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Does Qur’an endorse travel ban?

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury - 4/29/2008

According to Qur’an two mosques are most sacred and precious for all Muslims. These are called Haramine in Arabic. According to the holy Qur’an, if someone stops Muslim from visiting any of these mosques, it will be considered as unforgivable sin. But, very unfortunately, due to suggestions of some uneducated clergies and anti-Semitic elements in the society, Bangladeshi government is continuing travel ban on Israel, thus stopping the people of this country from visiting Al Aqsa mosque.

Let us have a glimpse over the names of the Muslim nations in the world, which have diplomatic or business relations with Israel. Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, Azerbaijan, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Mauritania, Iraq, Bosnia Herzegovina, Benin, Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrghizstan, Senegal, Bahrain, Maldives, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

In 2005, Saudi Arabia announced the end of its ban on Israeli goods and services, mostly due to its application to the World Trade Organization, where one member country cannot have a total ban on another. Saudi Arabia now does not have any ban on Israeli goods.

On October 1, 1994, the Gulf States publicly announced their support for a review of the Arab boycott, in effect abolishing the secondary and tertiary boycotts against Israel.

All Lusophone countries, including the African ones of Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique and Cape Verde, maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.

The first international organization which the Israeli government joined was the International Wheat Council, established as part of Point Four Program in early 1949. Since May 11, 1949, the State of Israel is a member the United Nations.

Israel is a member of many agencies within the UN, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Israel also participates in other international organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Within the UNESCO, Israel is a member of the scientific council of the Informatics program, an active member in the International Hydrologic Plan (IHP) and an active member of the Man and Biosphere programme (MAB).

Israel has joined the European Union Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development and is a member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the European Laboratory and Organization for Molecular Biology (EMBP/EMBL/EMBC), the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) since 1994, the International Network for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises. and the Bank for International Settlement in 2003.

Israel is, as of May 2007, was a trial member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Israel is a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue with NATO.

The economy of Israel is diversified with substantial government ownership and a rapidly developing high-tech sector. Poor in natural resources, Israel depends on imports of petroleum, coal, food, uncut diamonds, other production inputs, and military equipment. It also has received substantial direct economic aid from the United States, including approximately $1.2 billion per year since the mid-1970's, although that regular annual amount has been being tapered off by $120 million per year beginning in 1998. In 2007, direct economic aid from the US amounted to $120 million, or about 0.07% of Israel's GDP. As regards overall net international transfers, Israel is a major recipient and has ranked at or near the top ever since 1959 In May 2007, Israel was invited to join the OECD.

The country's GDP (Purchasing power parity) in 2006 reached $195 billion according to the International Monetary Fund or $179 billion according to the World Bank (see List of countries by GDP (PPP)). GDP per capita has been $31,767 according to the International Monetary Fund in 2007 or $26,200 in 2006 according to the CIA World Factbook. $31,767 is on par with most Western European countries like France or Italy, while $26,200 is lower than most Western European countries except Greece, Spain and Portugal but higher than all Eastern European countries and close to the average for the European Union. The economy grew by 8% in the last quarter of 2006, the fastest growth of any Western nation.

The major industrial sectors include metal products, electronic and biomedical equipment, processed foods, chemicals, and transport equipment. Israel possesses a substantial service sector and the Israel diamond industry is one of the world's centers for diamond cutting and polishing. It is also a world leader in software development and is a major tourist destination. In 1998, Tel Aviv was named by Newsweek as one of the ten most technologically influential cities in the world. American billionaires and business tycoons including Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Donald Trump have each praised Israel’s economic environment, and the country was the destination for Berkshire Hathaway's first investment outside of the USA when it purchased ISCAR Metalworking, and the first R&D Centers outside the USA for companies including Intel and Microsoft. The country has now become known as Silicon Wadi.

Israel has signed free trade agreements with the European Union, the United States, the European Free Trade Association, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Jordan, and Egypt, and on 18 December 2007, became the first non-Latin American country to sign a free trade agreement with Mercosur.

Average wages in 2007 hover around $109-133 per day.

Israel's strong commitment to economic development and its talented work force led to economic growth rates during the nation's first two decades that frequently exceeded 10% annually. The years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War were a lost decade economically, as growth stalled, inflation soared and government expenditures rose significantly. Also worthy of mention is the 1983 Bank stock crisis. By 1984 the economic situation became almost catastrophic with inflation reaching an annual rate close to 450% and projected to reach over 1000% by the end of the following year. However, the successful economic stabilization plan implemented in 1985 and the subsequent introduction of market-oriented structural reforms reinvigorated the economy and paved the way for its rapid growth in the 1990s and became a model for other countries facing similar economic crises.

