Belated Cordoba Cathedral Update

(ZENIT News / Córdoba, 09.19.2025).- The Cathedral of Córdoba, one of Spain’s most iconic religious monuments, faced an unsettling episode last month when repeated bomb threats forced police to sweep the site and activate emergency protocols. Authorities later arrested a man in Palencia, hundreds of kilometers away, accusing him of public disorder and hate crimes linked to the incident. On August 12, the cathedral’s security staff received nearly twenty threatening phone calls over several hours, warning of explosives in the building. For more than an hour, the vast medieval complex—visited daily by thousands of tourists and pilgrims—was combed by officers and evacuated in parts, until investigators determined the alarm was false. While no explosives were found, the caller, according to Spain’s National Police, used racist and xenophobic language alongside his threats. Tracing the calls eventually led officers to the north of the country, where the suspect was taken into custody.

Who was the suspect?

Background. Additional background.

"...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?"

  

^

The Jewish Cordoba

I have blogged multiple times here on what I see as a parallel between the conflict between Catholics and Moslems over the Cordoba Cathedral and that of Jews and Moslems at the Temple Mount.

In short, I ask why can Moslems demand equal rights to a church, including prayer therein, that Moslems occupied and turned into a mosque after conquering Spain and then following the Reconquista, they were prohibited from doing so yet, when Jews retook the Temple Mount where Moslems had built an Islamic compound after conquering and occupying Judea, Jews demanding equal prayers rights and additional privileges are somehow in the wrong.

Read here; here; and here. And let's not forget the Hagia Sophia (and here).

And now what do I read?

Medieval synagogue discovered under Spanish church

Remnants of a medieval synagogue were discovered during restoration of altarpiece in Santa Maria la Blanca church in Seville. Archeologists performing restoration work on the apse and altarpiece of the Santa Maria la Blanca church in Seville, Spain, have uncovered the remnants of a medieval synagogue Ark.

I checked here:

Santa María la Blanca is the only church in Seville which has the remains of three religions. Formerly a mosque, it was made a synagogue on the orders of King Alfonso X in 1252, and was then consecrated as a Christian temple in 1391

The church:

The outline of the ark:

"In our work we have documented the rear wall of the main altar, made with solid bricks of variable dimensions but around 29x14.5x5 cm, prepared for rope and firebrand as it is a load-bearing wall. This wall has a thickness of about 94 centimeters," explained archaeologist José Antonio Valiente. The hejal that was discovered in 2012, like the mihrab of the mosque, is a rectangular space, open in front, "the wall documented during this performance would correspond to its rear closure, on the right side wall as shown. If you look straight ahead, it would include the space where the sacred books of the Torah would be placed and which is oriented to the east according to the canons of these religious buildings," the archaeologist explained.

If you are visiting Seville, go here:

Its in the Juderia, the old Jewish quarter.

Yes, the synagogue that existed there is well-known but finding the Ark is new:

José María Rincón, the director of the restoration, said that the Ark had been concealed by the wall-sized, gilded baroque altarpiece, built in the mid-1600s. Rincón called the discovery “a unique opportunity to witness an element unseen for 350 years, soon to be veiled once more, likely never to be seen again.” The Ark was in “an exceedingly precarious” condition, he continued. 

All confimed.

But we Jews cannot even do archaelogical work at the Temple Mount.

^

Update on Cordoba: "cultural reductionism"

Spanish Church ‘accused of glossing over Muslim identity of Cordoba’s Great Mosque’

February 28 2023, 

The Catholic Church has been accused of glossing over the Muslim identity of the Great Mosque of Cordoba with a visitor centre that emphasises its Christian origins.

The Church’s planned centre for the mosque, which has served as a cathedral since the Spanish city’s reconquest by Christian forces in 1236, aims to “correct” what it deems to be an overly Islamic vision of the city’s past.

“The need to redesign the entire space [of the mosque area] derives from the finding that Cordoba is marked with a very powerful cultural label: that of a Muslim city,” said a report by Demetrio Fernandez, the Bishop of Cordoba.

