Video: The man was arrested following his alleged urination in a mosque / Credit: Israel Police

Upon receiving the report about the footage, Jerusalem District police officers began an investigation. Within a few minutes, the officers identified the suspect and arrested him at his residence. The young man was taken for questioning at the police station for the offense of offending religious sensibilities and behavior likely to disturb the public peace.

Israel Police patrol officers carried out the arrest, and the suspect is expected to be brought before a court. The police clarified in their statement that this was an unacceptable act and that there would be no tolerance or leniency toward acts of hatred against others.

The arrest was made as part of the Jerusalem District's focused enforcement activity against acts of violence toward religious institutions and clergy. The police emphasized that such cases would receive full operational attention and that their long arm would reach any suspect, wherever they may be.

Following the incident, the Israel Religious Action Center, founded by the Reform Movement, issued a sharp condemnation. "'The Center wishes to express deep shock at the published footage, in which a young Jewish man is documented urinating on the wall of the al-Azir mosque in Abu Ghosh, while boasting about the act and publishing it on the social network TikTok,' the statement read."

The organization defined the act as "'racist and humiliating, directly harming freedom of religion, the sanctity of the mosque, and the dignity of the worshipers.'" It was also noted that the incident joins other cases on social media in which videos with racist and inciting content are distributed, giving a broad platform to incitement and violence against Arabs.

The center called on the Israel Police and the State Attorney's Office "'to act decisively to bring the suspect to justice, and to ensure that there will be no cover-up or leniency in addressing this serious case.'" According to the organization, "'As long as such acts are not punished with the appropriate severity, they send a message of permission to encourage harm to holy places and to an entire public.'"

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Pope Francis is set to embark on a significant 12-day Asia-Pacific tour next week, with his first stop in Indonesia spotlighting the country's efforts to promote religious harmony, according to Reuters.

The 87-year-old pontiff's visit to the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation will feature a stop at Jakarta's Istiqlal mosque, Southeast Asia's largest, which boasts an unusual architectural feature – a 28.3-meter "Tunnel of Friendship" connecting it to the nearby Our Lady of the Assumption cathedral.

When Pope Francis visits #Indonesia next week, he'll stop by the iconic Istiqlal mosque in #Jakarta that has an unusual feature - a 28.3m "Tunnel of Friendship" connecting it to the city's Catholic cathedral across the road! #WonderfulIndonesia #WonderfulJourney pic.twitter.com/4hXw1iCWOq

— Wonderful Indonesia (@wonderfulid) September 1, 2024

 "It's extraordinary that the Catholics' number one figure is coming," said Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal mosque. "Whatever your religion is, let's respect our guest."

The tunnel, constructed by the Indonesian government in 2020, serves as a symbol of interfaith cooperation, a theme that has been central to Pope Francis's 11-year papacy. During his visit, the Pope is scheduled to participate in an interfaith meeting at the mosque and tour the tunnel, which features illuminated windows and inscribed art on its walls.

Indonesia, where nearly 90% of the 280 million population identifies as Muslim and only about 3% as Catholic, has not hosted a papal visit in more than three decades. The pontiff's upcoming trip has generated excitement among the country's Catholic community.

"If I could meet him, I could only bow before him. I couldn't even bring myself to hold his hand," said Maria Regina Widyastuti Sasongko, a 77-year-old Catholic woman who sells Pope Francis-themed merchandise.

The Pope's itinerary includes a meeting with outgoing President Joko Widodo and a mass at a Jakarta stadium expected to draw more than 80,000 attendees, according to Rev Thomas Ulun Ismoyo, an Indonesian church official.

Following his stop in Indonesia, Pope Francis will continue his journey to Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore.

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Archaeologists in Israel say they have discovered the remnants of an early mosque –  believed to date to the earliest decades of Islam – during an excavation in the northern city of Tiberias.

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This mosque's foundations, excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, point to its construction roughly a generation after the death of the Prophet Mohammad, making it one of the earliest Muslim houses of worship to be studied by archaeologists.