Two developments have helped to transform Israel's economy since the beginning of the 1990s. The first is waves of Jewish immigration, predominantly from the countries of the former USSR, that has brought over one million of new citizens to Israel. These new immigrants, many of them highly educated, now constitute some 16% of Israel's 6.5 million population. The second development benefiting the Israeli economy is the peace process begun at the Madrid conference of October 1991, which led to the signing of accords led to a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan (1994). The Oslo Accords between Israel and the Arabs led to the Second Intifada, which caused Israel to lose billions of dollars in economic terms. Experts say that even had the peace process not failed the Arab economies had little to offer Israel in terms of trade except for oil. In spite of Israel's difficult security situation it managed to open up new markets to Israeli exporters farther afield, such as in the rapidly growing countries of East Asia. In the past few years there has been an unprecedented inflow of foreign investment in Israel, as companies that formerly shunned the Israeli market now see its potential contribution to their global strategies. In 2006, foreign investment in Israel totaled $13 billion, according to the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Thus, in Israeli terms, prosperity increases, regardless of whether there is a de-facto peace or not. The Financial Times recently said that 'bombs drop, yet Israel's economy grows', as a demarker to this fact.

Israeli companies, particularly in the high-tech area, have recently enjoyed considerable success raising money on Wall Street and other world financial markets; Israel now ranks second among foreign countries in the number of its companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges.

For 2006, Israeli exports grew by 11% to just over $29 billion; the hi-tech sector accounted for $14 billion, a 20% increase from the previous year.

The United States is Israel's largest trading partner; two-way trade totalled some $12.6 billion in 1997. The principal U.S. exports to Israel include computers, integrated circuits, aircraft parts and other defense equipment, wheat, and automobiles. Israel's chief exports to the U.S. include cut diamonds, jewelry, integrated circuits, printing machinery, and telecommunications equipment. The two countries signed a free trade agreement (FTA) in 1985 that progressively eliminated tariffs on most goods traded between the two countries over the following ten years. An agricultural trade accord was signed in November 1996, which addressed the remaining goods not covered in the FTA. Some non-tariff barriers and tariffs on goods remain, however. Israel also has trade and cooperation agreements in place with the European Union and Canada, and is seeking to conclude such agreements with a number of other countries, including Turkey, Jordan and several countries in Eastern Europe.

Until the last decade, Israel's trade with the Arab world was minimal due to the Arab League boycott. Beginning in 1945, Arab nations not only refused to have direct trade with Israel (the primary boycott), but they also refused to do business with any corporation that operated in Israel, or any corporation that did business with a corporation that did business with Israel (the secondary and tertiary boycotts).

2.8% of the country's GDP is derived from Agricultural activity. While Israel imports substantial quantities of grain, it is largely self-sufficient in other agricultural products and food stuffs, due to the fact that food must be regulated Kashrut for sale in the Israeli retail market, and hence imports almost no food products from other countries. For centuries, farmers in Israel have grown varieties of citrus fruits such as grapefruit, oranges and lemons. Citrus fruits are still Israel's major agricultural export.

Israel is one of the world's major exporters of military equipment, accounting for 10% of the world total in 2007.

According to a report by Merill Lynch published in 2006, some 7,200 millionaires lived in Israel in 2006, 12.9 percent more than the previous year, Merrill Lynch reported in its World Wealth Report.

The report also said that the number of Israeli multi-millionaires – people whose wealth exceeds $30 million – grew by 15 percent to 87. In addition, Israel registered 50 percent more millionaires in 2006 than the average increase in the rest of the world.

The capital of Israel's super-rich stood at $35 billion in 2006, 17 percent more than a year earlier, the report found.

Uri Goldfarb, Merrill Lynch Israel vice president for private banking, attributed the capital boost of Israeli multi-millionaires to large investments in developing countries, the continued rise of the Tel Aviv stock exchange, and the purchase of property for development at home and abroad.

The report put at 9.5 million the number of people worth $1million or more, 8.3 percent more than in 2005. The total capital of the world's millionaires rose by 11.4 percent to $37.2 trillion, the first double-digit rise in seven years.

