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Abstract
What has been done and what is being done in the misrepresentation of the Palestine question is, on the one hand, an attempt to establish territorial claims through a selective portrayal of historical chronology which lends maximum support to a particular argument, namely the right of modern Zionists to Palestine as their ancestral home. On the other hand, by means of omission of a historical period, attempts are made to create doubt and challenge claims by those who are actually living in the land, the Palestinians, 90% of whom were Muslims at the turn of the 20th century.
At times when omission is not practiced a much more refined approach is deployed, contesting Palestinian history and the narrative accompanying it. What this approach represents is a way to cast doubt upon the history of a people by an outsider group that has a vested interest in negating the existence not only of the history but also of the people who are its subject. Such an approach is undertaken not by someone engaged in the pursuit of historical facts whatever they might be; rather it is an effort to contest the other as a means of affirming the collective self-interest of modern Zionism and its many supporters in the West.
The existing omission of Palestine's Islamic history has had a far deeper consequence, whether intended or not, of rejecting Muslim claims and rights to the land. History is written within the scope of time and space; thus the Islamic period time is omitted which also leads to a discontinuity of a people's right or claim to their own space. The Palestinians, who are the inhabitants of this land, are either completely absent from the history or at most a side show to the main act of Jewish history in Palestine, both ancient and present.
In order to remedy this imbalance in the treatment of historical periods in Palestine and the claims advanced in connection with them, I propose an examination of Al-Quds in Islamic Consciousness, which can be done by undertaking a textual and historical survey of relevant sources. What I propose is to undertake an exploration of the recorded Islamic history of al-Quds and Palestine and to establish the high reverence in which Muslims hold for this area. This is not intended to be a chronological treatment of the subject, but to provide focus on the religious foundations used to advance Muslim claims first to al-Quds, and by extension to the whole of Palestine.
The research will seek to answer the question often asked: what are the basis of Muslim claims to Palestine? What do Muslim sources say about al-Quds and the land? Why is al-Quds significant to the followers of Islam? Why should this Islamic understanding convey a legitimate territorial claim by the present day Palestinians? Finally, how this Islamic consciousness has been expressed in fatwa at various periods?
