When Palestinian Islamic Chief Justice Taysir Tamimi took the podium uninvited a week ago in front of Pope Benedict XVI, he unleashed a scathing attack on Israel provoking immediate condemnation from Jews, Israel and the Vatican. Karl Schembri interviews the defiant sheikh who upstaged the pope
Sheikh Taysir Tamimi is unrepentant about his act that derailed the pontiff’s Holy Land pilgrimage on its first day.
At a meeting dedicated to interfaith dialogue at the Notre Dame Centre in Jerusalem on Monday 11, the Palestinian Sharia Chief Justice and well-known religious leader took the podium uninvited and lobbed his verbal grenade as Pope Benedict XVI sat in his white armchair on stage.
In a mere five-minute speech delivered in Arabic in front of clerics, rabbis, priests and cardinals, Tamimi made headlines and attracted fierce condemnation from Jews and the Vatican when he called on the pope to condemn Israel’s “crimes and to pressure the Israeli government to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people”.
“I welcome your Holiness to the city of Jerusalem, the eternal political and spiritual capital of the Palestinian state,” the senior Muslim cleric said in his first sentence, itself a highly contentious opening given Jerusalem’s disputed status since it was illegally annexed by Israel in 1967.
A week later, Tamimi says he is very “calm” about the whole ordeal, expressing no regrets.
“To the contrary, I feel I did the patriotic and religious thing,” he says in his Ramallah office with a large photo of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem flanked by portraits of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas behind him.
“The pope was supposed to have come to listen to the truth, not on a public relations visit, to try and promote a nice facade and be nice to Israel. Let the pope and all the rabbis get angry. I’m not interested in making them satisfied or happy because what I said was the truth in defending my people and my religion. That’s all I care about.”
Just like many Palestinians, Tamimi believes that, given his past in the Hitler Youth, the German-born pope was more interested in building bridges with Jews than in reaching out to Muslims, who still feel aggrieved by his comments on the prophet Mohammed in 2006.
“I could feel that the pope felt guilty because he was in the Hitler Youth. He was working hard to please them, to get the Jews’ forgiveness,” Tamimi says.
Shortly after his unscheduled appearance, the pope’s spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, said Tamimi’s actions were “a direct negation of what dialogue should be”. Several news reports claimed the pope walked out after Tamimi’s speech, but in fact he did not; he shook hands with Tamimi and only walked out when the event came to an end.
Haifa’s Chief Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, who is also co-chairman of a joint Chief Rabbinate-Holy See committee, said he would refuse to meet Tamimi again after the incident.
“The Vatican condemned me only to make the Israelis happy,” Tamimi says. “They didn’t quote one word of mine which they objected to. The pope heard a lot of curses, criticism and Jews not welcoming him, and even rabbis asking for his arrest or deportation. Why didn’t the Vatican condemn any of that?”
Tamimi dismisses talk of having compromised interfaith dialogue.
“What kind of dialogue is that when they forbid me to talk? I kept on talking but they tried to shut me up. If I had a chance to talk to him again, I would say even more than that. I only had five minutes. What I wanted to say would take hours. Then an earthquake would happen.”
Although Tamimi and Rabbi Cohen were seated on stage, they were not meant to speak at the event, but the sheikh just righted a wrong by walking to the podium.
“They claim that I said things that went beyond what they wanted to hear. The point behind dialogue is to allow every party that is valued and whose point of view is respected to speak, even if you disagree with what is said. All I did was speak about the Palestinians’ suffering: the Israeli violations against Jerusalem and its holy places, house demolitions, land confiscation, and the murder of women, children and the elderly in Gaza. Isn’t this the truth? Whoever suffers has to express the pain. Don’t we even have a right to speak about that pain? That is a negation of dialogue.”
Tamimi accuses the organisers of double standards when it comes to their evaluation of interfaith dialogue.
