Sura IX, Repentence, verse 17-18 states: "It is not for the idolaters to tend Allah's sanctuaries... He only shall tend Allah's sanctuaries who believes in Allah and the last day and observes proper worship,
pays the poor-due and fears none save Allah"; verse 28: "O ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean. So let them not come near the inviolable Place of worship."
Since Jews (and Christians) are dhimmis, not idolators, these verses do not apply to them, and they should be allowed to visit mosques. In the early days of Islam, they could.
Under the Ottoman empire, though, additional restrictions were placed on Jews and Christians, and they were not allowed to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs or the Temple Mount. These are not based on Islamic law.
Last week, a Saudi journalist tweeted this:
Vanesa, a Jewish Israeli lady expresses how welcome she feels inside Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque 🕌
— Loay Alshareef لؤي الشريف (@lalshareef) June 13, 2021
This is what my great religion Islam promotes, and these are the values of the UAE 🇦🇪♥️ pic.twitter.com/guISS9HWGz
Loay Alshareef was already considered very bad in some Arab circles for having participated in a Chanukah ceremony last year. Here, the Egyptian-born, Bahraini citizen is taking a Jewish Israeli woman on a tour of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. She really enjoyed her visit.
But Arabs who saw this video are upset.
Saudi news site El Dorar's headline says that Loay "desecrated" the mosque by bringing the Jewish woman there.
The issue isn't that she is Israeli - if she was an Israeli Arab she would not have been condemned this way. And the mosque welcomes visitors from around the world no matter what religion.
No, the only part that upsets these Arab sites is that she is Jewish.
