A Significant Contrast between Muslims and Jews on Ritual Purity

“There are similarities and differences in the reasons why outsiders to the faith are barred from entering sacred areas in the Islamic and Jewish ritual-legal systems, but the underlying differences outweigh the surface similarities. Both religions deny infidels access to their most hallowed structures and spaces: Islam does so because non-Muslims obviously do not know enough about Islamic purity law to properly exit states of impurity they have contracted. One form of this impurity, janāba, is evidently possessed of a quality that makes it antithetical to the spiritual atmosphere that pervades the holy ḥaram. Judaism bars non-Jews from the Temple campus not because of what they know (or, rather, do not know) but because of what they are: intrinsically impure by virtue of their affiliation. These differences in outlook and approach harbor significant implications for the attitude to the ‘other’ in each system, implications which should certainly be studied further."

- Ze’ev Maghen (Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv), "They Shall not Draw Nigh": The Access of Unbelievers to Sacred Space in Islamic and Jewish Law,  p. 131