Mufti Mohammed Hussein #fundie

Mufti Mohammed Hussein #fundie israelnationalnews.com

The religious leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has expressed fierce opposition to the new decision of the Israeli government to expand the non-Orthodox mixed prayer section of the Western Wall (Kotel).

PA Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Hussein reissued claims that the Kotel is a Muslim site belonging to the Islamic Waqf, referring to it as "Al-Buraq" Wall, a name given by Muslims to the Kotel in the 1920s in an attempt to claim it. The name refers to Mohammed's "winged steed" he supposedly rode to Jerusalem in his "night journey."

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old comment by Hasan Prishtina

The Muslims already have the Temple Mount, the much larger top of the very same structure, which contains the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock and the Dome of the Chain. The Temple Mount is controlled by an Islamic waqf and no non-Muslim may pray there.

The Western Wall, by contrast, is the holiest of the rather few holy sites in Judaism. Non-Jews may pray there if they wish. This statement reaffirms the view, enforced under the Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967, that Jews have no place at their holiest shrine.

There are Palestinians who claim that the Western Wall has nothing to do with Judaism or the Jewish people and that Jews only began to pray there once Jewish nationalism had started in the late 19th century. Even if that were true, that does not mean that it has nothing to do with Jews now or that it is not a holy site now - this is the "Palestinians weren't a people in 1900 so they're not a people now" argument, only in reverse. As it is, it has been the direction in which Jews have prayed for millennia and there is a literature that goes back 1,000 years about Jews praying there. If you need a visual aid, here is an engraving from c.1845, before Zionism was thought of, showing Jews praying at the Western Wall. It is highly unlikely that any of the people in the illustration were anything other than loyal subjects of the Sultan who would not have dreamed of Jewish sovereignty there until the coming of the Messiah.

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Mufti Mohammed Hussein #fundie israelnationalnews.com

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