August 10, 2006–As a vegetarian, I take grim satisfaction in the notion that a cow may someday destroy the world. As farcical as that sounds, it’s a very real possibility. Like most apocalyptic farces, this one involves Jerusalem.

The most hotly contested piece of land in the world is the place where the Second Temple once stood, where Jewish and Christian fundamentalists hope the Third Temple will soon be built, and where the third holiest site in Islam, the Dome of the Rock, stands today. As Gershom Gorenberg demonstrates in The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount (Oxford, 2000), this site plays crucial and conflicting roles in the apocalyptic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, traditions that have a grave impact upon geopolitical events throughout the Middle East and, therefore, the world. Gorenberg, an associate editor and columnist for the Jerusalem Report, as well as an associate of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, is something of an authority on these matters. His book explores dangers that are simultaneously terrible and ludicrous.

Jewish fundamentalism, such as the fundamentalism embraced by the powerful right-wing political movement known as Gush Emunim, is rooted in the Kabbalistic belief that the divine presence is shattered and scattered throughout creation, and that Jews play a decisive role in bringing these fragments of divinity into their rightful places, and thereby redeeming the world.

For Jewish fundamentalists, this process requires Jews to reclaim every inch of the Promised Land, especially the Temple Mount. They believe that by building the Third Temple they’ll help bring about the golden age of the Messiah. Before this can happen, however, the Dome of the Rock has to go, by whatever means necessary.

Christian fundamentalists also have an interest in the Temple Mount. They refer to the Book of Daniel to make their case. Though Daniel is presented as living during the Babylonian exile, most historians believe the book was written during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus in the 2nd century BCE. The Book of Daniel describes a number of visionary dreams about corrupt human empires, including a dream in which an evil prince stops the sacrifices in the Temple and erects within it an “abomination” that “causes desolation.”

Historians believe that the Book of Daniel talks about the Seleucid’s reign, and that the “abomination” was the statue of Zeus that Antiochus placed in the Temple. To Christian fundamentalists, however, the book is all about the last days, when the Antichrist will deceive the world, fool the Jews into thinking that he’s their Messiah, and defile the Third Temple. The Third Temple needs to be built so that the Antichrist can defile it and so that the rest of the prophecies, including the annihilation of the vast majority of Jews, the conversion of the survivors, and the Second Coming of Jesus, will come to pass.

The alliance between Jewish and Christian fundamentalists attacks the best features of Israeli society while nourishing the worst. Christian fundamentalists believe that Israel needs to expand its borders to encompass the entire Promised Land, they oppose on principle any movement by Israel to trade land for peace, and they encourage Israeli aggression against both the Palestinians and Israel’s Muslim neighbors. If Christian fundamentalism was a fringe movement this wouldn’t matter, but it’s not. Christian fundamentalists are now the most powerful voting bloc in the US, they’ve taken control of the Republican Party, and they have very close ties with the Israeli government.

Meanwhile, Muslim fundamentalists are closely watching their Jewish and Christian counterparts. These fundamentalists have an apocalyptic narrative of their own, a narrative equally focused on the Temple Mount.

Although the Koran doesn’t discuss the end times in any detail, there are other Islamic sources that do, such as a 13th century compendium of apocalyptic visions called A Note on the Status of the Dead and Final Matters. There’s also a tradition associated with the Prophet that says that “Judgement Day shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, where the Jews will hide behind trees and stones, and the trees and stones will speak and say, ‘Muslim, behind me is a Jew. Come and kill him.’”

According to sources such as these, humanity will become ever more corrupt until, in the final days, a false Messiah will arise to conquer the world. This figure, known as Al-Masih al-Dajjal or the Antichrist, will be a Jew who will lead an army of his brethren from the east. He’ll eventually be defeated by Jesus, or perhaps by the Muslim redeemer known as the Madhi, in a battle near Jerusalem. After this, the dead will rise and be judged in the valley of Jehosafat next to Jerusalem’s walls.

This literature was largely ignored in the Arab world until 1967, when Israel thoroughly trounced the Arab forces arrayed against it. That defeat discredited secularism among many Arabs, and apocalyptic beliefs gained ground as people turned to religion to make sense of their humiliation. Such beliefs are becoming increasingly common in Muslim culture. For example, Egyptian writer Sa’id Ayyub’s 1987 book, Al-Masih al-Dajjal, spawned a genre of Islamic apocalyptic literature that’s every bit as popular in the Arab world as the Left Behind series is in the West. These books identify the Jewish Messiah with the Antichrist, and argue that his servants will soon destroy the Dome of the Rock in order to build the Third Temple.

Fortunately, there is a caveat that offers some protection to the Dome. This is where the doomsday cow comes in. According to Numbers 19, before entering the Temple, Jews must be ritually purified by the ashes of that rarest of beasts, a pure red heifer. The criteria are stringent. If the cow has even two white hairs by its third birthday, it’s disqualified. The last of the ashes of the previous red heifer ran out sometime after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

This caveat helped save the Dome on at least one occasion. In 1984, Israel’s domestic security force, the Shin Bet, uncovered a conspiracy to blow up the Dome of the Rock. Far from being marginalized crackpots, the conspirators held influential positions in Gush Emunim, and some had even met on occasion with Israel’s prime minister. They pursued their plans with extraordinary skill and sophistication, but they were unable to find a rabbi who would sanction their mission. After all, without the ashes of a pure red heifer, how could any Jew achieve the ritual purity needed to build the Third Temple? If they had succeeded, the results would have been catastrophic. One of the judges who presided over the case wrote that the destruction of the Dome would have incited hundreds of millions of Muslims against Israel and created “in the not-too-distant future, the risk of world conflagration.” For lack of a cow, the Dome was spared. Of course, once a new red heifer is discovered, all bets are off. This may not take very long. In collaboration with Israeli Jewish fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, like those involved with Canaan Land Restoration of Israel Inc, are now turning to biotechnology to try and breed a cow that meets the requirements of Numbers 19. Consider that next time you’re chowing down your cheeseburger.