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The al-Aksa mosque is mistakenly called, “Omar’s mosque” after the first Caliph of Jerusalem who captured the city in 638CE. This religious shrine was a hoax-gone-bad for Caliph Abd al-Wahd (705-715 CE). Wahd actually completed construction and named it al-Aksa so that it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran. Wahd desired to draw prayer and, more importantly, attention to the place where he was then ruler, Jerusalem. This attempt failed since Mohammed had a stern restriction regarding Jerusalem. The site fell into disrepair and, up until this century, no Islamic monarch deemed the Dome or the mosque...

Apr. 18, 2004 10:47 NewsMaker: A different kind of Muslim By MELISSA RADLER Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi is emerging as an unlikely voice of moderation in Islam A few years back, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, the secretary-general of the Italian Muslim Association, imam at the Shafi School of Islamic Jurisprudence, and the co-chair of Islam-Israel Fellowship at the Root and Branch Association, addressed a group of conservative-leaning Jews in Manhattan. After hearing him cite a Koranic passage endorsing Zionism (The Night Journey, 17:104), deriding terror groups for misinterpreting religious texts to advance their "pseudo-Islamic radicalist" agenda, and endorsing a "Jordan...

Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi is emerging as an unlikely voice of moderation in Islam *************SNIP*************** Today, Palazzi, 43, is emerging as an unlikely voice of moderation in a religion whose leaders are viewed by many as apathetic, if not sympathetic, to terror abroad and oppression at home. A student of Sheikh Muhammad Shaarawi (an Egyptian cleric who promoted Jewish-Muslim relations and backed Anwar Sadat's decision to make peace with Israel), Palazzi is a harsh critic of the anti-Semitism that has come to pervade Islam. A proponent of Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon's voluntary transfer plan, Palazzi opposes the US-backed road...

A Muslim sheik who condemns Yasser Arafat as a terrorist joined a Jewish rabbi in a protest outside the Palestinian Liberation Organization's U.N. mission in New York. During dozens of demonstrations and memorials in recent months, Rabbi Avi Weiss, president of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, had been calling, unsuccessfully, for a Muslim leader to join him in protesting Palestinian terrorist attacks.

Islam Perverted The Islamists have got it wrong By Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi Western observers, both among the general public and the media, commonly make the mistake of thinking that Islamism is the same as traditional Islam. Even Western researchers describe Islamism as a resurgence of traditional Islam. In contrast, moderate Sunni Muslims are characterised as those whose faith is mitigated, influenced by syncretism, or diluted by a certain amount of secularisation and Westernisation. But this turns reality upside-down. In fact, Islamists depart in important ways from the Islamic tradition. Indeed, some outstanding traditional Muslim scholars, such as Sheikh Muhammad...