Rice, lawmakers met with Muslim sheik known for justifying attacks on Israelis for Islam'
Sheik Taysir Tamimi
A senior Muslim cleric who is a prominent justifier of suicide bombings met last week with senators and congressmen and consulted last month with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, WND has learned.
Sheik Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian justice, also claimed in a recently released book for which he was interviewed that the Torah was "falsified," Jewish and Christian history were "invented," the Jewish Temples never existed and the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels.
"I am very glad to have this occasion to speak to Congress and the Senate and have access to groups and individuals that form American policy," said Tamimi in a statement.
"I emphasized in the meetings the importance of religious coexistence and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved without creating a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," the he said.
Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
He met in Washington last week with a slew of lawmakers as part of a new interfaith religious organization – the Council for Religious Institutions in the Holy Land – formed with the stated purpose of promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The council includes Israeli chief rabbis, top Muslim Palestinian judges and leading Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant clerics from Israel and the Palestinian areas. It is reportedly funded by the United States Agency for International Development, which also provides millions in annual aid to help the Palestinians build infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Tamimi and the council met Nov. 6 with Sens. Joseph Liebermann, I-Conn.; Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; and John Ensign, R-Nev. The next day the sheik held meetings with more than a dozen House members, including Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress.
Tamimi also reportedly met last week with David Welch, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, and consulted last month with Rice regarding how to promote a future Palestinian state.
His office told WND the Islamic cleric is slated to meet with President Bush, but no such visit could be verified.
Tamimi's Washington trip was timed to generate support for an upcoming U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit at which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to outline a Palestinian state including most of the West Bank. Some reports claim Olmert also is willing to cede sections of Jerusalem.
According to media reports, Tamimi and his group expressed to U.S. lawmakers last week a six-point platform that includes plans to set up a panel representing all the faiths that would condemn media or government incitement against any religious group; a board that would review educational materials for incitement; and a "hot line" to address any emerging crisis surrounding access to holy sites.  
But in the recently released book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists," by WND Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, Tamimi presented a different attitude, stating Jews have no right to Jerusalem or to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount.
Tamimi also is well-known for his justification of Palestinian suicide bombings and was accused by Israel of inciting violence at the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada that started in September 2000.
When asked to condemn suicide attacks during a video-taped interview with Klein for "Schmoozing" earlier this year, Tamimi refused. Instead Tamimi stated: "A suicide bomber who sees he will get killed by F-16s prefers to defend himself and has nothing but himself to defend himself. ... We believe he who gets killed will go to Allah in the sky and be with the prophets and the martyrs and the just people."
Tamimi went on during the interview with Klein to claim Jews have no historical connection to Jerusalem or Israel and that the Jewish Temples never existed.
"Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880's," said Tamimi.
"About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the Haram Al- Sharif (Temple Mount)," Tamimi said.
The Palestinian cleric denied in "Schmoozing" the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples throughout Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount itself; excavations revealing Jewish homes and a synagogue in a site in Jerusalem called the City of David; or even the recent discovery of a Second Temple Jewish city in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
He said descriptions of the Jewish Temples in the Hebrew Tanach, in the Talmud and in Byzantine and Roman writings from the Temple periods were forged and that the Torah was "falsified" to claim Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs were Jewish when indeed they were prophets for Islam.
"All this is not real. We don't believe in all your versions. Your Torah was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses never mentions Jerusalem. Maybe Jerusalem was mentioned in the rest of the Torah, which was falsified by the Jews."
Asked about the Western Wall, one of the holiest Jewish structures, Tamimi said the wall was a tying post for Muhammad's horse and that it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, even though the Wall predates the mosque by over 1,000 years.
"The Western Wall is the western wall of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It's where Prophet Muhammad tied his animal which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah."
Tamimi went on to claim to Klein the Al Aqsa Mosque, which has sprung multiple leaks and has had to be repainted several times, was built by angels.
"Al Aqsa was build by the angels 40 years after the building of Al-Haram in Mecca. This we have no doubt is true," he was quoted as saying in "Schmoozing."
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