Should We Separate Islam & Palestine?
In the Qur’an, Allah describes the Night Journey of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) from Mecca to Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa (the Farthest Mosque).
In that miraculous event, the Prophet also ascended to the heavens (Al-Miʿrāj) from the site of Al-Aqsa, forever binding Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem) to Islam.
Every Muslim has a share in the responsibility toward this holy site. Scholars across the Muslim world affirm that defending and safeguarding Al-Aqsa is a collective obligation of Muslims. In other words, caring about Palestine’s holy sites and people is part of our Islamic belief and duty, inseparable from our worship and identity as Muslims. Zionism’s colonization of Palestine is not only about stealing and colonizing the land, it also seeks to sever Palestine from Islam and erase the Muslim character of the land.
From its outset, Zionism was a European settler-colonial project, initially secular and nationalistic. Early Zionist leaders like Herzl and Ben-Gurion were not religious Jews, but largely instrumentalized religion later as a tool to rally support.
This ideology aimed to establish an exclusivist Jewish ethno-state in a land already inhabited by Palestinian Muslims and Christians, a goal that necessitated the dispossession and suppression of the indigenous people and their culture. As a result, Zionism has always viewed the Islamic heritage of Palestine as an obstacle to be overcome. One of the most prominent targets has been Jerusalem and its holy sites. For decades, Zionist forces and extremist Jewish settlers have systematically tried to alter the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Compound.
High-ranking Zionist officials openly dream of raising their flag over Al-Aqsa and even replacing the mosque with a “Third Temple”. In fact, well-funded Temple Mount groups are “actively agitating for the construction of a Jewish Third Temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” with some even drafting blueprints for it. These extremists view the very existence of Al-Aqsa, an icon of Islam, as an affront to their colonial vision.
Such actions clarify why Zionism targets Al-Aqsa because, by controlling or undermining this mosque, the colonizer seeks to break the Muslim Ummah’s bond with Palestine.
Under occupation, ‘Israel’ has already desecrated and destroyed hundreds of other mosques and Islamic sites since 1948. Al Aqsa is the crown jewel. If it falls entirely under Zionist control or is rendered “neutral,” it would symbolically sever Palestine from its most prominent Islamic roots.
Palestinians understand this, which is why Al-Aqsa’s status has long motivated the Muslim masses and their political will. The goal is a Palestine detached from Islam, reduced to just a piece of real estate under an exclusively Zionist narrative. When the Prophet (SAW) prayed in Bayt al-Maqdis, led the prophets, ascended through the heavens, and was honored in the Divine Presence, Palestine was stamped into the heart of Islamic consciousness as a responsibility, and one that cannot be erased.
Here we can understand that al-Isrāʾ wal-Miʿrāj is not a distant night journey we admire only from the books of Seerah. It is a living political and spiritual map for the Ummah today.
That night did not “symbolically connect” us to Jerusalem. It bound our faith to a land now targeted by Zionist colonization, apartheid, and genocide. So when we organize for Palestinian liberation today, we are not importing Islam into the struggle. We are returning the struggle to what it has always been an Ummatic obligation rooted in the Sunnah and a refusal to normalize oppression.
