Tuesday, December 08, 2009

The NYTimes Takes On Another Temple

Judaism's most sacred location, the Temple Mount, is more often than not dismissed by the world's media, among them the New York Times.

Seems other holy sites of other religions suffer from inaccurate reporting, too.

Here's from a NYTimes report on Ayodhya today:-

AYODHYA, India — To reach the most hotly disputed religious site in India, a pilgrim must negotiate a maze of caged paths, designed so that worshipers can approach it only single file...



From 1528 until 1992, a squat, nondescript mosque sat on this spot...


And here are some other details:

In the 7th century CE, Xuanzang (Hiuen Tsang), the Chinese monk, recorded spotting many Hindu temples in Ayodhya. In the epic Ramayana, the city of Ayodhya is cited as the birthplace of Lord Sri Rama, a Hindu deity who was worshipped as Lord Vishnu's seventh incarnation.




Ayodhya became a famous pilgrimage destination in the 1400s when Ramananda, the Hindu mystic, established a devotional sect of Rama.


But, as what occurred in Jerusalem in 638,

Ayodhya, like other Indian cities, was the victim of pillage and sacking during the Ghaznavi raids and Ghori invasions. Hindu temples were allegedly looted or destroyed. The cultural fabric was totally destroyed.

More:

There is incontrovertible archaeological evidence which proves that there did exist at the very spot of the Ram Janma Bhoomi a magnificent temple from at least the 12th Century A.D. onwards which was destroyed to build a mosque like structure over it in the 16th Century A.D. (and see this)


And you noticed that both the Jewish and Hindu remnants are challenged by Muslims.

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