Normalisation or solidarity?

By Nadia Abou El-Magd
Stirring up a heated debate over the role ordinary Egyptians have to play in the fight to liberate Jerusalem from Israeli occupation, Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mosque Mohamed Sayed Tantawi turned a seminar at Al-Azhar University last week into a launch pad for an ongoing controversy over whether or not Egyptians and other Muslims should visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Sheikh Tantawi used the occasion of the Al-Aqsa seminar to underline the importance of visiting Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem. "Visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque provides support to the Palestinian people, whom we should help in every possible way," Tantawi said. "If we don't do enough, it's a betrayal of our religion and umma [Muslim nation]." But many Islamic scholars and intellectuals objected.
"Al-Azhar ulema [scholars] revolt against Sheikh Tantawi's fatwa [religious edict]," read one headline of the Nasserist weekly Al-Arabi.
"I'm not the Mufti, I'm the Sheikh of Al-Azhar," Tantawi told Al-Ahram Weekly from his office in Al-Azhar, the highest institution of Sunni Islam. Tantawi explained that he had not raised the issue himself; rather, it was brought up by Barakat Al-Farra, an assistant to the Palestinian ambassador in Cairo. "I support his call. I support all the Palestinian demands, be they political, religious, or historical," Tantawi said.
He told the Weekly that he had visited the Palestinian territories during Ramadan of 1999, at the request of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He said that if he were invited again, he would "visit again, without hesitation." Tantawi's position has served to raise the issue of whether a visit to Jerusalem should be considered an act of defiance, or a move that legitimises Israeli occupation.
The League of Palestinian Scholars issued a statement appealing to Tantawi to alter his position. A statement carried by the Middle East News Agency warned that Tantawi's call would have "serious and destructive consequences for the Palestinian cause, amounting to an acknowledgment of Israeli sovereignty over the mosque and blessing the normalisation of relations with the Zionist enemy."
Sheikh Ekrema Sabri, Jerusalem's Mufti, told Egyptian TV on Monday, that " religious and personal visits which have nothing to do with the Israeli government are not part of normalisation." This implied he would not object to such visits.
The two-day seminar was organised by the League of Islamic Universities in cooperation with the Saleh Kamel Centre for Islamic Economy. Comments by Mahmoud Hamdi Zakzouk, minister of Al-Awqaf (religious endowments), supported Tantawi's stance. "Thousands of Muslims should visit Al-Aqsa Mosque throughout the year so that Israel, and the whole world, will know that Jerusalem is not just an Arab or Palestinian issue, but an Islamic one above all," Zakzouk told the seminar.
Grand Mufti Sheikh Nasr Farid Wassel has said that he objects to Muslims visiting Jerusalem on the authority of an Israeli entry visa. Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, has also banned Copts from visiting the holy city until it is liberated from Israeli occupation. But Israel maintains that Jerusalem is its eternal and undivided capital and has taken measures to alter the city's demographic character.
"When Israel knows that Jerusalem is a concern of all Muslims, it won't be able to challenge 1.2 billion Muslims by swallowing the entire city, changing its character or declaring it the Israeli capital," Zakzouk said.
Prominent Al-Ahram writer Fahmi Howeidy scoffs at this line of argument as evidence of a "political coma." "Can't they see that there is an occupation and an Intifada?" Howeidy told the Weekly. Tantawi's claim that a visit to Jerusalem is tantamount to a declaration of support for the Palestinians was dismissed by Howeidy as "an attempt to circumvent normalisation that won't achieve its goals."
Abdallah Al-Asha'al, a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, disagrees. "We boycott Israel, not Al-Aqsa," he said. "We have to make a distinction between visiting Jerusalem for spiritual, political and economic reasons, and coexisting with the Israeli presence." In a paper presented at the Al-Azhar seminar entitled "Visiting Jerusalem: the roots of the idea, its development and the view of the opposition", Al-Asha'al maintained that "visiting Al-Aqsa is a challenge to -- not acknowledgment of -- the Israeli occupation."
Anti-normalisation factions and prominent intellectuals have disagreed, however. "There are a thousand other ways for supporting the Intifada," Howeidy remarked. For him, visiting Jerusalem is not one of them.
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No matter what 24 Feb. - 1 March 2000
Fracas on the left 6 - 12 January 2000
Higher gear 15 - 21 July 1999
Normalisation 15 - 21 July 1999
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