"We know about many early mosques that were founded right in the beginning of the Islamic period," said Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a specialist in Islamic archaeology at Hebrew University who heads the dig. Other mosques dating from around the same time, such as the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, the Great Mosque of Damascus, and Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, are still in use today.

Cytryn-Silverman said that excavating the Tiberian mosque allows a rare chance to study the architecture of Muslim prayer houses in their infancy and indicates a tolerance for other faiths by early Islamic leaders. She announced the findings this month in a virtual conference.

When the mosque was built, around 670 CE, Tiberias had been a Muslim-ruled city for a few decades. Named after Rome's second emperor around 20 CE, the city was a major center of Jewish life and scholarship for nearly five centuries. Before its conquest by Muslim armies in 635, the Byzantine city was home to one of a constellation of Christian holy sites dotting the Sea of Galilee's shoreline.

Under Muslim rule, Tiberias became a provincial capital in the early Islamic empire and grew in prominence. Early caliphs built palaces on its outskirts along the lake shore. But until recently, little was known about the city's early Muslim past.

Gideon Avni, chief archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, who was not involved in the excavation, said the discovery helps resolve a scholarly debate about when mosques began standardizing their design, facing toward Mecca.

"In the archaeological finds, it was very rare to find early mosques," he said.

Archaeological digs around Tiberias have proceeded in fits and starts for the past century. In recent decades the ancient city has started yielding other monumental buildings from its past, including a sizeable Roman theater overlooking the water and a Byzantine church.

Since early last year, the coronavirus pandemic halted excavations and lush Galilean grasses, herbs and weeds have grown over the ruins. Hebrew University and its partners, the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology, plan to restart the dig in February.

Initial excavations of the site in the 1950s led scholars to believe that the building was a Byzantine marketplace later used as a mosque.

But Cytryn-Silverman's excavations delved deeper beneath the floor. Coins and ceramics nestled among at the base of the crudely crafted foundations helped date them to around 660-680 CE, barely a generation after the city's capture. The building's dimensions, pillared floor-plan, and qiblah, or prayer niche, closely paralleled other mosques from the period.

Avni said that for a long time, academics weren't sure what happened to cities in the Levant and Mesopotamia conquered by the Muslims in the early 7th century.

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"Earlier opinions said that there was a process of conquest, destruction and devastation," he said. Today, he said, archaeologists understand that there was a "fairly gradual process, and in Tiberias you see that."

The first mosque built in the newly conquered city stood cheek by jowl with the local synagogues and the Byzantine church that dominated the skyline. This earliest phase of the mosque was "more humble" than a larger, grander structure that replaced it half a century later, Cytryn-Silverman said."At least until the monumental mosque was erected in the 8th century, the church continued being the main building in Tiberias," she added.

She says this supports the idea that the early Muslim rulers – who governed an overwhelmingly non-Muslim population – adopted a tolerant approach toward other faiths, allowing a "golden age" of coexistence.

"You see that the beginning of the Islamic rule here respected very much the population that was the main population of the city: Christians, Jews, Samaritans," Cytryn-Silverman said. "They were not in a hurry to make their presence expressed into buildings. They were not destroying others' houses of prayers, but they were actually fitting themselves into the societies that they now were the leaders of."

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The slaughter merited brief reports by international news outlets, then quickly faded from the spotlight – not surprising in a year where attacks on places of worship occurred with relentless frequency. Hundreds of worshippers and many clergy were killed at churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples.

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A two-week span in January illustrated the scope of this somber phenomenon. In Thailand, a group of separatist insurgents attacked a Buddhist temple, killing the abbot and one of his fellow monks. In the Philippines, two suicide attackers detonated bombs during a Mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral on the largely Muslim island of Jolo, killing 23 and wounding about 100. Three days later, an attacker hurled a grenade into a mosque in a nearby city, killing two Muslim religion teachers.

The worst was yet to come.

On March 15, a gunman allegedly fueled by anti-Muslim hatred attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people. The man arrested for the killings had earlier published a manifesto espousing a white supremacist philosophy and detailing his plans to attack the mosques.

