(Image Kremlin.ru / CC BY)
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel -
The top cleric in the Palestinian Authority says it is every Muslim’s duty to wage jihad (holy war) against the “thieving Jews,” the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) watchdog group reported.
The Jerusalem-based organization monitors Palestinian and other Arabic news outlets to see what the Palestinians are saying in Arabic, content that the Palestinians frequently appear to think the English-speaking world has no access to.
PMW recently exposed an interview with PA Mufti Muhammad Hussein, the Palestinian’s chief religious figure.
The television moderator asked the mufti about the recent agreement by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to make peace with Israel and establish full diplomatic relations.
“All the religious rulings that were issued by the nation’s religious scholars obligated fighting against the thieving Jews, and they don’t disagree on banning normalization with the Zionists. But some reinterpret these texts and welcome the normalization,” the moderator said, referring to the UAE and Bahrain.
The mufti did not flinch and explained in detail the religious obligation to wage holy war against those very same “thieving Jews.”
“The texts clearly say that if an inch of the Muslims’ lands is stolen, jihad becomes a personal religious commandment for everyone who is capable of it,” Mufti Hussein said. “This is the Shari’ah law that the religious legal scholars have followed from the beginning.”
“The religious ruling is firm, valid, and present. The minimum we demand from those who are trying to twist the texts,” he said, “is that they read the texts correctly and not distort them.
Hussein said those rulings could not be changed “according to the whims of this or that ruler” and that “Allah will ask them about this.”
The expert translators at PMW noted that the Mufti used the Arabic term “fard ayn” which is a personal Islamic commandment incumbent on every Muslim to describe the seriousness of the obligation to wage jihad, or holy war.
