Introduction

Abstract

While certainly one of the holiest sites in the world for both Jews and Muslims, for much of the twentieth century, incidents corresponding to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif have best been understood as being motivated by competing nationalisms—a consequence of Zionist (later Israeli) and Palestinian attempts to appropriate the site as a symbol of respective, essentially secular, nationalist identities, largely for the purpose of legitimizing respective nationalist claims over a contested territory. At the same time, one cannot really say that in either case, as a nationalist symbol, the site became secularized. As I argue here, influence has largely run in the other direction, with the (initially at least) essentially secular ideologies of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism effectively becoming co-opted by their majority faiths.

The original version of this chapter was revised: Final corrections have been incorporated. The erratum to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49920-8_12