The Muslim holy month of Ramadan will soon be upon us.
In Jerusalem, even non-Muslims, such as myself, have, year after year, witnessed the expressions of sanctity, solemnity, and devotion to God, as expressed in the daily rhythms of communal and solitary life, that are unique to Ramadan.
However, in recent years, Ramadan in Jerusalem has come to be associated with rising tension at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and with the potential eruption of violence ever-present beneath the surface.
This was evident in 2021, when the last round of violence between Israel and Gaza was triggered, among others, by events at Al-Aqsa. It was no coincidence that the war erupted on the final day of Ramadan.
In the past two years, Pesach (Passover), Easter and Ramadan were celebrated simultaneously, aggravating the cyclical tensions and causing each of these holy days to be punctuated by sporadic violence.
This year, Ramadan will take place in the shadow of the war and carnage in Gaza. Even in the weeks prior to Ramadan, Al-Aqsa had figured prominently in the calculus of Gaza's war and its "day after".
Read more: Gaza's "day after" poised to bring more strife than stability
The chronic volatility of events at and in relation to Al-Aqsa/the Temple Mount can only be understood in the context of the status quo in occupied East Jerusalem.
For years, events in Jerusalem in general and at Al-Aqsa in particular have been driven by extreme religious actors who “weaponise” faith.
The extreme Temple Mount movements that seek to allow for Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa, considered fringe groups not long ago, are now mainstream. In fact, some members of Netanyahu's cabinet are openly aligned with them.
@middleeastmonitor Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa complex in Jerusalem to mark Jewish New Year Hundreds of Israeli settlers on Sunday forced their way into the flashpoint #AlAqsa Mosque complex in occupied #EastJerusalem to celebrate the Jewish New Year #RoshHashanah
original sound - Middle East Monitor
Similarly, there are iterations of extreme political Islam that have become more vocal over the defence of Al-Aqsa.
And finally, we have the “end-of-days” evangelical Christians who are no less radical and inflammatory than their Jewish and Muslim counterparts.
More than ever in recent memory, these different groups have been driving events and dominating the discourse in Jerusalem. As a result, traditional religious movements whose moderation allowed for a reasonable cohabitation of faiths in Jerusalem have been marginalised.
The growing tensions caused by religious radicalisation are not entirely new. For more than a century, it has been the real or perceived threats to the integrity of sacred space at Al-Aqsa – the site which Jews see as the Temple Mount – that has sparked violence.
But what erupts in Jerusalem doesn’t stay in Jerusalem — clashes in the holy city invariably send shockwaves throughout the region and beyond.
An underlying cause
There is a specific Jerusalem/Al-Aqsa dimension to the war in Gaza. Opinion polls made throughout the occupied Palestininian territories and the Arab world have consistently found that a majority of those polled see the desecration and threats to Al-Aqsa as one of the most important underlying causes of the war.
The minutes of meetings among Hamas leadership recently released by Israeli intelligence have revealed that the threat to Al-Aqsa was one of the two major motivations for launching the attack at this time (the second being the opposition to Israeli-Saudi normalisation).
Read more: Arab normalisation with Israel loses appeal amid Gaza horrors
It needs to be said from the outset that many of the perceived threats were reckless rumours that simply did not exist. However, as comforting as it would be to attribute this all to malicious “fake news”, that is not always the case.
While many of these claims are maliciously spread by extremists to stoke rage among the public, events in recent years clearly indicate that some of these claims are not without merit, and there is indeed reason for Muslim concern.
Let’s examine some of these claims.