CAIRO: Egypt’s Al-Azhar Al-Sharif — Sunni Islam’s oldest and foremost seat of learning — has strongly condemned Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s statement that he would build a synagogue at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound if he could.

Al-Aqsa compound is Islam’s third holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity, but it is also Judaism’s holiest place, revered as the site of the second temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

“If I could do anything I wanted, I would put an Israeli flag on the site,” Ben Gvir said in an interview.

Asked several times by the journalist if he would build a synagogue at the site if it were up to him, Ben Gvir finally replied: “Yes.”

Al-Azhar said in a press note that these “provocative statements are issued only by persons with an extremist mentality that does not respect religions, the sanctities of others, or international laws and conventions.”

The statement continued it “reminds the whole world that the blessed Al-Aqsa ‎Mosque, with its courtyards, precincts, and all its areas, has ‎been and shall always be purely Islamic and a historical right ‎for Muslims.”

It is “Islamic in origin, and it is the first of the two ‎Qiblahs (direction of prayer) and the third of the two holy mosques; It will remain ‎as such despite the criminal Zionist plans to Judaize the ‎historical landmarks of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the city of ‎Jerusalem,” the statement said.

In closing, it added: “Al-Azhar calls on the governments of the Muslim ‎world to take serious and strict positions against these ‎irresponsible and repeated statements by this Zionist official ‎and other extremists who have become accustomed to ‎storming the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and inciting violence ‎and terrorism against innocent Palestinians.”