Likud Party leader and well-known soothsayer Binyamin Netanyahu has predicted that if Israel doesn’t have total control over Jerusalem then al-Qaeda will blow up the Holy Sepulchre, sparking “an escalation of religious conflict” we can’t even envision.
It seems to me that either the once and future Israeli Prime Minister or al-Qaeda is dramatically over-estimating the importance of the Holy Sepulchre to modern Christianity, its claims to being “Christianity’s holiest site” notwithstanding.
1,000 years ago (actually it’ll be 1,000 years ago to the day on October 18) the Fatimid caliph destroyed the previous Sepulchre, and that did indeed spark a series of Crusades (ok… so it look 70 years for the Crusades to get going, but news traveled more slowly in those days). Yet it seems to me that Christianity has matured somewhat since the depths of the dark ages, and as eager as some in the west remain for any excuse to start a major war, I’d like to think the bulk of Christendom really isn’t so hung up on some 11th century building in Jerusalem.