The Palestine Scholars Association, a radical Islamic body in the Palestinian
territories, issued a fatwa on Wednesday banning foreign Muslims from visiting
the Temple Mount as long as Jerusalem is under Israeli control.
Dr. Maher
al-Huli, head of the fatwa department in the PSA, said that non-Palestinian
Muslims should refrain from visiting the Al-Aksa Mosque “while it remains captive
by the state of the Jews.”
He said in a fatwa that Muslims were instead
entrusted by God with “liberating and saving the mosque from the Jewish usurpers
and restoring it to the glory of Muslims.”
The fatwa came in response to
reports that pilgrims from some Islamic countries have recently been visiting
the Temple Mount as part of tourist trips.
According to Huli, “refusing
to visit the Aksa Mosque while it is under occupation means rejecting Zionist
sovereignty over the holy site and combating normalization with the Zionist
enemy.”
He said that Muslims need to be taught that Jerusalem is an
Islamic city that can’t be handed over to others. He also called for teaching
Muslims about the need to wage jihad in order “to liberate the mosque and lands
from the usurpers.”
In a separate development, Hamas announced Wednesday
that Sheikh Yusef al- Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader and
one of the most influential Islamic clerics in the world, will visit the Gaza
Strip in May.
The announcement was made by Hamas’s top official, Ismail
Radwan, who met with Qaradawi in Doha, Qatar, and invited him to visit the Gaza
Strip.
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