The mosque has served as a cathedral for hundreds of years and is used for traditional processions at Easter

“The cultural reductionism is so strong that it has the capacity to eclipse the brilliant Visigoth, Roman and Christian [periods]..."

So, Muslims are engaged in cultural reductionism of Jerusalem as the capital of Judea, where the Temple stood on Mount Moriah?

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Most Irrational Usage of the Term 'Normalisation'

I spotted this headline:

I think that is a most irrational usage of the term 'normalisation'.

The most normal thing would be for Jews, and, by the way, Christians, to benefit from the normal right of religious freedom of worship, and be able to pray at the Temple Mount. To read from the Bible there.

No Moslem structure need fear demolition or damage. 

No Moslem need fear his/her own freedom of worship will be restricted.

It is normal that persons who have religious sites can worship at them respectfully.

In fact, that is what Moslems want, and campaign for, at Cordoba.

And in Turkey, a church that, in a compromise, had been declared a 'museum', has now been turned into a mosque.

Those actions are not normal.

But, perhaps then, Islam and Islamists are abnormal?

^

Hagia Sophia Really Doesn't Interest the NYTimes

Following an editorial published by the New York Times, I sent the newspaper the following letter:

Your editorial, "The Hagia Sophia Is Converted Again" (July 23, 2020), informs that Turkey's President R.T. Erdogan indicated that when not being used for Moslem prayer, the Hagia Sophia, built to surpass Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem as you note, would remain open to the public. This is a welcome sign that Islam can tolerate shared space for holy sites of two different religions.

I hope that this spirit will move the Moslem Waqf authorities in Jerusalem, supported incidentally by Erdogan, to find a compromise whereby Jews can be present within the Haram A-Sharif, originally the Temple Mount, without discrimination or prohibition so they can express respect for our holy site.

It was not published.

Was I being outlandish?

In 2006, Spanish Muslims wrote to then Pope Benedict XVI and ask for hs permission to hold Islamic prayer in Córdoba Cathedral.

In part, it read:

"We invite you to create a new example, to send a message of hope to the world...[it would create a] unique ecumenical space...Do not fear. Together we can show the violent, the intolerant, the anti-Semites, the Islamophobes and also those who believe that only Islam has a right to remain in the world, that prayer is the strongest weapon imaginable..."

Whether or not one assumes that letter was an honest expression of shared place conflict resolution, nevertheless, Moslems should no be allowed to make an unequal claim in Jerusalem, denying Jews a change in the status quo and freed access and the right to worship, while they claim they be afforded those same rights in  Cordoba.

______________

UPDATE

Archaeological finds date a Christian structure at the site to the 5th century, predating Islam by more than a century.

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Islamic Prayers Said in Hagia Sophia

I have blogged multiple times about a contradiction in Muslim attitude toward Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount.

The Islamic Waqf authority emphatically denies Jews the right of freedom of worship at the location of the Two Temples, Judaism`s most sacred site. Yet at the same time, they act to pray at the Cordoba Cathedral in Spain and the Hagia Sophia in Turkey.

In other words, churches that became mosques due to Muslim conquest, must be at the disposal of Muslims as mosques even though they have been returned to their normal state.

But a Jewish holy site that was turned into a mosque must not be allowed to revert to a Jewish synaggoue even thought the Jews returned that site to Jewish authority.

The news?

Turkey Uses Hagia Sophia as Mosque for Islamic Prayer AgainBy Philip Chrysopoulos
The Islamic call to prayer was heard in what was once the center of Orthodoxy, Hagia Sophia, on Monday, as a video calling the former Byzantine cathedral “Hagia Sophia Mosque” on Youtube shows...This is the third year in a row that similar acts challenging the supposed status of Hagia Sophia as a secular museum have taken place in March.
...Hagia Sophia was built in 537 and served for nearly a thousand years as the cathedral of the Byzantine Empire, later to become the Greek Orthodox Christian Patriarchal Cathedral. It was converted to an Ottoman mosque on May 29, 1453, just after the fall of Constantinople, and it remained a mosque until 1931. Four years later, the iconic Byzantine basilica, once the very symbolof Greek Orthodoxy, began operating as a museum, after a decision by the first Turkish President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

...The use of the museum as a place of worship since 1931 has been strictly prohibited. However, in 2006 the Turkish government allowed the allocation of a small room in the museum complex to be used as a prayer room for Christian and Muslim museum staff, and since 2013 the muezzin singsthe call to prayer twice per day, in the afternoon from the minarets of the museum.

