Third Temple

The Third Temple is a proposed Jewish temple to be built in Jerusalem. The proposal has figured as a subject of Jewish liturgy and prayers since AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans (followed shortly thereafter by the expulsion of the Jews from the region). With the advent of Zionism, the state of Israel, and the possession of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967 (a culmination of the Six-Day War), the re-establishment of the center of the Jewish religion has been an ardent focus for both Religious Zionists in Israel and Christian Zionists in the United States.

Religious perspectives

Clashes with Muslim groups

The proposed location of the Third Temple, most likely on the Temple Mount area of Jerusalem, has sparked fierce controversy in the Muslim world, as the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (among other Muslim religious relics) sit in the exact area where the Second Temple is believed to have been situated; the Western Wall of the Second Temple, which sits on the outskirts of the complex, is the only remaining extant component of the Second Temple. Many Muslims fear, and have mongered conspiracy theories, that Religious Zionists seek to bulldoze the Muslim relics and replace them with the new Third Temple edifice; in turn, a ban on non-Muslim access to the Muslim area has stoked the ire of Religious Zionists, and several highly-publicized attempted breaches have taken place.

Controversy in Christianity

Christian Zionists, including many Dispensationalists, in the United States have eschatologically seen the Third Temple reconstruction as a heralding of the End Times, which would signify the rule of the Antichrist, the Tribulation, religious genocides against non-Antichrist-aligned forces, and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to pit humanity against angels in the ultimate war of good-vs.-evil. This view, and the resulting financial and political support for Religious Zionism in Israel by Christian Zionism-aligned nonprofits in the US, has brought intense accusations from non-Zionist Christians of advocating for a speedy end of the world.

Controversy in Judaism

Jewish groups have ideologically clashed over the subject, with many Haredim claiming that the Third Temple can only come by descent from heaven and with the advent of the divine Jewish Messiah. In addition, the incumbent restoration of korban, or animal sacrifice, with the rebuilding of the Third Temple is a controversial theological issue, given that most schools of Judaism have not observed korban since the expulsion by the Romans, and have all but excised korban from Jewish liturgy and rabbinically-approved halakha (religious law).

Anarchist perspective

While Zionism (and Israel) has been a long-controversial nationalism with far-right tendencies and appeals, the Third Temple could seem to be a cynical bid to entrench Jewish rule - religious or non- - in the region and signify the demoting of the faiths of the Palestinian/Israeli Arabs to a client minority religion without any existing claim to the region. However, with the long-running ethnoreligious irredentism of Islamist groups (including the Islamist theocracy of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, as stated by Khomeini) to drive the Jews from the region and make Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic) the capital of a multiregional caliphate, the Temple Mount can also seem to be the focal point of at least two competing religious irredentisms (one being smaller and garnering a David-like sympathy from the US against the Islamist Goliath) which seek expulsion, disposession and/or genocide of the other group from the area.

Thus, it is unrecommendable to view this as a black-and-white issue, as both competing sides see this religious hotspot as a black-and-white issue of survivalistic proportions.