Reply #76: Little tolerance evident in museum, critics say

[Coastie for Truth]

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But after burials were stopped at the cemetery, it fell into disuse, and large parts of it were used for other purposes.

In the late 1920s, the Palestinian leader and mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, sanctioned the relocation of bones found during construction of a hotel built by the Supreme Muslim Council on former cemetery grounds.

A city park was built over much of the land in the 1960s, as well as schools and a hotel. In the 1980s a parking lot was built in the area where the new museum is supposed to go up.

In its petition to the Israeli Supreme Court, the Al Aqsa Foundation, linked to the Islamic Movement, argues that under religious law, the sanctity of a Muslim cemetery is immutable and that it is forbidden to remove human remains or build on the area.

But expert opinions solicited by the Wiesenthal Center cite rulings by prominent Muslim scholars permitting the use of abandoned cemetery land for farming or construction after the remains have decomposed, a period of more than 30 years.

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