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Three Palestinians killed in riots in east Jerusalem and its vicinity amid tensions at Jerusalem holy site; despite claims that they were shot in clashes with security forces, circumstances remain unclear; Friday prayers outside Al-Aqsa mosque in opposition to Israel's decision to leave metal detectors at compound's entrances were followed by small skirmishes which escalated into violent riots across the West Bank. *snip* A police spokesman said police had been targeted by flares in At-Tur, putting the lives of officers in danger, and had employed riot disposal means. *snip* The Palestinian Red Crescent says 41 Palestinians were taken to hospitals...

BERLIN — With Israelis and Palestinians caught in another widening cycle of bloodshed, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Berlin on Thursday and urged him to tone down the harsh language that American and European officials believe is fueling the violence. The message delivered on Thursday to Mr. Netanyahu, who claimed this week that a Muslim cleric had inspired the Holocaust, will be repeated in the coming days when Mr. Kerry meets the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whose own comments Mr. Netanyahu and others have blamed for provoking attacks....

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen canceled a meeting with a key Arab leader Tuesday after he insisted she wear a headscarf. The National Front leader who is a frontrunner for president was scheduled to meet with Lebanon’s grand mufti, an important cleric for Sunni Muslims, but backed out after it was made clear she was expected to cover her head, Reuters reports. “You can pass my respects to the grand mufti, but I will not cover myself up,” Le Pen told the press.

THE Grand Mufti of Australia has just proved that Pauline Hanson is right to feel threatened by Islam in this country. Ibrahim Abu Mohammad has written an astonishing letter warning that to criticise even a gay-hating imam is to risk inciting terrorist attacks against us. His inflammatory letter perfectly demonstrates why Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was a fool to hold an Iftar dinner for the Mufti and other troubling Muslim leaders during the election campaign. And Turnbull’s dinner — shown on all TV news bulletins — may explain why Hanson’s vote on Saturday was so high, helping her to win...

Around 60,000 Muslims took part in Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem yesterday, and among them were 300 residents of Gaza aged 50 and above who were let in by Israel through the Erez crossing. Amid the large turnout Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, chairperson of the Supreme Muslim Council and former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and “Palestine” for the Palestinian Authority (PA), gave a sermon in which he called to ban all non-Muslims from the Temple Mount. Sabri in his sermon claimed that the Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their land by force and they...

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz has claimed that the Islamic State (Daesh) militants are Israeli soldiers and the Saudi-led 34-nation military alliance of Islamic countries will defeat it. The statement came after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the secretive leader of the terror group, called for an uprising in Saudi Arabia and pledged to attack Israel, in an audio recording released Saturday and attributed to him, AFP reported.Terming the extremist group's threat to attack Israel a 'lie', Aziz alleged that IS is a part of the Israeli army.

In a recent article titled “Why Hitler Wished He Was Muslim,” the Wall Street Journal draws our attention to two books that reflect the historical Nazi-Islamic supremacist axis. Given the goings-on in Europe, we thought these to be poignant titles adding necessary context to a continent that appears to be a potential powder-keg. Of Stefan Ihrig’s ”Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination,” the Journal writes: Through the 1920s and 1930s, Nazi publications lauded Turkey as a friend and forerunner. In 1922, for example, the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s weekly paper, praised Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the “Father of the Turks,” as...

Obama Silent While Saudi Sheik Screeches, ‘Destroy All Churches’ On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.

THE Grand Mufti has been accused of being out-of-touch with the Muslim community and abandoning them in the aftermath of the Parramatta shooting. Parramatta mosque leader Neil El-Kadomi last night attacked the faith’s spiritual head Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed over his lack of support during the crisis. “He did nothing when myself and my family were under siege for 14 days ... there were threats to my family, everything and he never came out to ask, ‘how are you?’,” Mr El-Kadomi said. “I had the Anglican Church support me, the Uniting Church support me, one of the Jewish Board of...

Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah says Christian religious sites in Arabian Peninsula must be razed in accordance with Muslim lawSaudi Arabia’s top Muslim cleric called on Tuesday for the destruction of all churches in the Arabian Peninsula after legislators in the Gulf state of Kuwait moved to pass laws banning the construction of religious sites associated with Christianity. Speaking to a delegation in Kuwait, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, who serves as the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, said the destruction of churches was absolutely necessary and is required by Islamic law, Arabic media reported. Abdullah, who is considered to...

