The International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has called on mosque preachers worldwide to denounce assaults on Muslim places of worship and insults to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad by extremist Jewish settlers in Israel. In a statement on December 12, the IUMS urged Muslim imams around the world to dedicate their Friday sermons to “denouncing these criminal acts, which hurt the sentiments of Muslims.”
Recently a group of Israeli settlers spray-painted anti-Arab slogans on the walls of a local mosque in the predominantly Arab village of Baka al-Gharbiya – which is home to roughly 31,000 Palestinian Arabs – near the city of Haifa. “These acts are a brazen violation of law and international conventions,” read the statement, which was signed by prominent Muslim scholar and IUMS President Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.