Al Azhar: Ongoing closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli occupation is reprehensible, immoral act

CAIRO- 27 March 2026: Egypt’s top Sunni institute of Al-Azhar Sheikhdom strongly condemned the continued closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli occupation.

In a statement published on its official social media pages, the sheikhdom said that the continued closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the first of the two Qiblas [the directions to where Muslims face during daily prayers] and the third holiest site in Islam, by the Israeli occupation during Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, and continuing to this day, is a reprehensible and immoral act. 

“It constitutes a confiscation of the Palestinians' right to practice their religious rites, a provocation of the feelings of Muslims worldwide, and a flagrant violation of international law,” the statement read.

Al-Azhar called upon the international community to confront these systematic acts of aggression, through which the occupation seeks to transform the region into a perpetual arena of wars and conflicts. 

It affirmed that the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been and will remain—Allah willing—a purely Islamic sanctuary, in which the occupier has no right, despite its futile attempts to impose temporal and spatial division upon it. Israel has “plans to Judaize the landmarks of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the State of Palestine,” it said.