Thread by @AriMGordon

A 🧵on a small campaign emerging in some parts of Arabic twitter intended to distance Arabs from Jerusalem and Palestinian concerns under the banner “the #qibla of the Jews (i.e. Jerusalem) does not concern us” or #قبلة_اليهود_لاتعني_لنا
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There’s been some praise of this from some Israel advocates, who seem to think that Arab world dissociation Palestinians is a) new and b) good for Israel. Both assumptions are just. plain. wrong.
2/ unitedwithisrael.org/saudi-campaign…

To start, "qibla" means sacred direction of worship in Arabic.✡️pray towards the site of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Muhammad also faced towards J'lem when God commanded that the Ka’ba in Mecca become the qibla for all ☪️(FYI- the qibla for early✝️and some today is due East)
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Those who follow rhetoric around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have all heard something like: “Jerusalem doesn’t matter to Muslims; after all, Muhammad rejected it as his qibla, and Jerusalem isn’t even mentioned in the Qur’an…”

To me, this is just silly.
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Dozens of verses in the Qur’an are read by its earliest commentators as referring to Jerusalem and its the setting for some formative narratives in the life of Muhammad, such as his Night Journey and Ascension to heaven from the Temple Mount (al-Isra & al-Mi’raj).
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The traditional anniversary of the Isra and Mi'raj occurred just this week, an occasion upon which Israel's MFA (@IsraelArabic) offered greetings to Muslims around the world.

https://twitter.com/IsraelArabic/status/1370040545121345538?s=20

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Islamic religious works dedicated to the spiritual merits and wonders of Jerusalem (called Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis) stretch back to the Middle Ages and Islamic guidebooks on how to perform religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem’s holy sites were common.
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Not to mention that Islamic tradition emrbaces biblical heritage. The Muslim geographer Ibn al-Faqih (11th c.) wrote: “Not a single handbreadth in the city was not prayed in by a prophet or lived in by a king.”

(In that sense Islam's connection affirms Jewish connection, too)
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Worth noting, also, that even as the Hebrew Bible mentions Jerusalem nearly a thousand times, the Pentateuch does not mention Jerusalem by name....
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...and OF COURSE for us as Jews Jerusalem’s sacrality and centrality flows from our extensive history, ritual, texts and dreams connected to the city. It is the heart that beats in our chest as a people.

...and OF COURSE political conflict shapes the way communities talk and think about Jerusalem. This was true during times of intra-religious conflict (such as b/t the Damascus-based Umayyads and Mecca-based Zubayrids) and inter-religious conflict (like the Crusades).
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The point is that the #qibla and sacred centers are about more than just the way a person holds their body in prayer 🤲; they are symbols of communal identity.

There’s a half-decent dissertation on this topic for @UPennNELC for a/o interested.
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repository.upenn.edu/edissertations…

So back to the #قبلة_اليهود_لاتعني_لنا campaign (“the Jewish qibla does not concern us.”): it's a response to voices saying that the Abraham Accords are the Muslim umma abandoning the cause of "Jerusalem," lovingly referred to as "First of the two qiblas" (ula al-qiblatayn).
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Some thoughts: 1) Arab politicization of the Palestinian people (whether as champion or sell-out) rarely serves the best interests of Palestinians. 2) marginalizing Palestinians, whether from the int'l community or from the Arab world, ultimately doesn’t serve Israel, either.
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There’s lots of criticism of the Abraham Accords, but I'm hopeful that increased Arab engagement may ultimately advance 🇮🇱-->☮️<--🇵🇸, but only if they can become trusted as having the interests of both sides in mind.
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Gaining the trust of both parties cannot happen by "abandoning Jerusalem," as though it did not matter to Palestinians and Muslims around the world.
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It starts with a shared recognition that a) too much blood has spilled over J'lem, b) the place matters deeply to us all and c) we can write a new chapter in the history of a city whose Hebrew name Saadya Gaon translated into Arabic as "Madinat Al-Salaam," City of Peace.
end.