• Sermon on Temple Mount, Al Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, Friday 25 February 2000
• Arthur Hertzberg: No Red Carpet for the Pope When He Lands in Israel by David Bedein

The International Conspiracy Against This Deen: The Pope's Visit

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, and may peace be upon prophet Muhammad, his family and companions.
Dear my respected brothers,
Allah says in the noble Quran "If Allah helps, you none can overcome you: if He forsakes you, who is there, after that, that can help you? In Allah, then, let Believers put their trust." Al-Imran (3:160).
Allah is the protector and not the U.S.
Allah is the helper and not the Pope.
"Thou enduest with honour whom Thou pleasest".

Dear brothers,
We should struggle against these corrupt rulers in the Muslim world. The Ummah should know their actions well because she should know how her deen is being fought by these agents to the imperialist infidels.
Allah says in the Noble Quran, "There is the type of man whose speech about this world's life may dazzle thee, and he calls Allah to witness about what is in his heart; yet is he the most contentious of enemies. When he turns his back, his aim everywhere is to spread mischief through the earth and destroy crops and cattle. But Allah loveth not mischief. When it is said to him, "Fear Allah," he is led by arrogance to (more) crime. Enough for him is Hell; an evil bed indeed (to lie on)!" al-Baqara (2:204-206).
These phrases of the Noble Quran match the description of our rulers today, their "aim everywhere is to spread mischief through the earth".

Oh Muslims,
You should be like what Allah described in his book, "And there is the type of man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah; and Allah is full of kindness to (His) devotees." al-Baqara (2:207).
So you should work to change the status of your Ummah by changing these rulers. You should show your disapproval to their unlawful actions.

Oh Muslims,
Islam is deep rooted inside you. The infidels along with the hypocrites will not be able to remove it from your hearts.
I invite you to work to abort the current conspiracies against this deen.
I invite you to work against the ones who fight this deen.
I invite you to work against the rulers in the Muslim world, whom had sold their deen for the imperialist infidels, so they became like them and they had stood in the same side with them against the Muslim Ummah.
The rulers are the ones who had supported the existence of Israel. They put their hope in the U.S., Britain, France and other imperialist infidel forces.
The recent hope they have is the visit of the Pope to Palestine next month.

Dear brothers,
Not only did your rulers commit unlawful and secret military and non military treaties with the enemies of the Muslim Ummah, but they also had let them control the Muslims lands and the Muslims.
These rulers are applying on the Muslim Ummah the laws of the colonial forces as if this Ummah is not a Muslim Ummah.
As if this Ummah doesn't have the only truthful laws in this world. When they did what they did Allah became angry and when we were silent against their actions Allah did not send us his victory so we became low amongst the nations of the world.
The rulers had continued to mislead this Ummah by raising slogans like: Dialogue between religions, the openness to the world, The Development Projects, The Global Peace, The International Communities, ..etc

Oh brothers,
You have nothing but two choices to choose from: Either you stay silent against this imperialist attack against this Ummah from the imperialist forces along with the rulers of this Ummah. Or you may work with the workers to establish this deen by the establishment of the Islamic Khilafah State. This will result definitely, Insha'Allah, in our return of being the first and the greatest Ummah in the world.
We have no time left. Look how the Pope is part of the International conspiracy against this deen. He had visited Egypt in the last few days and he had profaned Al'Azhar Mosque and Al'Azhar Islamic University.
The political onsiderations of the Pope's visit to Egypt are as follows:

1. It shows how the Vatican and the Pope became part of the U.S. tools to implement her plans in the world. The Pope is visiting an influential American agent which is the Egyptian Regime.

2. The U.S. had helped in creating Israel. She is the one who stands strongly next to her. The U.S. considers Israel the cornerstone in supporting her imperialistic plans in the middleeast.

3. The Christians will never accept to let the Jews control their religious sites in East Jerusalem.

4. This region of the middleeast will never accept the state of Israel. It is a strange creature that lives only by supporting devices. Once they are removed, this state will cease to exist. Look at Lebanon how the imperialist forces created her for the Lebanese Christian Minority by taking part of Syria and made her an Independent State. They made her for the same purpose that they made Israel; to be a dagger in the middle of the Muslim Ummah that forbids her from unity and from the establishment of the Islamic Khilafah State. The British planned since 1960s and even before that to make Israel a secular state for the Jews and the Palestinians in order to give her the possibility to live longer.

5. The Americans bypassed the British plans and thought of creating a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. They had pledged to the Pope to accept the existence of Israel.

