(CNSNews.com) – The Muslim world suffered two major terrorist attacks
over the weekend – in Turkey and Somalia – but the bloc of Islamic
states found just one subject worthy of commenting on on Sunday – the
“painful occasion” of the anniversary of a failed arson attempt at
Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque almost half a century ago.
By the end
of the weekend, the Saudi-based secretariat of the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had issued no public reaction to deadly
suicide bombings targeting a wedding party in southeastern Turkey and a
government building and market in central Somalia.
Fifty-one
people were killed and 69 wounded in the bombing in Gaziantep, which
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said had been carried out by a
suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14-years-old.
In Somalia, at
least 20 people were killed and more than 80 injured in twin bombings
for which al-Shabaab claimed responsibility.
Like its secretariat,
the OIC’s media organ, the International Islamic News Agency (IINA),
did also not react to the two terror attacks. IINA did carry one brief
report quoting a Saudi – not OIC – official as condemning the bombing in
Turkey.
The OIC did, however, release a statement
on Sunday, marking the 47th anniversary of “the wanton arson attack on
the blessed al-Aqsa mosque” in Jerusalem’s Old City, which Muslims
revere as the third-holiest in Islam after mosques in Mecca and Medina.
The
statement on the 1969 incident linked it to what it called today’s
“escalating aggression, attacks and repeated crimes” by Israelis against
al-Aqsa.
In the tradition of the OIC’s regular recollections of
the arson attempt, the statement made no reference to the fact the
arsonist was neither Israeli nor Jewish, nor in any way linked to the
Israeli authorities.
The perpetrator was an Australian, a member
of a quasi-Christian sect who was subsequently determined by a court to
be insane and spent the rest of his days in psychiatric care in his
homeland.
According
to news reports at the time, Denis Michael Rohan testified that he
received divine instructions to burn down the mosque, that he was a
descendant of the biblical King David, and that God would set him up as
king over Jerusalem and Judea.
The deranged 28-year-old’s actions triggered calls for jihad, with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction of the PLO broadcasting calls for Muslims to react: “What are you waiting for? The Zionists are burning down your sacred shrines.”
The
incident led the following year to the establishment of the bloc
originally known as the Organization of the Islamic Conference but renamed in 2011 the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and today boasting 57 mostly Muslim-majority members.
The
failed arson attempt sparked a multitude of conspiracy theories
accusing Israelis of trying to destroy al-Aqsa, and the adjacent Dome of
the Rock with its famous golden dome, in order for the Jews to rebuild
the biblical Temples which stood on that site from almost 1,000 years
before Christ until finally destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
Some
Muslim authorities dispute the Temple’s existence on the site. In its
statement on Sunday, the OIC referred to “the purported temple.”
It
said the anniversary of the 1969 incident was “being marked amid
growing calls for the division and destruction of the Mosque in order to
build the purported temple on its ruins and amid the intensification of
the Israeli policies of Judaization and ethnic cleansing of the
occupied holy city, its people and sanctuaries, in flagrant violation of
international law and relevant internationally legitimate resolutions.”
The
Temple Mount is the most revered site in Judaism, but although the area
has been under Israeli sovereignty since 1967 the closest location
where observant Jews are able to pray openly is the Western Wall, a
remnant of a retaining wall on the western flank of the platform.
Muslims
revere al-Aqsa based on the belief that Mohammed stopped there during
his “night journey” from Mecca to heaven. He is said to have tethered
his legendary winged steed, al-Buraq, there while he led prayers with
“Islamic prophets” including Adam and Noah.
Muslims refer to the Western Wall as the al-Buraq wall, a move that has gained support from the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO.
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