Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, who was appointed by Yasser Arafat to serve as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem between 1994 and 2006, on Saturday issued a fatwa (a legal opinion on a point of Islamic law given by a qualified jurist) against sellers and real estate brokers of homes and land to Jews, following last Thursday’s announcement that 15 Jewish families settled in their homes in Kfar HaShiloach (Shiloah Village, or Silwan) in eastern Jerusalem.
בעקבות רכישת הבתים בסילוואן ע”י עמותת עטרת כהנים, תושבי סילוואן הוציאו תקנות וחרמות נגד מוכרי וסוחרי בתים וקרקעות למתנחלים:
יש להחרים את הבוגדים, לא להתחתן איתם, לא למכור או להשכיר להם בתים, לא לשטוף את גופותיהם ולעטוף אותם בתכריכים או להביא אותם לקבורה בבתי קברות מוסלמים. pic.twitter.com/Nk5YL1ErYy— אסף גבור assaf gibor (@assafgibor)
According to the writ, the traitors should be boycotted, marriage to them is forbidden, they may not buy or rent homes, and when they die their bodies should not be washed and wrapped in shrouds, nor be buried in Muslim cemeteries.
In 2002, Sabri issued a pamphlet entitled “Palestine – the Man and the Land,” published by the Arab information Center, which included anti-Semitic motifs drawn from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, denied the historical right of the Jews to the Land of Israel and Jerusalem, and challenged the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel.
In a 2000 interview with the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, said, “Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity. It is not my fault if Hitler hated Jews, indeed they were hated a little everywhere. Instead, it is necessary to denounce the unjust occupation endured by my people. Tomorrow I will ask John Paul II… to support our cause.”
Mahmoud Abbas removed Sabri as mufti In July 2006, replacing him with Muhammad Ahmad Hussein.
In November 2018, Rabbi Aryeh Stern, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, ruled that a Muslim car accident victim could be buried in a Jewish cemetery after local Muslim cemeteries refused to bury him, obeying a Sabri ruling that banned his burial because he was suspected of selling property to Jews in Jerusalem.
The ban was originally issued in 1935 by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the pro-Nazi Jerusalem Grand Mufti, who ruled that “whoever sells a house or land to Jews will not receive a Muslim burial.” In October 2018, Sabri ruled: “Anyone who sells to Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem does not belong to the religion of Islam, we will not accept his repentance and he will not be buried in the Muslim cemeteries.”
On Thursday night, 15 Jewish families settled in Kfar HaShiloach in four settlement complexes purchased by the Ateret Kohanim land-redemption association.
The Yemenite Village, a.k.a. Kfar HaShiloach, located within the Baten Elhwa neighborhood in Silwan, was originally settled Yemenite Jews in Jerusalem who lived there from the late 1800s and the Arab pogroms of 1936–1939 when they were forced to leave their homes.
The Ateret Cohanim activity near Mount Olives and the City of David began in 1996 with the establishment of the Ma’ale HaZeitim neighborhood and continued in 2004 when it launched the resettlement of the Yemenite village. Ateret Kohanim says that the new complexes create a contiguous Jewish settlement from Ma’ale HaZeitim, through Kfar Ha’Shiloach to the City of David.
The Kfar Shiloach homes were attacked overnight Thursday by Arabs who threw fireworks and stones (Watch: New Jewish-Owned Homes Attacked in Kfar HaShiloach).