In today’s world, where almost whole world is living in peace, there are many nations whose people are still deprived of their basic human rights. They are strangers in their own land and they are being ignored by all human rights organizations for years. One of these nations is Palestine where 2 different religion followers live and they both claim that this land belongs to them. And this conflict has been a burning issue of this world still it is unsolved but we have to take a look at historical figures to check whether this land belongs to Jews or Muslims.
This all starts with King David who is also known as Hazrat Dawood AS in Islam. He was prophet of Allah and his name is mentioned 16 times in Quran and the word Khalifa means Caliph is also used for him in Quran. He was third King of Israel.
And many years before him, people of Israel who were known as Bani Israel means descendent of Israel(one of name of Yaqoob AS whose son Judah’s decendents are known as Bani Israel) lost their autonomy in the region and they wanted a king to rule them and return their autonomy and by grace of God, Samuel(Hazrat Shammil AS in Islam) tried to make 30 year OLD Saul(Talut) the king of Israel but people of Israel didn’t want him to become king without Ark of Covenant(Taboot e Sakina). Ark of Covenant was a blissful box which was gifted by God to Adam AS in heaven and it was inherited to all the prophets of God. It also reached Hazrat Musa AS or Moses. It contained original copy of Torah, stick of Moses, Mann from Mann o Salwa and other things that would remind people of blessings done to them by God in hard times. People of Israel had great affection with the blissful box and they used to pray infront of it and also used to take it to battles as a lucky charm. Due to disobedient behavior of Bani Israel like black magic, interest based buisness and unjust killing, the God punished them with a defeat. The defeat was against Philistine in which Bani Israel was guided by their elders to take Ark of Covenant with them as a lucky charm but when they were defeated, the Ark was taken by Philistine army with them and it was thrown to untidy place which proved to be very unlucky to them because God also punished them and plague started to spread among the people of Philistine and on the advice of astrologers that it was all happening due to fury of God on them, the rulers or Philistine decided to return the Ark to Bani Israel.
On returning of Ark, the people accepted Saul as their ruler. Saul defended the nation against Philistine many times and Dawood AS joined army at a young age and was taken to battle with Philistine where Philistine came with a giant known as Goliath(Jalut) and challenged Bani Israel to fight him, no one came forward except Hazrat Dawood AS who came forward and defeated the giant Goliath. After this battle, he became an apple of eye for people of Israel and people wanted him to become king.
He became 3rd king of Israel and during his reign. He decided to build a safe place for Ark of Covenant. The construction was started during his reign and ended during reign of his son Solomon also known as Hazrat Suleiman AS. He was also prophet who was given reign as a king and all living things including animals and Jinns were obedient to him. He ordered Jinns to build the temple and this temple was known as temple of Solomon or First temple or Haikal e Suleimani in Urdu. The temple had three portions, the first portion was for worshippers, the 2nd for bishops and 3rd was holiest among all because it was for placing Ark of Covenant.
Before the temple of Solomon, there was no special place for Ark of Covenant. After the death of King Solomon in 931 BC, the United kingdom of Israel was divided into two states, the northern part was called State of Israel and southern part was called State of Judah. In 722 BC, the northern state of Israel was invaded by Assyrian empire(Ashoora saltanat) and Jews living there escaped to state of Judah. Jews were the most blessed people of God and they were guided many times by God but still The Jews again started disobedience of God again and again. When Jews were being brutally suppressed by pharaohs of Egypt, God sent Musa AS or Moses to guide them and save them. But the jews also betrayed Musa AS during difficult times eg during confrontation with giant Aoj bin Anaq of Syria when all Jews except 2 left Musa AS and God punished them by making them lost in desert for 40 years but then they asked for mercy from God and God gave them another chance. Another time when Musa AS went to Koh e Toor for some time and when he returned, he found that his people started worshipping a golden calf known as Bal. God also forgave them this time and guided them but they continued their bad deeds and this time, God punished them in form of another fatal threat known as King of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar who invaded the state of Israel and Judah in 586 BC, defeated Assyrian empire and established their rule in Israel. This proved fatal to Jews because Nebuchadnezzar destroyed temple of Solomon and also killed thousands of Jews. He also established a city of slaves outside the city of Jerusalem which was known as Tel Aviv and thousands of jews were enslaved in it. The Ark of Covenant was also taken from temple of Solomon and then this ark was vanished from history. Some people believe that this ark was taken away by angels on the order of God because of disobedience of Jews and some says that it is still present in this world.
Then after this, the Persian King Cyrus the great of Achemid empire also known as Dhul Qarnain in Islam invaded Israel and established his Achemidian empire by defeating Nebuchadnezzar. He was a kind king and he allowed Jews to return to Israel and he also allowed them to rebuild the destroyed temple of Solomon again and also promised to help in construction. This new temple was known as The Second Temple. He freed the Jews slaves from Tel Aviv and allowed them to enter Jerusalem. He is still looked as a messiah by Jews and also he has great respect among Muslims. After Achemidian rule in Israel, the Conqueror of Macedonia Alexander the great started conquest of world and conquered most of the world that time. The state of Israel and Judah also fell to Macedonian empire. But after the death of Alexander at a young age, the empire fell to his generals and one of his generals established Selucid empire in Israel.
In 168 BC, the Jews were divided into two groups, one was religious jews and other was Hellenized Jews. Hellenized means affected by the Greek culture.
