CAIRO,
September 14, 2005 (IslamOnline.net)- It is lawful to demolish places
of worship built on territories usurped by occupation forces like
synagogues in the liberated Gaza Strip, a host of scholars have
agreed.
"It
is lawful to tear down synagogues built by Israel in Gaza as they are
reminiscent of the occupation," Sheikh Yusuf Jomaa Salama, the
Palestinian Minister of Waqfs and imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, told
IslamOnline.net Wednesday, September 14.
"We
Muslims do respect other religions and history records mention nothing
concerning Muslims demolishing churches or synagogues, but they rather
left them intact in their conquests.
"But
when it comes to the Gaza Strip, it is completely a different story as
they are built on usurped land."
Thousands
of Palestinians gathered Wednesday amid the ruins of the largest of
the former Gaza Strip settlements for a mass cross-party rally to
celebrate Israel's pullout.
Two
days after Israeli troops left Gaza following a 38-year occupation,
senior representatives from all the main Palestinian movements
addressed the crowds in Neve Dekalim, the once the unofficial
settlement "capital" now largely reduced to rubble.
They
planted national flags on the liberated soil, chanted patriotic songs
and fired celebratory salvos.
Insignificant
Salama
noted that the Palestinian Authority has already decided to bulldoze
flat these synagogues and Israel's Supreme Court has ordered their
demolition.
"It
is insignificant to keep the synagogues after the evacuation of all
Jews and dismantling of their settlements in the Gaza Strip."
"Rabbis
themselves have ruled that these synagogues were no longer sacred
after the Israeli pullout. The Israeli government should have
demolished them before pullout instead of embarrassing the
Palestinians."
Mohammad
Desouqi, professor of Islamic Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Shari`ah
in Qatar, agreed that there was no point of keeping them.
"The
deserted synagogues would not be fit for worship since they would
neither be maintained nor cleaned."
Pretext
for Israel
Palestinian
Chief Justice Sheikh Tayseer Al-Tamemi said demolishing the Jewish
temples in the liberated Gaza Strip is "inevitable," calling
it a "religious duty."
"Under
Islam, if a mosque was built on occupied land, it should be demolished
and the land given back to its indigenous people," he said.
He
fears that the very existence of these synagogues would give a pretext
to the Israelis in the future to claim Palestinian land once again.
"The
Palestinians have every right to get rid of every trace of occupation,
be it a synagogue or a settlement. This is no doubt in accordance with
relevant international resolutions that demanded Israel to withdraw
from the occupied Palestinian territories."
Mesbah
Hammad, deputy dean of the faculty of Shari`ah and Law at Al-Azhar
University in Egypt, said from a legal perspective the PA is entitled
to run the strip after the Israeli pullout and handle its real estate
and land.
"So
it is up now to the PA's discretion to whether demolish or leave these
synagogues intact least it could be an excuse to the Israelis to raze
mosques in modern-day Israel as an in-kind response to the synagogue
demolition in Gaza," he said.
Palestinians
began demolishing synagogues Monday, September 12, in former Jewish
settlements in the Gaza Strip, according to Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
The
PA had said would destroy all the two dozen remaining synagogues after
the Israeli government refused to demolish them.
Some
synagogues had earlier been torched by Palestinians, who had entered
former Jewish settlements like Netzarim shortly after the last
soldiers left the strip.
