Maintain the Historical Status Quo

The Experience of History try to restore the Kaaba to the shape it had originally been built in by the Prophet Abraham. He left the Kaaba in its “truncated” shape. The reason for this is given in a Hadith of Sahih al-Bukhari. That is, had the Prophet tried to change the shape of the Kaaba, a controversy would have erupted which might have affected the Prophet’s peaceful mission.1 That is why the Prophet left the Kaaba as it was in his time and did not make efforts to reshape it. This prophetic Sunnah, or practice, gives us an important principle—that is, never try to change the historical status quo. Trying to make changes in any long-standing status quo will almost certainly lead to serious consequences, even including violence. There are a number of examples in the later history of Muslims which confirm the veracity of this principle. Before its partition, Palestine came under the British Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate was a legal commission which functioned from 1923 to 1948 and formalized the British administration of the Palestinian territory that had formerly constituted the Ottoman Empire. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917 British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in Palestine of a “National Home” for the Jewish people. In 1947 the United Nations proposed a Partition Plan for Palestine, which recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.