Islam in Israel
Israel is home to Islam's third holiest site or shrine after those in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia: The Haram al Sharif (Temple Mount) from which Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to Heaven. This belief, not only by Israeli Muslims, but by all Muslims, raises the importance of the Dome of the Rock and the adjacent Al-Aqsa Mosque Most Muslims are angered by rumors that the Israeli government is trying to demolish the shrines, replacing them with the Third Temple. These beliefs are unfounded; in 1967, the Government of Israel acknowledged the authority of the Waqf to administer Muslim holy sites.
Most Muslims in Israel are Sunni Arabs. From 1516 to 1917, the Sunni Ottoman Turks ruled the areas that now include Israel. Their rulership reinforced and ensured the centrality and importance of Islam as the dominant religion in the region. The conquest of Palestine by the British in 1917 and the subsequent Balfour Declaration opened the gates for the arrival of large numbers of Jews in Palestine who began to tip the scales in favor of Judaism with the passing of each decade. However, the British transferred the symbolic Islamic governance of the land to the Hashemites based in Jordan, and not to the House of Saud The Hashemites thus became the official guardians of the Islamic holy places of Jerusalem and the areas around it, particularly strong when Jordan controlled the West Bank (1948-1967).
In 1922 the British created the Supreme Muslim Council in the British Mandate of Palestine and appointed Amin al-Husayni (1895-1974) as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The council was abolished in 1948, but the Grand Mufti continued as one of the most prominent Islamic and Arab leaders of modern times.
Israeli Muslims are free to teach Islam to their children in their own schools, and there are a number of Islamic universities and colleges in Israel and the territories. Islamic law remains the law of the land as concerns, for example, the marriages of Muslims, without the need for formal recognition arrangements of the kind extended to the main Christian churches. Similarly Ottoman law, in the form of the Mecelle, for a long time remained the basis of large parts of Israeli law, for example concerning land ownership.