...In May of 2017 the Anatolia Youth Association (AGD) organized a gathering in front of Hagia Sophia for morning prayers and called for the re-conversion of the museum into a mosque...On March 31, 2018 Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan recited the first verse of the Quran in Hagia Sophia, dedicating the prayer to the “souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especiallyIstanbul’s conqueror,” reiterating his position to make Hagia Sophia a mosque once again.

In March 2019 Erdogan said that he will change the status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque...

^

Move Over Cordoba, Here Comes Reccopolis

You know of my posts regarding Cordoba, where Muslims are attempting to take back a mosque built on a church that the Spanish reestablished as a cathedral.

Now, I have been alerted, there's an earlier mosque in Spain.  From the article:

Finally, the orientation of several buildings appears to be influenced by ideological considerations....One large (approximately 20 × 40m) newly discovered feature is certainly oriented quite differently from the palatine church (Figure 3.6); indeed, it is the only building with this particular orientation so far discovered. What appears to be its broad side faces towards the south-east (Figure 5a–b). In light of the site’s early Islamic phase, this feature requires further exploration. 

The earliest mosques in Iberia date to the eighth century...The two eighth-century mosques in Iberia at present identified archaeologically correspond to the first phases of the Umayyad Great Mosque of Cordoba (AD 785–788; Ewert 1995) and the Great Mosque of Zaragoza (Hernández Vera 2004: 75). The tendency in Islamic Iberia was to orient mosques between south-east and south (Rius 2000: 105).Insofar as can be discerned from the geomagnetic data, the plan of the large structure at Reccopolis recalls those of Umayyad mosques in the Levant, particularly that at Jerash, Jordan...Although the geomagnetic survey is inconclusive, the Reccopolis structure might also indicate a three-aisled hall (Figure 5b); such features are characteristic of Levantine Umayyad mosques—notably the Great Mosque of Damascus, the newly discovered mosque in Tiberias, and that of Khirbat al-Minya (Figure 5d), 14km north of Tiberias (CytrynSilverman 2009: 49–51, 2012).

But getting back to church-mosque-cathedral and its relevance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, I was astounded to read this about Cordoba:

Moors created an inclusive and pluralistic society where religion was important but did not dictate public policy.

If that is true, why cannot Jews share the Temple Mount with Moslems? 

And by the way, that Islamic Professor, S. Amjad Hussain in the article writes

By 1492 all the Moor-controlled areas had been wrestled back by Christian kings. Muslims and Jews were given the choice of either converting to Catholicism or leaving the country. Hundreds and thousands of Jews and Muslims took refuge in Morocco across the Straits of Gibraltar. Countless others were burned at stake for refusing to convert.

Did that burning-at-the-stake relate to Muslims as well?

So I asked an expert and received this reply:

Muslims, who ruled a portion of the Iberian peninsula until the demise of the Kingdom of Granada (Eastern Andalusia) in January 1492, were expelled from the Kingdom of Castile and the Catalan-Aragonese confederation in 1609 (mainly in order to crush the economy of the latter and substitute the Muslim population by Castilian nationals), but normally no Muslims were burnt at the stake. After 1492, no Jews remained in Spain...Some of them were indeed burnt at the stake, as Christian apostates (in fact all of them were Jewish apostates), were burnt at the stake. According to their own laws, Christians cannot burn Jews. 

This article tries to substitute the Jews with a mix of Jews and Muslims, and, in addition, it adds a spin of a Spanish imperialistic idea (that the three cultures lived together in harmony). In fact, when the Almohad Berbers invaded the Iberian peninsula in the second half of the Twelfth century CE, Jews were harshly persecuted. The Jewish community of Lucena, which once was called "the Jerusalem of Al-Andalus", totally disappeared, and the Rambam had to flee with his family from Cordova, like many others. In the Iberian peninsula, according to Jewish Chronicles, good places for Jews were Cordova (between the Seventh and the Eleventh centuries), Toledo (between the Eleventh and the Twelfth centuries, Gerona and Barcelona (between the Ninth and the Fourteenth centuries) and Narbonne (in France today, but also within the Jewish concept of Sepharad, during all the Middle Ages until the end of the Thirteenth century).

