Rabat – A member of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) has responded to Egyptian author Youssef Zeidan for his criticism of Salahudin Ayubi (Saladin), calling him “despicable.”
Zeidan had used the same term referring to the Islamic military leader, who is honored throughout the Muslim world as the man who re-conquered the holy city of Jerusalem.
“This is a despicable person. I don’t even want to pronounce his dirty name”, said PJD El Mokrie Abou Zaid Idrissi in a video interview on the party’s online TV channel.
Idrissi continued his rebuke of the author.“Didn’t that wretched person claim that the site of Jerusalem is not the one mentioned in the Quran, and that the Israa (Prophet’s night journey to Jerusalem) took place in another site in the Arabic Peninsula than the Al Aqsa mosque, giving a false historical, religious and anthropological interpretation than even Zionists didn’t dare to proclaim?”
Idrissi, who is also a writer and university professor, added that Zeidan is just one many others who exceeded him in showing “self-hatred” and lowering themselves to Israel, even though the latter would not pay attention to them.
During a TV interview, Zeidan created another controversy when he described Saladin as “one of the most despicable figures in history.”
His past views on Jerusalem and Al Aqsa, Islam’s third holy site, were also controversial. When he claimed in another TV interview that the Al Aksa Mosque is not the one mentioned in the Quran, Israeli news website Jerusalem Post reported the news under the title “The Egyptian Intellectual Who Handed Over Al-Aksa”.