Jerusalem is the capital and largest city of Israel in both population and area, with 732,100 residents in an area of 125.1 square kilometers (49 sq mi). Located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern tip of the Dead Sea, the city has a history that goes back as far as the 4th millennium BCE, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. Jerusalem has been the holiest city in Judaism and the spiritual center of the Jewish people since the 10th century BCE. The city contains a number of significant ancient Christian sites and is widely considered the third-holiest city in Islam.

The walled area of Jerusalem, which constituted the entire city until the 1860s, is now called the Old City, and was added to the List of World Heritage Sites in danger in 1982. The Old City has been traditionally divided into four quarters, although the names used today—the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters—were only introduced in the early 19th century. Despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometer (0.35 square mile), the Old City is home to several sites of key religious importance: the Temple Mount and its Western Wall for Jews, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims.

Modern Jerusalem has grown up around the Old City, with its civic and cultural hub extending westward toward Israel's urban center in Gush Dan.

Although the precise origin of the Hebrew name for Jerusalem, Yerushalayim remains uncertain, scholars have come up with a variety of interpretations. Some say it means "legacy of peace" — a combination of yerusha (legacy) and shalom (peace). "Shalom" is a cognate of the Hebrew name "Shlomo," i.e., King Solomon," the builder of the First Temple. Alternatively, the second part of the word could be Salem (Shalem literally "whole" or "in harmony"), an early name for Jerusalem that appears in the Book of Genesis. Others cite the Amarna letters, where the Akkadian name of the city appears as Urušalim, a cognate of the Hebrew Ir Shalem. Some believe there is a connection to Shalim, the beneficent deity known from Ugaritic myths as the personification of dusk.

A Midrashic interpretation in Genesis Rabba explains that Abraham came to the city that was then called Shalem after rescuing Lot. Upon arrival, he asked the king and high priest Melchizedek to bless him, and Melchizedek did so in the name of God (indicating that he, like Abraham, was a monotheist). This encounter between Melchizedek and Abraham was commemorated by renaming the city in their honor: the name Yeru (derived from Yireh, the name Abraham gave to the Temple Mount) was combined with Shalem, producing Yeru-Shalem, meaning the "city of Shalem," or "founded by Shalem." If shalem means "complete," or "without defect, " Yerushalayim would mean the "perfect city," or "the city of he who is perfect". The ending -im indicates the plural in Hebrew grammar and -ayim the dual, leading to an interpretation of the name as representing two facets of the city, such as two hills. The pronunciation of the last syllable as -ayim appears to be a late development, which had not yet appeared at the time of the Septuagint.

A city appears in ancient Egyptian records called Rushalimum, which many scholars believe to be the first reference to the modern day city of Jerusalem.

Ceramic evidence indicates the occupation of Ophel, within present-day Jerusalem, as far back as the Copper Age, c. 4th millennium BCE, with evidence of a permanent settlement during the early centuries of the Early Bronze Age, c. 3000-2800 BCE. Ann Killebrew has shown how Jerusalem was a large and important walled city in the MB IIB and IA IIC (ca. 1800-1550 and 720-586 BCE), during the intervening Late Bronze (LB) and IA I and IIA/B Ages Jerusalem was a small and relatively insignificant and unfortified town. The earliest written references to the city are probably in the Berlin and Brussels groups of Execration Texts (c. 19th century BCE) (which refer to a city called Roshlamem or Rosh-ramen) and the Amarna letters (c. 14th century BCE). Some archaeologists, including Kathleen Kenyon, believe Jerusalem as a city was founded by West Semitic people with organized settlements from around 2600 BCE. According to tradition the city was founded by Shem and Eber, ancestors of Abraham. The Biblical account portrays the Jebusites as having control of the city, inhabiting the area around the present-day city until the late 11th century BCE when David is said to have invaded and conquered their city, Jebus, and established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah (c. 1000s BCE). Recent excavations of a large stone structure are interpreted by some archaeologists as lending credence to the biblical narrative.

According to the Hebrew Bible, David reigned until 970 BCE, when his son Solomon became king of Israel. Within a decade, Solomon began to build the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah inside the city. Solomon's Temple (later known as the First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in Jewish history as the repository of the Ark of the Covenant. The next four centuries, up until the destruction of Solomon's Temple (c. 586 BCE), are known in history as the First Temple Period. Upon Solomon's death (c. 930 BCE), the ten northern tribes split off to form the Kingdom of Israel. Under the leadership of the House of David and Solomon, Jerusalem remained the capital of the Kingdom of Judah. When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE, as the Babylonians conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and laid waste to Solomon's Temple. However, many claims of the Fall of Jerusalem are gathered from the Ptolemaic records, in which some dates have been found to be erroneous. Some religions claim that Jerusalem fell in 606-607 BCE; however, no historical evidence supports that the 18th or 19th year of Nebuchadrezzar was in the year 607 BCE, and Zecharias 7:1-5 establishes the year 587 BCE for the complete and final attack on Jerusalem by the Babylonians.

