshipping, or praying or whatever he wants to call it."

In another report, Escudero declared

this is not about winning a victory for one religion or the other.  He said: "They pretend that we are trying to conquer the mosque again. That's not the intention at all. We want it to be a place where anyone -- whether Muslim, Christian or Jew -- can do his meditation or his internal way of worshipping, or praying or whatever he wants to call it."

Some seek to portray this as if 

the building evokes a supposedly harmonious past, when Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in peace, an idea that the Spanish refer to as convivencia, or “coexistence.”

If the above is true and a genuine ex‎pression of Islamic "tolerance", why not apply it to Jerusalem's Temple Mount?  By the way, the new mayor of Córdoba, Isabel Ambrosio, has vowed to return the title of the mosque-cathedral to the public domain. The battle over cross, crescent and conservation rages on.

If the Muslims demand a right to pray at a location of a former Mosque, built where a Church was, why are they so adamant that Jews, whose Temple area was occupied by Muslims, who built a Mosque on it, but these Jews now want the right to pray there?

Are not we Jews doing the same thing the Muslims are?

Our rights are less than what they demand for themselves?

What is good for a Muslim in Spain and in Turkey, is surely good for Jews in Jerusalem.

After all, our two Temples were on the Mount first.

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UPDATE

A new proposal to establish that the Western Wall is part of al-Aqsa Mosque is set to be submitted by the Palestinians to a vote at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) next week, Ynet learned Thursday.

UPDATE

Israel says it objects to any international presence on Temple Mount

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