"Who are Westerners to call the elimination of urine from the body on top of a holy shrine a show of disrespect?"
Jerusalem, June 8 - Video of a militant Islamist relieving himself on the roof of Islam's third-holiest site as his colleagues threatened violence over the desecration inherent in Jews walking in the area two Sundays ago have prompted the religious council administering the site to explain that followers of Muhammad may pee on the shrine but infidels may not, and certainly dhimmi Jews may not. They also chastised journalists for raising such an impertinent point.
Under the terms of a decades-old agreement agreement with Israel and Jordan, the Islamic Waqf runs the Al Aqsa Mosque and runs the day-to-day affairs of an ancient plateau that Jews revere as their holiest; it now houses the Al Aqsa Mosque and other shrines. Waqf representatives clarified Sunday that tendentious misinterpretation of footage of a Palestinian man urinating atop Al Aqsa while tensions simmered below in the face of Hamas threats to meet a Jewish celebration of the city's liberation from Jordanian occupation 55 years ago has given rise to misunderstanding of Islamic doctrine that partisans now distort in attempts to highlight the hypocrisy of Muslims who insist Al Aqsa's sanctity needs protection from Jews.
"Zionists willfully misrepresent the video," explained Waqf secretary Ayma Dumfuq. "They would have the uninformed believe that Muslims urinating on the mosque rooftop, playing soccer, parkour, and other games, not to mention pointing their backsides to the spot where Muhammad stopped in his Night Journey each time they bow in five-times-daily prayer, somehow displays disrespect for the sanctity of the site. Such a distortion can only hold true if one accepts heretical, dangerous notions of 'consistency' with which Zionist have poisoned world culture. Jews soiling the Haram al-Sharif with their unclean feet do far more damage than any loyal Palestinian defending the holiness and honor of Al Aqsa by pissing all over it."
Scholars noted that different sensibilities governing urine contribute to the divergent reactions to the video. "To those unfamiliar with the place of urine in Arab society, it does seem strange," acknowledged Paula Jist, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. "But those unfamiliar have never imbibed camel urine as a panacea for a host of ills, for one thing. Who are Westerners to call the elimination of urine from the body on top of a holy shrine a show of disrespect?"
"On the other hand," she continued, "everyone understands that Jews walking around, alive and sovereign and not oppressed or second-class, with their own powerful military and economy, is just universally offensive. It's common sense."