Al-Azhar Al-Sharif mourned Sheikh Youssef Salama, the preacher of the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the former minister of religious affairs in the Palestinian Authority, who spent his life serving the message of Islam, and teaching its sciences at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, after his death during a raid at his home in Al-Maghazi in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. He was 68 years old.
Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s oldest and foremost seat of learning, strongly condemned the attack by an Israeli military aircraft.
It also condemned Israel’s operations in the enclave targeting “our steadfast people in the Gaza Strip,” stressing that the crimes of the Israeli government, including its massacres of civilians, would not undermine the determination, patience, strength, and the clinging of the Palestinian people to their land, their defense of it and its sanctities.
Al-Azhar offered its sincere condolences to the family of Sheikh Youssef and to all Palestinian people.
On Sunday, Mohammed Mokhtar Gomaa, Egypt’s minister of religious endowments (Awqaf), also mourned Sheikh Salama.
Gomaa stressed that the Israeli occupation has gone beyond its limits in its oppression and tyranny, targeting the innocent and eliminating scholars, and that there must be international action to curb Israeli aggression.
Salama served as a minister in the PA between February 2005 and March 2006. He also served as a preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.