^

Lost: A Cathedral

I have written (here and here) about the situation in Cordoba in connection to the Temple Mount as I see an exact parallel: an ancient sacred site, lost, retaken, former group seeks to pray.

Why cannot Muslims accept or at least recognize that what Jews wish in Jerusalem is what they themselves are doing in Cordoba, Spain?

What they demand for themselves in Spain, they refuse, violently, to Jews in Jerusalem.

I see that the Cathedral term is barely used as it is now promoted as a Mosque.

As here:

"Today the Mezquita de Cordoba (Cordoba Mosque) as it is comonly [sic] known (or the Cordoba Cathedral as it was know by its owners the Catholic church) can be visited throughout the year for an entrance fee. Following a dispute between the church and the city over the name of the building in the 2010's it is now diplomatically called "Cordoba Mosque Cathedral"  

For other similar sites:

here;

here;

here;

and here.

Is the Cathedral lost?

^

Revisiting that Church, that Mosque, that Cathedral in Cordoba

I have noted the parallel between the Muslim demands that Jews not seek to regain their rights at the Temple Mount whereas in Cordoba they are doing the very same thing several times here. Also here.

I am not arguing who is historically correct but the very idea that what Muslims can do in Spain (seemingly a very foreign country which they conquered and subjgated) is prohibited for Jews.

I have found this item (in Spanish) from last June:

The Cabildo (administrative council) affirms that the "false controversy" over the Mosque is "an attack on Catholics"
Remember that "she has been possessed by the Church in an uninterrupted manner" since 1236June 23, 2017

The Cabildo challenges the City Council to bring to justice the property of the mosque of Cordoba Demetrio, about the Mosque: "It is Byzantine Christian art, the Moors only put the money".  The mayor herself is aware of a report from the City Council's legal counsel that recognizes that the Monumental Mosque-Cathedral Complex has never been part of the inventory of assets of the City of Cordoba

The Cabildo Catedral de Córdoba has made this Thursday a "call to the responsibility of politicians and institutions so that they do not feed" the "false polemic" on the ownership of the Mosque-Cathedral, since "it only generates division among the population and supposes an attack on the Catholic community of Córdoba, which has the right, like any Catholic community anywhere in the world, to have its own Cathedral, as a place of worship for the entire diocesan community. "

In a statement, the Cabildo has reacted well after this Thursday has been constituted in the City of Cordoba a commission of experts who will advise the Consistory and the mayor, Isabel Ambrosio (PSOE), in the "legal, patrimonial and academic" fields, on how to achieve that "the Mosque-Cathedral returns to have public ownership".

Given this, since the Cabildo has been stated that such statements "have no legal basis", since "the owner of the Mosque-Cathedral Monumental Complex of Cordoba is the Catholic Church since 1236 and this has been affirmed by international, national and international institutions. local ", as well as" the courts ".

In fact, as recalled from the Cabildo, "the own mayor, Isabel Ambrosio, is aware of a report from the City Council's legal advice that recognizes that the Mezquita-Catedral Monumental Complex has never been part of the City Council's inventory of assets".

In addition, "the Court of Instruction number six of Cordoba recognized in June 2015 that the Monumental Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba is owned by the Church since 1236 and, since then, has been owned by the Catholic Church in a public, peaceful and uninterrupted. "

...On the other hand, and regarding the possibility that in the Cathedral of Córdoba there may be a shared cult, between Catholics and Muslims, the Cabildo has stressed that what is the main temple of the Diocese of Cordoba "has been consecrated for almost 800 years years to the catholic cult, which is incompatible with the Islamic cult, as is not compatible the Catholic site with the Muslim in the Islamic religious center"...