In 538 BCE, after fifty years of Babylonian captivity, Persian King Cyrus the Great permitted the Jews to return to Judah to rebuild Jerusalem and their holy temple. Construction of the Second Temple, was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple. Jerusalem resumed its role as capital of Judah and center of Jewish worship. When Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, Jerusalem and Judea fell under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty under Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE, Ptolemy V lost Jerusalem and Judea to the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenized polis came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias the High Priest and his five sons against Antiochus Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in 152 BCE with Jerusalem again as its capital.

In May 2007, Jerusalem had a population of 743,000, of whom 68% were Jewish, 30% were Muslim, and 2% were Christian, and a population density of 5,750.4 inhabitants per square kilometer (14,893.5/sq mi). In 2005, Jerusalem received 2,850 immigrants, with nearly three quarters of them arriving from the United States, France, and former members of the Soviet Union.

Jerusalem plays an important role in the three monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The 2000 Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem lists 1204 synagogues, 158 churches, and 73 mosques within the city.

Jerusalem has been sacred to the Jews since the 10th century BCE, as the site of Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple. It is mentioned in the Bible 632 times. Today, the Western Wall, a remnant of the Second Temple, is a holy site for Jews, second only to the Temple Mount itself. Synagogues around the world are traditionally built with the Holy Ark facing Jerusalem, and Arks within Jerusalem face the "Holy of Holies". As prescribed in the Mishna and codified in the Shulchan Aruch, daily prayers are recited while facing towards Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Many Jews have "Mizrach" plaques hung on a wall of their homes to indicate the direction of prayer.

Christianity reveres Jerusalem not only for its role in the Old Testament but also for its significance in the life of Jesus. According to Biblical accounts, Jesus was brought to the city of Jerusalem not long after his birth and later in his life cleansed the Second Temple. The Cenacle, believed to be the site of Jesus' Last Supper, is located on Mount Zion in the same building that houses the Tomb of King David. Another prominent Christian site in Jerusalem is Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion. The Gospel of John describes it as being located outside Jerusalem, but recent archaeological evidence suggests Golgotha is a short distance from the Old City walls, within the present-day confines of the city. The land currently occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is considered one of the top candidates for Golgotha and thus has been a Christian pilgrimage site for the past two thousand years.

According to tradition, Jerusalem is widely considered the third-holiest city in Islam. For approximately a year, before it was permanently switched to the Kabaa in Mecca, the qibla (direction of prayer) for Muslims was Jerusalem. The city's lasting place in Islam, however, is primarily due to Muhammad's Night of Ascension (c. 620 CE). Muslims believe Muhammad was miraculously transported one night from Mecca to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, whereupon he ascended to Heaven to meet previous prophets of Islam. The first verse in the Qur'an's Sura al-Isra notes the destination of Muhammad's journey as al-Aqsa (the farthest) mosque, in reference to the location in Jerusalem. Today, the Temple Mount is topped by two Islamic landmarks intended to commemorate the event — al-Aqsa Mosque, derived from the name mentioned in the Qur'an, and the Dome of the Rock, which stands over the Foundation Stone, from which Muslims believe Prophet of Islam, Muhammad ascended to Heaven.

After learning about Israel and Jerusalem as well Muslim religious attachment to this holy city, can anyone not at least raise question to the Bangladeshi government as to why the travel ban is yet continuing on Israel, thus stopping thousands of Muslims from seeing the holy mosque, which is one of the two holliest mosques in Islam. On the other hand, Bangladeshi Christians are also barred from visiting their holliest Bethelham. This can not be treated as good policy of any government. On the other hand, Bangladesh may consider possible reaction from World Trade Organization [WTO], which never will allow any of its member countries from continuing complete ban on another member. Many of the nations have established economic or diplomatic relations with Israelto avert the possible negative actions of this law. On the other hand, if we will carefully scrutinize relations of Israel with any foreign countriy, we shall only witness the examples of gesture and goodwill and cooperation. Our neighboring nation India is just one example of benefiting from its relations with Israel.