By Abigail Radoszkowicz
JERUSALEM POST INTERNATIONAL EDITION (February 16, 2001)
Traduction fran�aise <Palazzi_Jerusalem_Post_FR.htm>
Can't remember coming across this particular verse of scripture in either the Old or New Testaments? That's because it's from the Koran (17:104, The Night Journey).
Rarely in the Arab-Israeli dispute do we hear those Koranic passages, which could be interpreted as setting out an Islamic basis for the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel. Thus, the message a visiting iman (Moslem cleric) brought to Jerusalem last week - that Jews retaining sovereignty over the Temple Mount presents no theological problem as long as Moslems' religious rights are safeguarded, and that Zionism is the fulfillment of Koranic prophecy - took many who heard it aback.
Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Secretary General of the Italian Moslem Association and Moslem co-chair of the Islam-Israel Fellowship of the Root and Branch Association - which promotes the study and practice of universal Jewish teachings - believes this strongly. So strongly, in fact, that he arrived last week, while the "Aksa intifada" was still raging, to be the keynote speaker at the association's Conference on Jerusalem, held at the Jerusalem City Council chambers.
In his speech, Palazzi called for Israel's continued sovereignty over Jerusalem, and noted that Jerusalem's holiness in Islam was derived from two sources: It is the city of the pre-Islamic biblical prophets also revered by Islam (King David and King Solomon), and it is the site of the Dome of the Rock from which Mohammed ascended to Heaven (the Night Journey).
During his visit, Palazzi was also received by President Moshe Katsav and a delegation including Likud MK Ayoob Kara, a Druze; Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari, an east Jerusalem resident who heads both the Nakshbandi Sufi Order and the Uzbek Moslem Community in Israel; and Zuhair Hamdan, the Sur Baher resident who claims to have collected 10,000 signatures from his fellow Arab east Jerusalemites on a petition demanding a referendum before their areas are transferred to the Palestinian Authority
PALAZZI, 40, was born in Italy to a Moslem mother whose grandfather immigrated from Aleppo and an Italian father who converted to Islam.
He holds a doctorate in Islamic Sciences, granted by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and currently serves as the imam of the Italian Islamic Community. Since 1991, he has directed the community's Cultural Institute, which promotes Islamic education in Italy, fights Islamic fundamentalism and fanaticism, and advocates interreligious dialogue.
For Palazzi, pluralism starts at home: He is married to a Catholic, and they are raising their two-year-old son Omar as a Moslem. Palazzi also teaches at the Institute of Anthropological Research in Rome, and was formerly a lecturer of religious history at the University of Velletri, also in Rome.
Asked how he came to his views, Palazzi reflects that in addition to his traditional Sunni university education, his position as a minority in his homeland must have also influenced him. Indeed, much in Palazzi's character mirrors the experience of the Diaspora Jew's mixed cultural heritage. His warm, positive demeanor is characteristic of Sufi teachers - Sufism is a mystical dimension and discipline of Islam rejected by some Moslems as too esoteric in relation to more orthodox teachings - but in his case it is also fused with an unmistakably Italian taste for good living.
Palazzi cites Koran passages showing that the Land of Israel was given to the Jews, and that Jews would be brought back to Israel before the end of days, such as, "Bear in mind the words of Moses to his People [Children of Israel] ... Enter, my People, the Holy Land which God has assigned for you. Do not turn back, and thus lose all."
