Israel-Palestine–Jerusalem

1. When and how was Islam introduced into the history of Jerusalem? Why did Christianity, which had dominated Jerusalem prior to Islam, decline?

In the early seventh century, prior to the emergence of Islam, Jerusalem was under the rule of the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire), and Christianity constituted the city’s dominant religion as well as its cultural foundation. During this period, Jerusalem’s major churches were administered as institutionalized holy sites and were placed under the patronage and control of the Christian Byzantine state. Through this process, Jerusalem became the object of excessive veneration as a sacred place, and the perception spread that the physical city of Jerusalem functioned as a gateway leading to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Myths and traditions formed over several centuries were materialized through the holy sites, and when combined with humanity’s fundamental longing for paradise, Jerusalem came to be perceived as a place akin to a staircase ascending to heaven.

This perception of Jerusalem contained two coexisting dimensions. Outside the city, excessive idealization and mystification of Jerusalem were constructed, while the actual inhabitants developed a collective identity as people entrusted with a divine mission to protect the holy city. This cognitive structure was repeatedly reproduced throughout subsequent history and continues to function as an important spiritual background to the conflicts surrounding Jerusalem today.

Meanwhile, under Byzantine rule, the Jewish population of Jerusalem was subjected to severe discrimination and persecution. Jewish residence in the city and access to holy sites were strictly restricted, and in particular, the Western Wall—one of the most sacred sites in Judaism—was deliberately left in ruins and used as a dumping ground. Byzantine Christians interpreted this condition as a sign symbolizing the downfall of Judaism and divine judgment.

In 610, the Sasanian Persian Empire, which had adopted Zoroastrianism as its state religion, invaded the Byzantine Empire, initiating a large-scale war that lasted for approximately twenty years. In 614, Persian forces temporarily captured Jerusalem, during which numerous churches were destroyed. At that time, the Jewish community supported the Persians due to its hostility toward Byzantine rule. Although the Byzantine Empire recaptured Jerusalem in 629, the prolonged war severely exhausted the power of both empires. Jerusalem was left devastated, and the Byzantine Empire found itself militarily and economically incapable of coping with the emergence of new powers.

At that time, Jerusalem was inhabited by diverse ethnic groups, including Syrians, Armenians, and Egyptians, as well as multiple Christian denominations. Although the Byzantine Empire maintained its rule centered on Greek Orthodoxy, the Christian world had already fallen into serious doctrinal disputes and sectarian fragmentation. Each sect in Jerusalem perceived the city not as a shared space of collective faith, but as a territory in which its own sectarian zone had to be preserved. As a result, inter-sectarian conflict functioned as a more immediate and significant issue in the daily lives of residents than religious confrontation with Islam.

Under these circumstances, when Arab Muslim armies approached Jerusalem, many Christian denominations—excluding Byzantine Greek Orthodoxy—as well as the Jewish community displayed a welcoming attitude toward the emergence of a new ruling power. For them, both the Byzantine Empire and the early Islamic forces appeared less as guardians of faith than as administrative rulers, and in practice, the tax burden under Islamic rule was considerably lower than during the Byzantine period. The primary concern of Jerusalem’s inhabitants was not political sovereignty, but the preservation of their sectarian communities and residential quarters, and this pragmatic attitude was repeatedly observed in later history.

Historians assess that from the first Arab invasion of Syria in 633 to the complete conquest of Palestine and Egypt in 640, a period of approximately seven years, there were no abrupt changes in the daily lives of Jerusalem’s residents. The early caliphal government prioritized tax collection, the maintenance of military operations, and the establishment of administrative systems over religious conversion. The Muslim leaders who governed Syria and Palestine during this period were often of merchant or nomadic origin and focused on pragmatic administrative management.

Although the conquest of Jerusalem was completed in 638, its outcome can be said to have been effectively decided earlier at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636. After this battle, major cities including Damascus fell in succession, and Jerusalem, isolated, endured a prolonged siege before ultimately surrendering. Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem responsible for the city’s defense, demanded as a condition of surrender that the city be handed over directly to Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who subsequently entered Jerusalem accompanied by a small entourage.

