Palestinian Cleric: Restore the Caliphate and Murder Jews

A Palestinian preacher, Ali Abu Ahmad, used Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque on Oct. 24, 2015 to call for the restoration of the Sunni Muslim caliphate and the destruction of “the Jews, the Americans, and the Russians.”

Ahmad’s comments were noted in a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount, is a spot that has become increasingly venerated by Muslims—particularly since Israel re-united Jerusalem, including the Old City and Temple Mount, in the 1967 Six-Day War. The mosque often is referred to as Islam’s third holiest site. Many Muslims believe it to have been the “farthest mosque,” from which Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammed rode his horse, Barack, on a night journey to heaven. However, most scholars agree that al-Aqsa mosque was built in the eighth century, decades after Mohammed’s death in 632 C.E., five years before Muslim armies seized Jerusalem from Byzantine Christian control.

Ahmad exhorted his followers:

“Oh servants of Allah, the issue of the al-Aqsa mosque is not merely about Jews storming the place of the Prophet’s nocturnal journey, and defiling it. It is about an entity that is plundering the lands of the Muslims.”

Claiming that Jews planned to “storm” the al-Aqsa mosque, the Palestinian cleric echoed incitement by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who is frequently described by the press and policy makers as a “moderate.” In an August 1 speech Abbas, making use of what CAMERA has noted to be a long-standing libel (“Incitement over Temple Mount Leads to Palestinian Violence Again,” September 16), said Jews planned “to get rid of al-Aqsa and establish their so-called ‘Temple.’” On September 16, he exhorted, “The al-Aqsa is ours…and they [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet…We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem.”

Ahmad offered a violent solution to his imagined Jewish designs on the mosque, which occupies the southwest Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. “The issue,” he threatened, “will only be resolved through the return of the Caliphate, Allah willing….The Caliphate [rule of all Muslims by a religious and temporal leader, the caliph] will be the one to liberate Jerusalem very soon…and annihilate the Jewish entity.”

The MEMRI report on Ahmad’s remarks can be found here.

The crowd responded to Ahmad’s calls “let us kill them [Jews]” and “make the ground swallow them up, along with their homes,” with cheers of affirmation.

In reference to the Caliphate, Ahmad might have been alluding to the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). CAMERA has noted recent ISIS threats against the Jewish state (“ISIS Echoes Palestinian Calls for Attacking Israelis,” October 22).

Ahmad is not the only Palestinian religious official to use historical falsehoods to deny Jewish connections to the Temple Mount, site of both the First and Second Temples, the former destroyed by Babylonia in 586 B.C.E., the latter by Rome in 70 C.E.

Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, told Israel’s Channel 2 on Oct. 25, 2015 that “al-Aqsa is an Islamic mosque since the creation of the world.” Hussein said the mosque was built somewhere between “3,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago.” Thus, according to the chief Islamic religious figure in Jerusalem—an Abbas appointee—the mosque manages the feat of predating by millennia the Islamic religion itself, which most scholars agree was founded in 622 C.E.

This is not the first time that Hussein has indulged in anti-Israel propaganda. Reuters previously, and uncritically, quoted his false allegations that Israeli’s had thrown grenades into al-Aqsa (“Top Palestinian Cleric Says Israel Threw Stun Grenades Into Al-Aqsa; Israel Denies,” April 20, 2014).

Like Ahmad, the current grand mufti has also previously incited violence against Jews, seeking to deny any Jewish connection to the land—and thus the very legitimacy of the Jewish state. According to Palestinian Media Watch, a non-profit organization that analyzes Palestinian media, Hussein once preached, “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent charge that a previous grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, gave Adolf Hitler the idea for the gassing and incinerating European Jewry, attracted considerable media coverage. Much of it, as CAMERA noted, focused on Netanyahu’s exaggeration while overlooking al-Husseini’s actual role in inciting anti-Jewish violence and collaborating with the Nazis. (“Bibi, the Mufti, and the Media,” October 23). Will the media again fail to report Palestinian Arab preacher’s incitement to murder Jews?