(Her: Joanna)
Throughout our journey thus far, we came across a few where
a few popular religions live “happily” and “peacefully” together, such as
Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sofia in Bulgaria. But none of these cities were these
religions “live” together as dramatically as Jerusalem. Muslim, Christian, and Jews with the same
origin all live actively in this small city.
The somewhat “peace” in Jerusalem is thank to an order or rule book that
the Ottoman Empire lay down detailing how the city will be run base on the snap
shot when the order was recorded to eliminate any argument. Whoever wants to change anything, everyone
has to agree (which is nearly impossible).
It is quite bizarre that the same Muslim family has been locking the
door of the Church of Sepulchre for over 500 years.
Bizarre and crazy are the perfect words to describe
Jerusalem (and of course fascinating). I
have never seen so many religious people in one place. Let alone religious people from 3
religions. Everywhere you see people
praying.
Jerusalem is divided into 4 quarters – Jews quarter,
Christian quarter, Muslim quarter and Armenian quarter (yeah…this is an odd
one). It is total craziness to see a
street full of Muslim with ladies all covered up and see Orthodox Jews just
around the corner who also dressed in black but with fashionable curly sideburn
and big hat.
It seems like that the location where the foundation stone
is seems to be the point of conflict.
The foundation stone is situated where the Dome of Rock in the Muslim
ruling but this object is both the holy of holy for both Muslim and Jews. Christians seems to be out of this
conflict.
It is quite bizarre to see people are so intensively touched
by the holy objects and speculated location of where Jesus or Prophet Mohammed
had been. There is no evidence where
exactly the places are but people just treat these places as the holy depending
on your religion. For example, there are
2 places where Jesus were crucified, died and was buried; there are 2 tombs of
the Virgin Mary.
I was bought up from a Catholic family. I have always thought that the most important
thing is my spiritual relationship with God being a person with a
religion. Rituals and ceremony are solely
to assist a person’s relationship with God.
Being in Israel with so many people of different religion cramped in one
country was an eye-opener for me to see how differently each religion and each
person interpret the meaning of religion and their relationship with God. Being on this land, I understand why religion
has always been in the history of man a source of conflict. I don’t feel that the Holy Land is a holy
place. What I see is the nature of human
being – unfortunately, the ugly side of human being.