Following the transfer of the city, ʿUmar concluded the so-called “Pact of ʿUmar,” guaranteeing the religious rights of Christians and Jews. Churches and holy sites were protected, freedom of religious practice was permitted, and non-Muslim residents were granted the status of dhimmī, under which they paid the jizya and land taxes in lieu of military service. In addition, Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, which had been prohibited during the Byzantine period, was once again permitted. ʿUmar then proceeded to the Temple Mount, which had been left as a refuse site, ordered its purification, and commanded the construction of a mosque near the southern wall. This structure later became the foundation of al-Aqsa Mosque. This act symbolically demonstrated that Islam redefined and restored Jerusalem not as a space symbolizing the defeat of Judaism, but as one of its own sacred cities.

Finally, while recognizing Jerusalem as a city of prophets, ʿUmar made it clear that divine revelation had been completed through Muhammad. Transcending the internally fragmented condition of Christianity and its tensions with Judaism, he sought to affirm the superiority and finality of Islam as the ultimate revealed religion through Islamic rule over Jerusalem.

2. What position did Islam take after the World Wars?

After the Second World War, Islamic forces in Palestine and Jerusalem adopted absolute opposition to the establishment of the State of Israel and the protection of Islamic holy sites as their core positions. The Islamic world came to regard Palestine not merely as an object of territorial dispute, but as a sacred heritage of the Islamic ummah, and continued uncompromising resistance.

When the United Nations passed a resolution in 1947 to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, the Islamic leadership centered around Amin al-Husayni, then the highest religious authority in Jerusalem, strongly rejected it. They argued that Islamic land could never be ceded and that the forced establishment of a Jewish state by Western powers constituted an assault on the entire Islamic world. Accordingly, they called for military intervention by neighboring Arab states and defined this struggle as jihad undertaken to defend the faith.

In Islam, Jerusalem (al-Quds) is regarded as the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina and is the site of al-Aqsa Mosque. Following the First Arab–Israeli War in 1948 and the division of Jerusalem into eastern and western sectors, Jordanian and Palestinian Muslims secured control over East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and blocked Jewish access to holy sites. They perceived the maintenance of Jerusalem as a city with an Arab-Islamic identity as a sacred duty and defined themselves as the guardians of Islamic holy places.

After the Second World War, the Palestinian issue became a symbolic cause that transcended regional conflict and mobilized solidarity among Muslims worldwide. Volunteers affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood who arrived from Egypt and elsewhere participated in combat, asserting that saving Palestine was equivalent to saving Islam itself. Leaders of surrounding Arab states likewise actively utilized the Islamic justification of the Palestinian cause to reinforce their domestic political legitimacy. This tendency has persisted to the present day.

In particular, the Third Arab–Israeli War (the Six-Day War) of 1967 marked a critical turning point for Islamic forces in Palestine and Jerusalem. In this war, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Amid the profound trauma of defeat, religious awakening rapidly emerged as grassroots resistance. Prior to the war, the Palestinian masses had expected Arab nationalist leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser to deliver their salvation. However, when the Arab coalition forces were decisively defeated within a short period, a perception spread that the cause of defeat lay not in secular politics but in the weakening of faith. Consequently, Islamic fundamentalism, advocating a return to Islam, emerged as an alternative ideology. As a result, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had originated in Egypt, expanded rapidly within Palestine, eventually leading to the formation of Islamic fundamentalist organizations such as Hamas.

Following Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the Islamic world defined this event as a grave crisis affecting Islamic holy sites. Al-Aqsa Mosque came to symbolize Palestinian resistance beyond its function as a religious facility and was perceived by the entire Islamic community as a historical burden and a collective humiliation. Whereas earlier resistance had taken the form of nationalist struggle for territorial recovery, after 1967 it increasingly acquired the character of a holy war, or jihad, encompassing the entire Islamic world. Within this framework, Hamas, which emerged in the late 1980s, interpreted the defeat of 1967 in religious terms and established the construction of an Islamic state through armed struggle rather than negotiation as its ultimate objective.

3. What is the most influential Islamic school among Palestinian Muslims, who is its central figure, and what is the core of his teaching?