^

Reversing the Reconquista in Cordoba

I have blogged previously on the parallel between the Cordoba Cathedral where Islamist activists are attempting to use prayer attempts to reclaim a church that had been turned into a mosque and is not a church again to the Temple Mount where Muslims refuse the right of jews that they demand for themselves.

A recent update:

Spanish Cathedral Targeted for Reversing the ReconquistaThe Cathedral of Córdoba has become a battleground in the campaign to reduce the influence of the Church in Spain and beyond.

The Cathedral of Córdoba... the cathedral’s ownership is now also a target of protest from both the Spanish left and Muslim activists.
The dispute is part of a long-running campaign to seize the church on the basis that it should not belong to Catholics, but to the whole world...

...The region of southern Spain known as Andalusia, al-Andalus in the Arabic, was the political center of Moorish control of the peninsula.

Moorish culture reached its zenith under the Ummayad Dynasty of rulers who claimed the title of caliph with their capital at Córdoba...But the crown jewel of all al-Andalus was the Great Mosque, the symbol of Ummayad power and glory.

The mosque was commissioned in 784 by Abd ar-Rahman I and was subsequently expanded by his successors until it was able to welcome 40,000 people and was considered one of the largest and greatest architectural achievements in the entire Islamic world...The site of the mosque, however, had very ancient roots. According to archaeologists, after Visigoths captured Córdoba in 572, they established a church on the site that by the time of the Muslim invasion had the title of the Basilica of St. Vincent. It was initially allowed to continue as the last Christian church by agreement with the new Muslim overlords, but, soon, half of it was taken to provide additional prayer space for newly arriving Muslims from Damascus.

The rest of the basilica was eventually “purchased” from the Christians and destroyed in order to build the new Great Mosque...when Córdoba was captured by King Ferdinand, one of the first decisions he had to face was what to do with it.
The new ruler decided to transform the mosque into the city’s new cathedral...The minaret, meanwhile, was converted to a bell tower, with bells brought from Santiago de Compostela. In effect, Ferdinand preserved the mosque’s beauty for posterity.

As Dario Fernandez-Morera has convincingly demonstrated in his important study, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (2016), Andalusia was far from a paradise for Christians and Jews, as they suffered from political and social disabilities, had to pay the jizya (religious tax), and endured persecutions and oppression under sharia (Islamic law).

...In 2004 and 2006, Muslims in Spain and elsewhere, mostly recent converts to Islam, petitioned the Holy See to allow Muslim prayers in the cathedral. In 2007, the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, used a summit in Córdoba on “Islamophobia” by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to demand publicly that Muslims be granted the right to pray there.

In April 2010, during Holy Week, two Muslims grew violent when asked to stop praying in the cathedral and seriously injured two security guards; and by that August, Islamic groups renewed their calls for the right to worship.

In 2013, an organization called the “Platform for the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba” secured more than 350,000 names for a petition demanding the seizure of the cathedral, a push heavily promoted by the Spanish socialist newspaper el País...The irony of this, of course, is that political leaders in Spain are actually proposing that Christian churches be seized once more, just as they were 1,200 years ago, and handed to Muslims.

Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, told the Register, “What is unique in this case is it is not an Islamist government doing this, but a left-leaning one — left-leaning officials who are anti-Catholic, and maybe anti-Muslim too, but they see this as a convenient way of suppressing religion; suppressing Catholicism in Spain.”

Should this alliance succeed, it would be an immense victory — and not just a symbolic one — for the Islamist cause at a time when Europe is already purging its own Christian history.

As Bishop Fernández notes, “They want to reverse the Reconquista.”

No status quo there.

^ 

At Which Holy Site Was That Violence?

Violence at a holy site that once was a Jewish Temple and now a Mosque.

Sorry.

Violence at a holy site that is a church, recalling a previous attack at a church*, that once was a church, then became, after the Muslim conquest, a mosque and now for several centuries is a cathedral.

VALLADOLID, Spain  - A Muslim man stormed the San Pablo Church in Valladolid, Spain Saturday evening [video here] and disrupted a wedding while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" The 22-year-old unnamed Moroccan charged the altar and tore off the altar cloth as the groomsmen tried to grab him.

