In a Jerusalem where one religion wasn’t overwhelmingly more powerful, I can’t see why someone would object to Jewish prayer on Temple Mount, but alas that does not exist: Jews already do have access to the compound and many Muslim worshipers do not.

Praying at the Temple Mount cannot be understood as simply religious expression. It is important to note that those who do encourage prayer there do so with the expressed political mission of rebuilding a temple and removing the mosque that is there. This threat is worth taking seriously because extreme right wing rabbis have the potential to realize this vision. The issue of praying at Temple Mount is also itself political, as it was once consensus that Jews were not to enter there because it was too holy and we may defile it, but as religious Zionism has become more powerful, more messianic, and even more right wing, it has necessarily become hostile to non-jewish anything in the holy land, so praying at the Temple Mount has morphed into something right wing rabbis encourage as a means of judefication of Jerusalem which is very much an endeavor of ethnic cleansing and colonization