At a national remembrance service two weeks later, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealanders had learned the stories of those impacted by the attacks – many of them recently arrived immigrants.

"They were stories of those who were born here, grew up here, or who had made New Zealand their home. Who had sought refuge or sought a better life for themselves or their families," she said. "They will remain with us forever. They are us."

On Easter Sunday – April 21 – bombs shattered the celebratory services at two Catholic churches and a Protestant church in Sri Lanka.

Other targets, in coordinated suicide attacks by local militants, included three luxury hotels. But Christian worshippers at the three churches – including dozens of children – accounted for a large majority of the roughly 260 people killed.

The victims at St. Anthony's Shrine in Colombo included 11-month-old Avon Gomez, his two older brothers, and his parents.

The day's biggest death toll – more than 100 – was at St. Sebastian's, a Catholic church in the seaside town of Negombo. It's known as "Little Rome" due to its abundance of churches and its role as the hub of Sri Lanka's small Catholic community.

The attacks surprised many in the predominantly Buddhist country, where the Christian community totals about 7% of the population and has long avoided involvement in bitter ethnic and religious divides.

Six days after Easter, more than 9,400 miles (15,000 kilometers) from Sri Lanka, a gunman opened fire inside a synagogue in Poway, California, as worshippers celebrated the last day of Passover. A 60-year-old woman was killed; an 8-year-old girl and two men, including the Chabad of Poway's rabbi, were wounded.

Some congregation members said the slain woman, Lori Kaye, blocked the shooter by jumping in front of Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, whose two index fingers were injured.

The man charged with murder and attempted murder in the attack, John T. Earnest, could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder, although prosecutors haven't yet said whether they will pursue capital punishment.

At a court hearing in September, prosecutors played a 12-minute recording of Earnest calmly telling a 911 dispatcher that he had just shot up a synagogue to save white people from Jews.

The attack occurred exactly six months after 11 people were killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest assault on Jews in US history.

An additional anti-Semitic bloodbath was narrowly averted in October when an armed assailant tried to blast his way into a synagogue in Halle, Germany, where scores of worshippers were attending services on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism.

Unable to break through a locked door, the gunman went on a rampage in nearby streets, killing two people and wounding two others.

Authorities said the 27-year-old German man who has confessed to the attack had posted an anti-Semitic screed before the assault and broadcast the shooting live on a popular video game site.

In contrast to the Poway and Halle attacks, where authorities have identified suspects and motives, some of the worst attacks on houses of worship unfold without arrests or claims of responsibility.

In October, for example, more than 60 people were killed in a bombing during Friday prayers at a mosque in the village of Jodari in eastern Afghanistan.

No group claimed responsibility and authorities offered conflicting explanations of how the bombing was carried out.

One common element of all the attacks: Dismay that many people of faith now have reason for apprehension as they gather for worship.

"No one should have to fear going to their place of worship," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom after the Poway attack. "No one should be targeted for practicing the tenets of their faith."

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The players visited the Noble Sanctuary, a compound that houses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam.

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"This is the most beautiful day in my life," said Yasser Al-Mishal, the president of the Saudi Football Federation.

"Really, it's hard to express my feelings. I thank God that I could visit Al-Aqsa mosque and pray inside the mosque."

The Dome of the Rock is built where the Prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven and it encompasses the Foundation Stone, a rock holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians. Jordan has custodianship of the holy sites.

The area is one of the most sensitive sites in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Saudi players are due to face the Palestinian national team in the West Bank on Tuesday for a World Cup qualifying match.

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The Jerusalem Waqf, which runs the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, isn't Israeli at all. It's jointly controlled by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, and diligently disseminates both countries' anti-Israel incitement. Hence it is no surprise that anti-Israel riots periodically erupt there.

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On Sunday, it sought to exploit a calendrical anomaly: The Jewish fast of Tisha B'Av coincided with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice). Since both holidays commemorate events that occurred on the Mount (the destruction of the First and Second Temples, in Jewish tradition; Abraham's sacrifice of Ishmael, in Muslim tradition), some members of both faiths like visiting the mount on that day. The Waqf, therefore, called a mass prayer rally at Al-Aqsa to prevent Jews from "defiling" it with their "filthy feet," as Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas once famously said.