Witnesses said the man tried to assault the priest. "A lot of people, including the bride's mother, were crying," according to the priest who was officiating the wedding, "and there were people who had already jumped out of the pews because we did not know whether this person came alone or not or if he was armed."

And they get upset if Jews request the right of access and freedom of worship at the Temple Mount.


__________

*

A confrontation between Muslim tourists and guards employed by the Roman Catholic bishop at the world-famous Cordoba mosque saw two people arrested and two guards injured last night.  Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a local bishop, Demetrio Fernández, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain.Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria had started praying among the marble columns and coloured arches of the vast building when security guards ordered them to stop.
"They provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence," the bishop's office said in a statement.
Cathedral authorities said the guards had invited the visitors to continue viewing the inside of a 24,000 sq metre building that was once the world's second biggest mosque, but without praying.
"They replied by attacking the security guards, two of whom suffered serious injuries," the bishop's office said.

^

Cordoba Cathedral and Islam - A Comment

For the past several years I have pointed many times (here in 2010; and here in 2014) to the Cordoba Cathedral as an example of Islamic hypocrisy vis a vis the Temple Mount.

What they demand for themselves in Spain, they refuse Jews in Jerusalem.

And now Gatestone Institute published this

Qatar, Saudi Arabia to Islamize One of Europe's Greatest Cathedrals

by Giulio Meotti. He doesn't seem to mention my posts on the subject.

Here is from the summary:

In Islamic symbolism, Córdoba is the lost Caliphate...If these Islamists, supported by the militant secularists, will be able to bring Allah back inside the Cathedral of Córdoba, a tsunami of Islamic supremacism will submerge Europe's decaying Christianity. There are thousands of empty churches just waiting to be filled by the voices of muezzins...

The Western attempt to free Jerusalem in the Middle Ages has been condemned as Christian imperialism, while the Muslim campaigns to colonize and Islamize the Byzantine Empire, North Africa, the Balkans, Egypt, the Middle East and most of Spain, to name but a few, are celebrated as a season of enlightenment.

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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.

____________________


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

^

Needed in Jerusalem: Cordobian Toleration

My readers know that I have pointed to a basic attitude of hypocrisy by Muslims in their campaign to deny Jews free access and the right of freedom of worship at the Temple Mount.  They themselves demand the right to pray at a church which was originally a church but when Muslims conquered the country they turned that church into a mosque.  When the native population reconquered their country back from the Muslim occupiers, the reconsecrated the church.

In my opinion, this parallels the situation in Jerusalem.

The Muslims know quite well that their structures are on the site of the former Jewish temples.

What has happened there?

Well, first of all, we are referring to Cordoba in Spain.

All the churches in that city [Cordoba] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent...when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque...This was clearly an act of spoliation...Abd-er Rahman I requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral.

and what has been happening recently?  This:

In 2006, the former president of Cordoba’s Muslim community, Mandur Escudero, sent a letter to the Pope asking that Muslims be permitted to pray there. To demonstrate to the world that it was impossible for him to do so, he then prayed outside the Mezquita in the middle of the street.

Details:

Muslims in Spain are campaigning to be allowed to worship alongside Christians in Cordoba Cathedral -- formerly the Great Mosque of Cordoba...Cordoba's dazzling "mihrab" -- the sacred alcove from where Muslim prayer is lead -- still stands as a separate part of the site and is one of the main attractions for tourists.

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.  "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."...

In April [2010], more than one hundred Muslim visitors staged a protest by unrolling their prayer rugs inside the site and beginning to pray. When security tried to remove them, the protest got violent and two were arrested.

According to Cordoba's Bishop, Demetrio Fernandes, this incident shows it is impossible to share a house of worship. It would be like sharing a wife between two husbands, he told CNN.

"Would they be happy to do the same in any of their mosques?" he asked. "Absolutely not. Because I understand their religious feeling and they have to understand ours as well. The religious feeling is the deepest one in the human heart, so it is not possible to share."

So, why cannot that work for Jews, in Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount?

I now have seen something else, that 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.

So, here again is Escudero who insists 

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."

If the above is true and a genuine expression of Islam, why not apply it to Jerusalem's Temple Mount?

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