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the "Arab Army of Liberation."...

Philadelphia’s transit system has been ordered to accept provocative ads that include a 1941 photograph of Adolf Hitler with a former Arab leader after a federal judge ruled in favour of a pro-Israel group’s free-speech lawsuit. The proposed bus ads carry a tagline saying: “Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran”. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority believes the ads violate “minimal civility standards” and will consider an appeal. The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported on Wednesday’s ruling by US district judge Mitchell Goldberg. The ad in question features a photograph of a 1941 meeting between Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, described...

Daniel Greenfield's article: The Ghosts of Auschwitz in the Middle East Posted: 04 Feb 2015 08:35 AM PST In exile in Argentina, the world’s most wanted man was writing a defense of the indefensible. He rejected “so-called Western culture” whose bible “expressly established that everything sacred came from the Jews.” Instead he looked to the “large circle of friends, many millions of people” whose good opinion of his crimes he wanted. These millions of people were not in Germany. They weren’t even in Argentina. His fellow Nazis had abandoned him after deciding that the murder of millions of Jews was...

WASHINGTON – Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s top religious authority in the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam, has ruled it’s acceptable for men to marry girls so young the West would deem it nothing short of pedophilia and rape. Despite the Saudi justice ministry’s failed efforts to date to set 15 as a minimum age to marry a girl in the kingdom, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz declared there is nothing prohibiting Muslim men from marrying girls even younger. As Grand Mufti, Abdulaziz is president of the Supreme Council of Ulema (Islamic scholars) and chairman of...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday Islam "belongs to Germany", in a clear repudiation of anti-immigration protesters gathering in Dresden and other cities. A day after walking arm-in-arm with French President Francois Hollande at the front of a massive march in Paris to honor the victims of killings by Islamic militants, Merkel received the Turkish prime minister and urged dialogue among religions. The conservative chancellor pointed to comments made by former German president Christian Wulff, who said in 2010 that Islam was part of Germany, triggering a fierce debate. "Former president Wulff said Islam belongs to...

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in the country, said Tuesday that the militant groups Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda were "enemy number one of Islam" and not in any way part of the faith. Although the mufti and other senior Saudi preachers have condemned ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other groups before, the timing of Sheikh's statement is significant given the gains by militants in Iraq. "Extremist and militant ideas and terrorism which spread decay on Earth, destroying human civilization, are not in any way part of Islam, but...

Francis took off his shoes to step into the gold-topped dome, which enshrines the rock where Muslims believe the Prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven. Speaking to the grand mufti of Jerusalem and other Muslim authorities, Francis deviated from his prepared remarks to refer not just to his "dear friends" but "dear brothers." "May we respect and love one another as brothers and sisters," he said, and added, "May we learn to understand the suffering of others! May no one abuse the name of God through violence!"

Among those convicted and sentenced to death on Monday was Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood's spiritual guide. If his sentence is confirmed, it would make him the most senior Brotherhood figure sentenced to death since one of the group's leading ideologues, Sayed Qutb, was sentenced and executed in 1966. In announcing the 683 death sentences for violence and the killing of policemen, Judge Said Youssef on Monday also said he was referring his ruling to the Grand Mufti, the nation's top Islamic official — a requirement under Egyptian law, but one that is considered a formality. It does, however, give a...

During his October 6, 2013 speech at Bar Ilan University, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini. Mr. Netanyahu characterized el-Husseini as, “the undisputed leader of the Palestinian national movement in the first half of the 20th century.” The Prime Minister highlighted the ex-Muft’s role in fomenting pogroms (dating back, in fact, to the so-called “Nabi Musa” riots of 1920) during the decades between the Balfour Declaration, and the eventual creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Netanyahu’s address also focused on el-Husseini’s World War II era collaboration with the Nazis, the...

This unpleasant bit of history is routinely ignored and glossed over, despite the blazingly obvious congruence of National Socialist anti-Semitism with modern-day Islamic jihadist anti-Semitism, which existed long before Nazism and helped fuel it. NETANYAHU LINKS PALESTINIAN LEADERSHIP, NAZIS (Arutz Sheva)—In a surprisingly powerful and frank speech at Bar Ilan University, delivered in a calm and almost informal manner, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pointed to a deep link between the Palestinian national movement and the Nazi regime in Germany. At the heart of the oration was the determination that Arab rhetoric notwithstanding, the “territories” and “settlements” are not the heart...