It’s now 57 years since an arson attack devastated Al-Aqsa Mosque. On this date, 5Pillars’ Robert Carter expresses fresh fears for Islam’s third holiest site as genocidal Zionist extremists have grown more emboldened than ever before amid Western complicity in the Gaza genocide and Muslim world leadership shying away from direct action.
On August 21, 1969, the Muslim world awoke to horrifying news: Al-Aqsa Mosque was on fire.
An Australian national, Denis Michael Rohan, had set fire to one of Islam’s holiest sites just two years after Israel’s invasion and occupation of East Jerusalem. The blaze caused extensive damage and destroyed the historic Minbar of Salahuddin, a priceless symbol of Islamic history that had stood in the mosque for centuries.
The attack provoked outrage across the Muslim world and helped lead to the creation of what is now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The UN Security Council condemned the “extensive damage caused by arson to the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem” and described the incident as an act of desecration and profanation at one of mankind’s most venerated shrines.
Today, 57 years later, the anniversary should not simply be an occasion to remember a crime from history. It should act as a stark warning.
Because Al-Aqsa remains under threat. The situation has become so dire that some observers consider its destruction imminent, with growing evidence that extremist Zionist and settler movements want to fundamentally transform the site – and some explicitly advocate replacing its Islamic structures with a Jewish temple.
For many Muslims, the danger is not some abstract fear based solely on the memory of 1969. It is rooted in what they can see happening in occupied Palestine today.
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A plot backed by Israel’s leaders
The first point to understand is that Al-Aqsa is not simply another religious building.
Under the longstanding arrangements governing the site, the Islamic Waqf administers the compound, while Israel controls access and security. Non-Muslims may visit, but the established status quo prohibits non-Muslim prayer there. That arrangement has come under increasingly direct challenge.
For years, far-right Israeli politicians and sectarian religious nationalist activists have pushed for expanded Jewish access and prayer at the compound. Groups advocating the construction of a so-called Third Temple regard the site as the location of the ancient Jewish temples and seek a fundamental change to its present character.
The most alarming aspect is that these ideas are no longer confined to obscure fringe activists standing outside the gates of power.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, an anti-Arab racist who has invaded the site alongside other extremist settlers, has repeatedly used his political position to challenge the status quo. In August 2024, he openly argued that Jews should be allowed to pray at the compound and said that, if it were up to him, he would build a synagogue there.
Asked directly whether he would build one on the site, his answer was: “Yes.” He also said: “If I could do anything I wanted, I would put an Israeli flag on the site.”
The question Muslims must ask is obvious: how can Al-Aqsa be considered safe when a senior minister openly talks about establishing a synagogue within the very compound that Muslims regard as sacred?
Ben-Gvir and other Israeli politicians have repeatedly invaded the compound, while growing numbers of religious nationalist visitors have prayed and performed rituals there despite the laws protecting the Islamic site from Zionist Jewish conquest.
On July 23 this year, Ben-Gvir again desecrated the compound during Tisha B’Av. He praised what he described as “huge progress” and celebrated the sight of Jews praying there and “feeling like they’re the owners of the place.” “This has never happened before,” he reportedly said. The message couldn’t be any clearer. The Zionist pig wants Al Aqsa.
The Israeli government may officially insist that the status quo remains unchanged, but actions on the ground tell the exact opposite. Even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has publicly reaffirmed the existing arrangements, Ben-Gvir and other religious nationalist figures have continued to challenge them without consequence.
Jordan, which has a recognised custodial role at the holy site, recently warned of an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover following escalating incursions.
In 2025, the Hashamite King of Jordan, King Abdallah II, warned the United Nations: “Israel’s hostile rhetoric calling for the targeting of Al Aqsa will incite a religious war which will reach far beyond the region and lead to an all out clash which no nation will be able to escape.”
Earlier this month, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned that continued tampering with the status quo could trigger a religious conflict that would reverberate far beyond Palestine.
Credit: Teo K / Shutterstock.com
Jordan has repeatedly warned that Israeli actions at Al-Aqsa could trigger wider conflict or war, but always shies away from pledging that Jordan itself would go to war specifically to defend its custodianship of Al-Aqsa. Alas, this fact is likely one of the key factors behind why Israel feels so confident to further its plots against the site. After all if they can commit a genocide against Arab Muslims in Gaza and the Muslim world stands by, what would happen if they seized Al Aqsa?
During Ramadan 2025, Israeli authorities severely restricted Palestinian access to the mosque for weeks, imposing age limits and permit requirements on West Bank worshippers. For four consecutive Fridays, Palestinians faced heavy restrictions at checkpoints, with some reportedly turned away despite possessing the permits required to enter Jerusalem. Jordanian and other Arab world leaders again did nothing to help.
To erase Palestine, they must first erase Al Aqsa
Zionist terrorist plots to destroy Al Aqsa are being worked on as we speak.
In April 2025, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry warned about threats circulating among Israeli settler organisations calling for Al-Aqsa Mosque to be attacked and demolished and for a temple to be constructed in its place.
Other Temple movements have openly campaigned for greater control of the site, while settler activists have organised increasingly large incursions and religious rituals inside the compound.
The destruction of Al-Aqsa is not merely something imagined by its defenders. There are activists who advocate replacing the Islamic holy site, politicians who want to establish Jewish religious institutions within the compound and a steady erosion of restrictions that were supposedly designed to preserve its delicate status quo.
But someone ignorant of the conflict for Jerusalem might ask, why are some Jewish settlers so obsessed with replacing Al Aqsa? It’s just a compound. They have already essentially hijacked the city, right?
The fact is, Zionism – the politically ideology behind Israel – wants a total takeover of all Palestine. The land, the sea, the air and even the culture. It wants to completely remove even any reference of Palestine from history. The whole “it was a land without an people for a people without a land” lie which even the PM Netanyahu pushes himself.
The battle for Al-Aqsa cannot be separated from the wider struggle over Jerusalem or the battle to stop an entire cultural genocide from happening. For decades, since the arrival of Jewish immigrants from Europe, Palestinian neighbourhoods have been demolished, residents displaced, settlement projects expanded and Israeli sovereignty increasingly imposed over more Arab land.
International bodies have repeatedly warned about violence, provocation and incitement by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their historic and religious sites.
Jerusalem Al Quds is not merely a collection of buildings. Its mosques, churches, streets, cemeteries, markets and neighbourhoods carry the history of the people who have lived there for centuries.
To remove Palestinian history from Jerusalem would require more than changing a map. It would require changing the physical and religious landscape of the city itself.
That is why Al-Aqsa matters so profoundly.
An attack on the mosque would not simply be an attack on a building. It would strike at Muslim religious identity, Palestinian heritage and the historical character of Jerusalem.
The 57th anniversary of the Al-Aqsa arson attack should therefore be more than a historical commemoration. It should be a moment of vigilance.
Muslims should remember what happened in 1969, remember how quickly the flames consumed one of the most precious treasures inside the mosque and remember that the political and religious forces seeking to alter the status of the compound have not disappeared.