Muslims in the Levant region, including Palestine, have traditionally followed the Shāfiʿī school among the four major Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence. This school strictly adheres to the Qurʾān and Hadith while allowing context-sensitive rational interpretation in cases lacking clear textual evidence, thereby exhibiting a moderate character. Owing to these features, Shāfiʿī interpretations have been widely applied across everyday religious life, including worship, marriage, and inheritance.

In the realm of modern politics and resistance movements, however, Islamist ideology (Islamism) has exercised strong influence. In contemporary Palestinian Muslim society, the symbolic figure of the resistance movement is Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas. Despite being paralyzed as a result of a childhood accident, he organized Islamic welfare activities and resistance movements in the Gaza Strip through strong charisma and religious devotion.

The ideological foundations of Yassin and Hamas are rooted in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. According to this ideology, Palestinian land is not the property of individuals or a particular nation, but religiously inalienable property designated by Allah for the Muslim community. Consequently, a logic emerged asserting that no part of this land could be conceded or compromised to Israel, which is regarded as non-believing.

Moreover, they understand Islam not merely as a system of religious rituals, but as a comprehensive way of life encompassing politics, economics, education, and society as a whole. From this perspective, resistance against Israel is interpreted not as a simple territorial dispute, but as a religious obligation incumbent upon all Muslims to defend their faith—that is, jihad. This ideology shares a theoretical foundation with the thought of Sayyid Qutb, who provided the intellectual basis of the Muslim Brotherhood. Through such religious discourse, Ahmed Yassin contributed to the formation of a strong Islamic identity that distinguished Hamas from the largely secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

4. What influence does Islam have on Jerusalem and Palestinian, and what is the role of Jerusalem and Palestinian in the Islamic world?

In Palestinian society, Islam has functioned as the most central driving force shaping not only religion but also national identity, the justification for resistance, and the foundation for international solidarity. Islam constitutes a central pillar permeating law, education, and politics, and particularly groups such as Hamas, which adopt a hardline stance rejecting compromise with Israel, mobilize their support base on the basis of Islamic doctrine. For these groups, Palestinian territory is perceived as waqf—sacred land entrusted by God—and is regarded as something that can never be relinquished.

Furthermore, in circumstances where state authority fails to function normally, Islamic charitable organizations have penetrated deeply into everyday life by leading hospital operations, providing education, and conducting relief activities. This served as a crucial mechanism through which religious devotion was transformed into political support, and even under conditions of external occupation and oppression, Muslim pride and tradition functioned as key means by which Palestinians maintained their national identity.

At the same time, Jerusalem—al-Quds—constitutes a powerful source of mobilization that unites the entire Islamic world. Protecting the site of al-Aqsa Mosque, where the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven, is perceived as a religious obligation by approximately 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. Moreover, within Islamic historical memory, Jerusalem is understood as having remained under Islamic rule after the time of Muhammad, then lost to the Crusaders, and later reconquered by Saladin. These memories overlay contemporary conditions in Jerusalem with the era of the Crusades and reconstruct the recovery of Jerusalem by Islam as a compelling historical mission.

As a result, issues such as changes in Jerusalem’s status or restrictions on access to holy sites trigger not only popular uprisings within Palestine but also large-scale protests across Islamic countries worldwide. The Palestinian and Jerusalem question is regarded within the global Islamic ummah as one of the most significant political, religious, and historical challenges. For this reason, despite sectarian divisions between Sunnis and Shiʿas, Islamic states have consistently articulated a unified official stance in the name of Palestinian liberation and the defense of Jerusalem, which also constituted the fundamental background for the establishment of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Furthermore, how the Palestinian issue is addressed in the Islamic world serves as an important criterion for evaluating the religious legitimacy and political sincerity of national leaders. From the era of the Arab–Israeli wars to the present day, Islamist movements and regional powers have sought to expand their influence by placing Jerusalem and Palestine at the center of their political agendas. Even today, major Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey continue to present themselves as protectors of Palestine while reinforcing their leadership roles across the Middle East and the broader Islamic world.

Reference

Idinopulos, T. A. (2002). Jerusalem (D. J. Lee, Trans.). Seoul, South Korea: Greenbi. (Original work published 1994)