Jerusalem is the mirror of our world

Throughout history, whatever the condition of Jerusalem has been, the world has been in that condition. Whatever the prevailing order in the world has been, its reflection on Jerusalem has been exact.

Those who have held Jerusalem as a city have applied to Jerusalem the very conception they have held of the world. In the periods when Jerusalem was in Christian hands, however Christians looked at and treated people of other nations, they tried to make the same world valid in the other places under their rule. That is why Jerusalem's present sorrow and weeping come not only from its own sorrow but from its sad gaze at the general state of the world.

Jerusalem, in the shadow of the temple built by Solomon in the land promised to the Jews, continued for a time as a center of justice and high wisdom and as a model of justice and tawhid (oneness of God) for the whole world. But later, after the Children of Israel began to misunderstand their chosenness on a racist basis and to regard themselves as superior to all people as a race, Jerusalem rapidly moved away from being a model of justice and tawhid. Proceeding from the arrogance they began to project onto these lands, the Children of Israel began to produce problems for their surroundings as well. As a result of different attacks targeting Jerusalem up to the famous Babylonian exile, each time the Jews were subjected either to massacres or to exile.

After the last exile the Jews' ties with Jerusalem were almost severed. After this event, until the time of its conquest by Umar, it was forbidden even for the Jews to enter Jerusalem. Umar conquered this city, without war and without conflict, at the request of the people of the city, by entering it at the end of the famous journey he made with his servant, taking turns on a single camel. The conquest of Jerusalem by Umar is the event in which the conquest as a concept meets its meaning most strikingly. Not a single drop of blood was shed, and after it was conquered an entirely new order was established.

This order found its finest expression in Umar's famous peace charter. No one's faith, church or freedom to practice religion would be interfered with, and everyone's security of life, property, religion, honor and intellect would be guaranteed. With this charter the Jews were able to enter Jerusalem freely after centuries, and in the centuries that followed, until the time Jerusalem was occupied by the Crusaders, for some 450 years they were able to live in Jerusalem in safety and peace together with Muslims and Christians.

When the Crusader Christians who came from the West occupied Jerusalem in 1099, they left not a stone upon a stone nor a head upon a body; they massacred not only Muslims but also Jews, and even the Eastern Christians living there. The model they put forward during the 90 years they held the city became the model they envisaged for all people in the world as well.

Later, Saladin's both reconquering it in 1187 and re-establishing here the order that Umar had established showed that the order Muslims envisaged for Jerusalem was no coincidence. When Jerusalem later passed into the hands of the Ottomans, the same order continued. The model Muslims designed for the world presented an excellent model of living together, freedom of religion and conscience, performing worship freely and the safety of houses of worship.

Meanwhile, whatever model the European Crusader Christians applied in Jerusalem, they put the same model into practice in their own countries: intolerant, impatient, neither toward Muslims, nor Jews, nor Christians of sects other than their own...

In the Middle Ages, in no city of Europe was there room for any religion or sect other than the dominant religion or sect. In no European city is there a mosque. If there is a Catholic church there is no Protestant church. If there is an Orthodox church there is no Catholic church... Yet in the same period, that is, in the Christians' Middle Ages, all the Muslim cities were applying everywhere in the same way the model Muslims had put forward in Jerusalem. Cairo, Antioch, Istanbul, Konya, Sarajevo, Damascus, Baghdad and all the other Muslim cities... In all of them the mosque, the synagogue and the church are found together right in the heart of the city. None of them is on the periphery of the city.

After the First World War the Europeans, who for centuries had shown intolerance to the Jews, wanted to give them Palestine and Jerusalem as a gift, as an atonement for their sinfulness toward them. Their attempts to create a homeland for the Jews and to settle them in their Zion, their way of establishing their own order in Jerusalem, are extremely similar to their way of designing today's world. With whatever oppression they drown the world, they apply the very same oppression in Jerusalem, or vice versa. That is, whatever their practice in Jerusalem is, their practice in the world is that.

Whatever the Children of Israel deem fit in Jerusalem for the Muslims, who throughout history have repeatedly saved them from massacre both in Jerusalem and elsewhere, they deem fit the same things elsewhere too. That is why the state of Jerusalem is always a summary of the state of the world. Jerusalem is the mirror of the world. Salvation begins in Jerusalem or is completed in Jerusalem.

It is not possible to liberate Jerusalem while leaving the oppression and distortion in the world as they are. To save Jerusalem, these injustices in the world must be ended. Unless the order in the world changes, nothing in Jerusalem will change; let us not deceive ourselves. That Jerusalem continues to remain under this occupation today is the result of the world order working persistently and stubbornly for a history and an international order that serve Zionism. It is the result of the world being counted as no more than five. But above all, the present state of Jerusalem is a reflection of the fact that more than 1.5 billion Muslims are not living as Muslims and do not know whom to befriend and whom to treat as an enemy.