“Dialogue is one of the major principles of Islam; dialogue with others. But the conferences they organise are a far cry from dialogue. They use them to make their ugly face look beautiful; to hide terrorism and ignore the plight of others. I mean I’m really surprised that when they speak badly about Islam and our prophet, they call this freedom of expression, but when I talk about their crimes and how they attack us, and about the effects of their attacks, they consider this out of order.”
Shortly before we speak, Tamimi received a telephone call informing him that his photos were posted at Israeli checkpoints as a wanted person, together with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He says he is not intimidated by this.
“They claim they have a democracy, but whoever speaks the truth becomes a wanted criminal. I’m not even afraid they might kill me,” he says.
Still, he believes Christians, Muslims and Jews can live together in peace, insisting that “the enemy” is the occupier, not the Jews.
“History proves it’s possible to live together. In my speech I referred to Omar Ibn Al Khattab who liberated Jerusalem without shedding one drop of blood. When the occupation is gone, and we have all our rights back, of course we can live with Jews, in the same way we live with Christians. History has proved this many times. They used to live with us, especially in Europe they used to run away from Christians and we gave them shelter and helped them. It’s history. Even the history written by the Jewish rabbis shows this.”
Yet widespread reports quote him in a 1994 speech as having said that “the Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated, and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due ... Where Hitler failed, we must succeed”.
Tamimi dismisses outright having made such a hate speech: “It’s impossible that I said those words. It might be a misquote or bad translation. This quote is contrary to my beliefs and my religion. I don’t consider Jews as enemies. Palestinians don’t consider Jews as enemies. They are not enemies because they are Jews. We are enemies with whoever occupies our land and displaces Palestinians, violates holy places, kills children, demolishes mosques, confiscates land... those are the ones we consider enemies, the Zionists and the Israeli government. But not the Jews.”
For Tamimi, there is no question of recognising Israel’s right to exist when the Palestinians’ own existence is all the time put into question.
“Israel ignores our right to live on our land. They are working to kick us out of the land all the time. How do you want me to recognise anyone who ignores my right to live in my country?”
He also condones suicide attacks, justifying them on the grounds that Palestinians have no army to resist the occupation.
“We don’t call them suicide bombers. We don’t have tanks, we don’t have fighter planes, and we don’t have missiles. When a human being feels that he’s going to die in his own house, he defends himself with his body. If I know that you’re coming and you want to kill me, I will eventually defend myself, and if I don’t have any weapons I will use my body, especially if I know I’m going to be dead anyway.”
Earlier this year, Tamimi issued a Fatwa (religious decree) banning Palestinians from selling land and property to Jews, which is already a criminal offence in the West Bank punishable by death. A man was sentenced to death by hanging by a Palestinian military court last month.
“Yes, I said it’s forbidden to sell, or negotiate to enable Jews to buy Palestinian property. Whoever does such a thing is committing high treason. He must be brought to court and be punished for it. We are enemies and they occupied our land and they want to control everything on this land and to wipe us out of it.”
With US President Barack Obama’s heightened rhetoric about a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel making daily headlines, Tamimi still holds no optimism for change.
“Through his speeches and comments, Obama is working hard to improve the ugly face of America, which Bush made even uglier,” he says. “But till now we haven’t seen anything on the ground. We are waiting.”
Despite his hardliner image Tamimi also has to be credited for appointing the first ever female Islamic judge, and he promises more will follow. In fact, men and women are collecting in the office, which happens to be situated between a woman’s hair salon and a lingerie boutique, to be briefed ahead of a competitive exam for prospective lawyers in the Sharia court.
“Whoever wins, whether it’s a man or a woman, will get the appointment,” he says. “Islamic Sharia (law) allows women to occupy such positions. Actually it’s very important when it comes to personal problems and issues, because when it comes to a relationship between a man and a woman, the woman sometimes doesn’t say what she has to say in front of a male judge because she might feel reserved. But if the judge is a woman she will talk freely. Therefore we will achieve better justice in this way.”
Karl Schembri is a correspondent for Ramattan News Agency in the West Bank and Gaza
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