6. The Americans pushed the Pope to recognize the existence of Israel. Not only he did that but he also acquitted the Jews from t he blood of Jesus which contradicts with what the Christians believe.

What was left for the Pope to do is to acknowledge the control of the Jews of the holy sites for the Christians which contradicts with the Christian religion that forbids that. One of the previous Popes said once to Hertzel (One of the founders of Israel) that Jerusalem should never be under the Jewish control. That was stated clearly in the recent "historical" agreement which was signed recently between Arafat and the Pope. But Israel refuses to give up East Jerusalem.
So how the imperialist infidels will solve this case?
Their plan is to make Jerusalem and the surrounding areas an International area under the control of the U.N. which means under the control of the U.S. That's why the U.S. is using the issue of moving her U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem once a while especially whenever the U.S. elections get closer.

Oh Muslims,
I say to the Jews, I say to the western imperialist forces, I say to the corrupt rulers "agents":
Israel will never be absorbed in this region because it is a vicious malignant plant that will be uprooted soon, Insha'Allah.
Look how the Crusaders had lived in this land for a hundred years but then they were kicked out. I expect, Insha'Allah, for the Jewish state that was created by the new Crusaders to live shorter. Her removal requires the determination of the sincere Muslims after they remove their corrupt rulers.

May Allah glorify us with Islam
May Allah glorify Islam by the establishment of the Islamic State.
Ameen.

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Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, the Bronfman Professor of the History at NYU and the author of such seminal works as The Zionist Idea and The French Enlightenment and the Jews, who in the 1970's served as the chairman of the conference of presidents of major Jewish organizations in North America. Now 79, Hertzberg looks back at a career in which he has distinguished himself as a pioneer in the field of interfaith relations and interfaith dialogue. Given Hertzberg's career-long predisposition to keep a door open to non-Jews who relate to the state, people and land of Israel, it may seem surprising to some observers of the interfaith issues in Israel that Arthur Hertzberg would be the first major figure to raise doubts and difficulties with the impending arrival of the Pope, expected To arrive in Israel on March 21, on a day that coincides with the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Hertzberg took the podium of the World Assembly of Jewish War Veterans who were convening in Jerusalem this week to deliver a stinging lecture, in which Hertzberg observed that that there should be no euphoria or celebration in anticipation of Pope John Paul II's expected arrival to Jerusalem.

Hertzberg's position: there are too many unanswered questions and too many black holes that the Pope must respond to, beginning with the Pope's own Polish background and the Pope's advocacy of Sainthood for the pontiff of World War II, Pope Pius XII.

Rabbi Hertzberg remarked that he and the Pope are the same age, born only a few miles from one another in Poland. Although Hertzberg was brought up in the US, thirty seven of his close relatives remained in Poland and were murdered during World War II. As a scholar of modern Jewish history, Hertzberg has had the occasion to conduct scholarly research concerning the fate of Polish Jewry during the war, and he has recently been studying the activity of the Polish Catholic Church during those fateful years. "In the weekly reports of the Polish bishops filed to the Vatican during the war, there is not a single report on record that relates to the fate of the Jews", said Hertzberg. When Hertzberg has asked to review the eleven volumes of records that the Vatican itself maintained concerning the mass murder of the three million Jews of Poland during World War II, the Vatican has denied access to those files to historians of that period.

Meanwhile, Hertzberg notes, Pope John Paul II will not say what he was doing during the war, when he was a young priest in Poland, except to say to TV producer Marek Halter that "I lived too quiet a life". While the record showed that after the war the future pontiff indeed helped to bring some Jewish children out of hiding in monasteries back to their families, Hertzberg asks questions that the Pope should be addressing: What were his activities during the war? What did the future pontiff know of what was happening to the Jews of Poland? As Hertzberg commented on a recent TV documentary concerning the Pope's life, "This pope will go to his death, wishing that he had behaved differently during the war"

Hertzberg raised another question: What was the current Pope's relationship to Pope Pius XII, whose record of possible collaboration with the Nazis is still in question to this day? And what would inspire Pope John II today to launch a campaign to bestow sainthood on Pope Pius XII?

Hertzberg's critique of the Pope's visit was not limited to the past. Hertzberg asked why, for ecample, does the Pope insist on conducting a mass on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Hertzberg called this a "slap in the face of Jewish dignity".

And although Hertzberg is a dove, a charter member of Americans for Peace Now and an enthusiastic supporter of the peace process, he doubts the appropriateness of the accord signed by the Pope and Yassir Arafat - only a month before the Pope's visit - which challenged Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem.

In short, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg says that the Pope should be received by Israel with the respect due to a world leader, yet without the enthusiasm of any red carpet treatment.

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