During rule of Greek Selucid empire, the Greek culture effect on Jews increased rapidly and this led to revolt against Selucid empire by jews which is also known as Maccabean revolt and during that revolt, the Selucid King Antiochus IV desecrated the second temple to stop jews but the revolt resulted in an independent jewish rule known as Hasmoneon dynasty which was overthrown by Roman empire in 37 BC but still it was not as bad as the previous events. God again sent a prophet among Jews to guide them to right path and on 1 BC, Jesus also known as Hazrat Essa AS was born in Jerusalem and many people accepted him as a prophet because he started speaking at birth. He also had many miraculous abilities, he had ability to give lives to dead people, sight to blind people and curing the diseased.
He tried his best to spread the message of God among the people of Israel but Jewish people didn’t listen to him and started conspiring against him and at last, at the age of 33, Jesus was punished by Jews on a cross. But in Islam and Christianity, it is believed that he is still alive and he was saved by God and he will return to this world and this concept is known as The Second Coming. Jews call Jesus as antichrist(Dajjal) and think that he was crucified to death by them but it is not accepted by Islam and Christianity. On this behaviour towards the prophet of Allah. God again punished them and this time, it proved fatal in comparison to all other punishments.
When Jews started revolt against Roman empire, it proved to be a big failure for jews and the Roman general Titus invaded Jerusalem and destroyed everything. He destroyed the second temple and killed 130000 jews in one day and also forced all Jews to leave Israel. So Jews were forced out of Israel. It was time of 70 CE and it was the start of Jewish downfall which is also known as diaspora which lasted till 1900s. The Jews started going to other regions of the world for shelter and settled there for some time. Some of the diaspora period Jews also came to subcontinent. After Jesus Christ, Christianity came out as rapidly growing new religion of the world
The Byzantine empire thought Christianity as the sect of Judaism and thought of both Jews and Christians as same people. But 313 AD was the time when Byzantine king Constantine became a Christian and after some time, the whole empire started embracing Christianity and became Christian. After this, the people of Byzantine empire started to see jews as the traitor and killer of Jesus and because of this Jews were forced out of Byzantine empire and they were also killed largely. Now they had nowhere to go. Jews always thought that they will reside in other regions of the world but their original country is Israel where they had been living for thousand years, now they had to go somewhere and in 571 AD prophet Muhammad SAW was born and he started preaching Islam at the age of 39.
After coming of Islam, the Jews were tolerated in Arab. But jewish people also started conspiracies against Holy prophet Muhammad SAW because it was not acceptable for them that a prophet came out of Bani Israel. Holy prophet Muhammad SAW was decendent of Ismail AS son of Ibrahim AS and he was from Arab. So the jewish people started conspiring against him also. They used to ask him difficult questions so that it will be proved that he is not a prophet but Holy prophet Muhammad SAW was guided by Allah through his angels and he answered all the questions correctly and shocked jews eg once jews asked him about Cyrus the great which was totally impossible for Holy prophet Muhammad SAW because the timeline was totally different and no Arab knew about Cyrus but Allah guided him through his revelation Surah al Kahf in which Cyrus the great was mentioned in verse 83-101 as the king who trapped Gog and Magod behind the wall, who followed a path from East to West etc. This was really shocking for jews because they never thought that anybody would ever be able to answer this question. Holy prophet Muhammad SAW established a Constitution of Makkah according to which Jews would have equal rights in the society after his emigration to Madina but still jews didn’t accepted him as a prophet. After Holy prophet SAW, Hazrat Abubakr R.A became First Caliph and he launched Jihad against only those people who didn’t obeyed Islamic principles like Zakat not against innocent people. The second Caliph was Umar R.A who started to expand Islamic empire and he launched various campaigns. One of those campaigns was known as battle of Yarmouk which was started during reign of Hazrat Abubakr R.A and Hazrat Khalid ibn Waleed R.A was selected as commander. But Hazrat Umar R.A selected Abu Ubaida ibn Jarrah as commander and started campaign. This battle was a massive success for Muslims and whole of Byzantine empire and Sassanid empire fell to Rashidun Khilafat.
One of the country that was a part of Byzantine empire that time was Israel and in 638 AD Hazrat Umar R.A conquered Jerusalem without any bloodshed and keeping in view the holiness of the city, he opened the city for people of Judaism Christianity and Islam. We should keep in mind that Jews were forced to leave Jerusalem and they were again allowed to enter Jerusalem just because of Muslims. Hazrat Umar R.A proved to be a very kind king and he also allowed everyone to practice their own religion freely without any fear. When second temple was destroyed by Titus, only one wall of the temple was left and this wall is known as The Wailing Wall(dewar e girya). This wall was renovated and made strong during rule of Hazrat Umar R.A. also Masjid al Aqsa was built on the ruin of second temple but before any criticism we have to know that the temple was totally destroyed and the remaining portion was respected by ruler. Dome of rock(Gumbad e Sakhra) was built on the place where Holy prophet Muhammad SAW started his journey towards heaven and hell(safar e mairaj). Jews lived here peacefully under Muslim rule. In this, we came to know that Jews were deprived of their home but still Muslim rule helped them to live freely. But still conspiracies of Jews continued which will be discussed in next part. (Writer Sharjeel Mazhar based in Lahore, Pakistan is a student of history).
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The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication or organization (Pakistan News International).
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