Reclaiming a sacred site was framed so that Muslim re-use itself counted as profanation

Evidence

Profanation in the angry last stages of the Latin States produced strong feelings. The tendency was already sharp as early as the loss of the “Temple of the Lord’ in 1187. This building had never been anything but a mosque, the site having been ruinous when the Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab captured Jerusalem; nevertheless, it was the site of the Temple where Christ had taught, and it always held a peculiar place in the imagination of Crusaders, one of whose principal objects, as a popular song put it, was templum Det adquirere. Its association with the Order of Chivalry named after it is well known, and its loss after the capture of the city by Salah ad-Din was bitterly resented. The accounts of its restoration to Muslim worship and of the ceremonies of cleansing it by the Muslims, and also - rather less stressed - of the profanation of true Christian shrines in the city, suggest an angry desperation on the part of Christians, which the thought of their past profanation of mosques was not enough to solace. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 633

Categorization

• XREF: The reciprocal accusation of religious profanation — each side framing the other’s use of holy places as desecration — parallels the mutually-constituted enemy constructs in the Anidjar/Aziz vault thread.
• SHARE: The detail that the Dome of the Rock’s ‘Temple of the Lord’ site was only ever a ruin before becoming a mosque, yet held unique Crusader sacredness, is exactly the counterintuitive historicity a medievalist friend would savor.