Islam in Israel

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Muslims constitute 16 percent of the population of Israel. Israel is home to Islam's third holiest site or shrine after those in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia: The Haram al Sharif (Temple Mount) from which Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to Heaven. This belief, not only by Israeli Muslims, but by all Muslims, raises the importance of the Dome of the Rock and the adjacent Al-Aqsa Mosque. They are therefore particularly sensitive to, and at times incensed by, that this site is under the control of the Jewish state of Israel. Israeli government officials understand the challenges they face in this regard and it can probably be said that Muslims are given complete freedom of worship and their mosques and holy sites are granted extra measures of protection as in the case of the Temple Mount which officially remains under the control of the Islamic Waqf, the Muslim administrative body currently responsible for the area of the Temple Mount.

Most Muslims in Israel are Sunni Arabs. From 1516 to 1917, the Sunni Ottoman Turks ruled the areas that now include Israel. Their rulership reinforced and ensured the centrality and importance of Islam as the dominant religion in the region. The conquest of Palestine by the British in 1917 and the subsequent Balfour Declaration opened the gates for the arrival of large numbers of Jews in Palestine who began to tip the scales in favor of Judaism with the passing of each decade. However, the British transferred the symbolic Islamic governance of the land to the Hashemites based in Jordan, and not to the House of Saud. The Hashemites thus became the official guardians of the Islamic holy places of Jerusalem and the areas around it, particularly strong when Jordan controlled the West Bank (1948-1967).

In 1922 the British had created the Supreme Muslim Council in the British Mandate of Palestine and appointed Amin al-Husayni (1895-1974) as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The council was abolished in 1948, but the Grand Mufti continued as one of the most notorious Islamic and Arab leaders of modern times, often inciting Muslims against Jews wherever he went.

Israeli Muslims are free to teach Islam to their children in their own schools.

[edit] Jerusalem and Islam

Main article: Jerusalem in Islam