Of the Umayyad mosques of Aleppo and Damascus

If my readings are correct, the two most recent imams of the mosque have been (i) Moaz al-Khatib, who was deposed and imprisoned under Assad, and during the Syrian revolution led the National Opposition Coalition until his April 21st resignation, and (ii) Mohamed al-Bouti, the famed scholar who replaced him, who was killed in a suicide attack on another Damascus mosque, the Iman Mosque, on March 21st.

The burial of al-Bouti — who had supported Assad and called the Syrian opposition “scum” — in the Umayyad, close to the tomb of Saladin, is therefore a potentially incendiary move, giving extraordinary high honor to the imam in the aftermath of a revolutionary strike against another mosque in which that same Assad-supporting imam was killed while preaching.

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May the Umayyad mosque of Damascus, now a locus of possible contention, avoid the fate of its sister in Aleppo. May the “white lighthouse” minaret be preserved…

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