To ensure mass attendance, it took two unusual steps. First, it ordered all other Jerusalem mosques closed on Sunday so that Jerusalem Muslims who wanted to attend services on one of the holiest days of the Muslim year would have nowhere else to go. Second, it asked imams throughout Israel to spread the message to their congregants.

Below are some of the responses from imams, who were asked what they thought of this (as published in Haaretz):

"Gathering in a religious space is not meant to cause escalation, much the opposite, we stress that we all must live in peace," said Sheikh Mohammad al-Quran, imam of Kseifa's mosque, adding that sermons and prayers at his mosque would focus on alms to the needy and the growing problem of violence within the Arab community.

Ahmad Abdullah, imam of Ein Naqquba's mosque, said that Friday's prayers were mainly a spiritual preparation for Saturday's fast, which precedes Sunday's holiday. "The topics brought up in the mosque are at the discretion of the imam," he added.

Sheikh Amar Walid, imam of Kafr Qassem's mosque, said that Eid al-Adha is meant to foster unity among peoples and deter violence and that violence within the Arab community would top his agenda that Friday, as it does every Friday. Then, referring to last week's murder of a 19-year-old Jewish yeshiva student by Palestinians, he added, "We are tired of the conflict, we need to end it already, the idea behind slaughtering an animal for the Feast of the Sacrifice is that it is upon us to avoid bloodshed among people."

In sharp contrast to how Israeli Arabs self-identified a decade ago, they now increasingly identify as Israeli

Nor are these imams unusual; most Israeli Arabs shun violence. Indeed, just last month, defense officials reported that terrorist activity among Israeli Arabs – never high to begin with – has dropped sharply, with the worrying exception of the Bedouin community, where it's on the rise.

In 2015, Israel arrested 120 Israeli Arabs suspected of terrorist activity. By 2018, that number had halved to just 60 arrests.

No less significant, Israeli Arabs increasingly identify as Israeli. In one survey conducted shortly before Israel's April election – nine months after the passage of the controversial nation-state law, which critics wrongly claimed made Arabs second-class citizens – 46% of respondents self-identified as "Israeli Arab," 22% as "Arab," 19% as "Israeli Palestinian" and 14% as "Palestinian." Thus 65% included "Israeli" in their self-definition, almost double the 33% who included "Palestinian." And the most integrationist option, "Israeli Arab," was chosen by more than twice as many people as the second-place contender. This is a sharp contrast to how Israeli Arabs self-identified a decade ago.

The same survey found that 76% of Israeli Arabs termed Jewish-Arab relations in daily life "mostly positive," while just 18% termed them negative. Moreover, fully 94% recognized the existence of a Jewish people, unlike the Palestinian Authority, which vehemently denies Jewish peoplehood. And in a separate poll, a majority of Arab respondents said they were "proud to be Israeli."

Equally notable is the recent change in Arab voting patterns. In April's election, 30% of Arab voters cast ballots for Jewish parties, almost double the 17% who did so in 2015. Granted, this was partly to protest the petty bickering that led Arab parties to dismantle their joint ticket; now that the Joint List has reconstituted itself, many Arab voters may return to it in September's do-over election. But some experts think the movement toward Jewish parties could actually intensify, and so do the parties themselves: Left-leaning parties are courting Arab voters in a manner that Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham Initiatives coexistence organization, termed "unprecedented."

"The Center-Left Zionist parties are basically going over the heads of the Arab parties to appeal directly to Arab voters in a very genuine manner," he said, "and that is because they have identified the growing frustration of Arab voters with the parties that are meant to represent them."

Even more surprising, some center-rightists have urged their parties to do the same. Former Benjamin Netanyahu aide Nathan Eshel and Israel Hayom columnist Professor Eyal Zisser both recently published columns arguing that the time is ripe for this since repeated polls have shown that Arab voters overwhelmingly prioritize domestic issues – jobs, crime, education, and housing – over the Palestinian conflict. And successive Netanyahu governments have worked hard to address such issues in the Arab community.

