In a Friday sermon delivered at the Masjid Al Furqaan in Cape Town, South Africa, Sheikh Riyaad Fataar said that the Al-Aqsa Mosque was “slipping from the hands of the Islamic nation ... because the plans of the Jews are moving [ahead].”
Quoting Saladin—the Muslim military and political leader during the Crusades—and saying that Muslims “are staying in jihad in order to get rid of the Zionist occupier,” Sheikh Fataar, Deputy President of the Muslim Judicial Council of South Africa and the imam of the Husami Masjid in Cravenby, a suburb of Cape Town, called upon all Muslims in the world to support them and “show your help in whatever different ways there are.”
“All other free people of the world are called: If you think that holy sites are important in your religion ... you should be standing with them,” said Sheikh Fataar, a graduate of Al-Azhar, who serves as the lifetime president of the South African Students’ Association in Egypt.
The sermon was delivered on March 16 and posted on the YouTube channel of Masjid Al Furqaan, which is part of the Islamia College in Cape Town.
