IsraPundit Reading your works and interviews you have given to such outlets as World News Daily, it seems at times that your voice is a lone Moslem voice in the wilderness. This contrasts sharply with the situation among Christians, where you can find a large body of Christian Zionists. How much of a following do your views about Israel have among Moslems the world over, and among the half-million Moslems in Italy?


Prof Palazzi: The situation is not ideal at all, and one must admit that in the Muslim world mosques, universities, Islamic schools, media, etc., are frequently under the total control of the Wahhabis, while Sunnis - who are until today the majority of the Muslims - have very limited resources.

The role played in the religious programs of al-Jazirah TV by Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the ideologue of suicide terrorism, made this situation even more dramatic. Originally the Sunni position, represented by the then Sharif of Mecca al-Hussein and later by his son, the late King Feisal of Hijaz and then of Iraq, was openly pro-Zionist, while the Wahhabi one was extremely anti-Zionist

Now the situation is such, that many of those who are Sunni from the point of view of belief, and consequently condemn terrorism and suicide bombing, are nevertheless reasoning like the Wahhabis for what concerns Israel and its relations with the Muslim world. This is especially true for the Arab world, while outside of it many Sunnis have preserved their original pro-Zionist stance.

I am fully aware that I am voicing a minority orientation, but do not feel so isolated as it could appear. The former President of Indonesia and leader of Nadwat al-Ulema (i.e. the leader of the main Islamic organization of the most populous Muslim country of the world), Shaykh Abdurrahman Wahid, is known for his pro-Israel stance, and was also invited to lecture in New York by the American Jewish Committee. The Mufti of Sierra Leone, Shaykh Ahmad Sillah, is also pro-Israel, and so are the Grand Mufti of the Russian Federation, Shaykh Tajuddin, and the Mufti of European Russia, Shaykh Salman Farid, who wrote a fatwa against the intifadah. Same can be said about the Muftis of Chechnya, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Courtesy of the folks at Israpundit. Absolutely fascinating. At first I thought this guy was a serious nut, but his history is absolutely correct. Prince Faisel even reached a signed agreement with Chaim Weizmann back in the '20s in which he endorsed Jewish statehood. The other Arab leaders simply ignored it, of course, arguing that Faisal wasn't empowered to make such agreements on behalf of the Arab nation (which of course he wasn't, but neither was anybody else either, since the Arab nation was really nothing more than a collection of feuding tribes and clans at the time). Check out the rest, its well worth reading.