None of this means there aren't real problems in Arab-Jewish relations, including unconscionable anti-Arab broadsides by too many rightist politicians and vicious anti-Israel incitement by Arab Knesset members and Islamist clerics. But overall, the story of the past decade – under Israel's "most right-wing government ever" – has been one of increasing Arab integration. Whatever government is formed after September's election must continue that trend.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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One suspect is in custody after the shooting Saturday at the Al-Noor Islamic Center in the Oslo suburb of Baerum. Police say they believe no one else was involved.

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Oslo police official Rune Skjold told a news conference Sunday that the suspect, a man in his 20s, has been found to hold extreme right-wing views and animosity toward immigrants.

After the shooting, police went to his residence and said they found his 17-year-old sister dead. Police said the man is a suspect in that death.

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The Israel Antiquities Authority estimates that the mosque, uncovered ahead of new construction in the Bedouin town of Rahat in the Negev Desert, dates back to the seventh to eighth centuries.

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There are large mosques known to be from that period in Jerusalem and in Mecca but it is rare to find a house of prayer so ancient whose congregation is likely to have been local farmers, the antiquities authority said.

Excavated at the site were the remains of an open-air mosque – a rectangular building, about the size of a single-car garage, with a prayer niche facing south towards Mecca.

"This is one of the earliest mosques known from the beginning of the arrival of Islam in Israel, after the Arab conquest of 636 CE," said Gideon Avni of the antiquities authority.

"The discovery of the village and the mosque in its vicinity are a significant contribution to the study of the history of the country during this turbulent period."

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The holiday marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan when devout Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. But the start of the holiday varies from country to country – with splits even within the same country – because the start of Eid is traditionally based on sightings of the new moon, which sometimes differ from astronomical calculations and vary according to geographic location.

As with everything else in the Middle East, politics often plays a part with countries that traditionally followed Saudi Arabia's lead breaking with it this year, including the Palestinians and Jordan.

Muslim Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, as well as Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, announced the first day of Eid is Tuesday, whereas Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and others said the Shawwal crescent moon was not visible across the country and won't start until Wednesday.

In Gaza, mosques blared with Eid calls on Monday evening, shortly after Saudi Arabia announced the end of Ramadan, only to be interrupted when the Palestinian grand mufti in Jerusalem said they could not spot the crescent, thus extending Ramadan by one more day.

An Imam at al-Khalidi mosque on the Gaza City beach apologized and told worshippers: "We can't but follow the instructions of our mufti," and asked them to stay in the mosque for the Ramadan night prayer known as Taraweeh.

It was not clear why Gaza did not follow Saudi Arabia's lead, as it usually does. But the change by the local Islamic authorities drew anger, jokes, and criticism on social media. Some posts urged the faithful to wake up in the morning and eat, pretending they did not know the Eid decision had changed.

The holiday traditionally lasts one to three days and is eagerly anticipated after the month of fasting. During Ramadan, the faithful refrain from eating, drinking, smoking or sexual activity from dawn to dusk.

Most businesses close during Eid, as people dress up and visit relatives, enjoying their first daytime meals in a lunar month. Mosques hold special prayers at sunrise and children are often given gifts or a special allowance.

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Sunni Muslims Ahmed Mohamed, Abdullah Chaarani and Hatim Moukhaiber set fire to a Shiite mosque in a suburb of Melbourne.

Two had plotted an attack in central Melbourne just weeks later and were convicted of conspiring to plan a terrorist attack last year. They had bought machetes and explosives and tried to get a gun license before they were arrested, according to media reports.

The three have yet to be sentenced.

Australia, a staunch U.S. ally that sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East or their supporters.

Last year, a Somali-born man set fire to a pickup truck laden with gas cylinders in the center of Melbourne and stabbed three people, killing one, before he was shot by police.

Earlier this month, an Australian court found a man guilty of plotting to blow up an Etihad Airways flight out of Sydney under the orders of Islamic State.

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