A plan has been drawn up in Washington and Tel Aviv to end Muslim sovereignty over Masjid al-Aqsa. The reports are no longer rumours; they are documented. Jared Kushner and Mike Huckabee are pushing a paper that would strip Jordan of its custodianship, dissolve the Islamic Waqf, and hand the Aqsa compound to a body created by the Israeli government. The complex would then be declared a “multi-faith centre,” opened to Jewish worship, with Israel signing off on Friday khutbahs and appointing imams.

This article examines what is happening, what it means in the Sharī’ah, and what the obligation of the Ummah is when an enemy moves against one of the three sanctuaries of Islam. We will define the terms involved, present the evidences for the inviolability of Masjid al-Aqsa, and dismantle every excuse used to justify silence or surrender. We will close with what the believers must do. 

What the Plan Actually Says

According to Middle East Eye, which broke the story on 25 May 2026, multiple American, Jordanian, Palestinian, Western and Gulf Arab sources confirmed that the United States and Israel are “actively working” to strip Jordan of its historic custodianship. The plan is championed by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, and Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel and a long-time supporter of illegal Israeli settlements.

Under the proposal, the authority of the Jordanian-backed Islamic Waqf “would abruptly end and a new body created by the Israeli government would declare the Al-Aqsa Mosque a ‘multi-faith centre’.” Jews would be granted “equal access” to the Muslim site, with formal permission for large-group Jewish prayer. Israel “would also have a major say over the appointment of imams, preachers and senior mosque officials, and would also be involved in signing off on the content mentioned in Friday sermons.”

Two US officials told MEE that Washington had already drafted a paper on the envisaged future of the mosque, in which the Trump administration would like to see Al-Aqsa “stripped of its Muslim identity, with the site turned into a landmark tourist attraction that hosts all three Abrahamic religions.” A rotational Arab oversight role was floated, with Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, and the UAE briefed on the proposal.

This is the model of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron projected onto Bayt al-Maqdis. After the 1994 massacre of Muslim worshippers by Baruch Goldstein, Israel split the Ibrahimi Mosque, allocating 63% for Jewish worship and only 37% for Muslims. The Palestinian and Jordanian sources told MEE the new arrangement at Al-Aqsa “appeared to be loosely modelled” on this division.

So when we speak of this plan we are speaking of three concrete steps, each of which is treated separately in the Sharī’ah:

First, the dissolution of the Islamic Waqf and the transfer of a mosque to a body created by a non-Muslim occupying state. 

Second, the legal opening of an Islamic mosque to organised non-Islamic worship and ritual. 

Third, the takeover of the religious office: the appointment of imams and the censorship of khutbahs by an occupier whose declared aim is to dispossess the Muslims of the land.

Each of these, taken on its own, is a catastrophe. Taken together, they amount to the legal erasure of Masjid al-Aqsa as a Muslim sanctuary.

What Al-Aqsa Is in the Sharī’ah

Before we discuss the ruling on the plan, we must define what Al-Aqsa is. Many people speak about it without precision.

Masjid al-Aqsa is not merely the silver-domed building at the southern end of the compound (al-Qibli Mosque), nor the Dome of the Rock alone. Al-Aqsa in the language of the Sharī’ah refers to the entire walled enclosure, approximately 144 dunams (around 35 acres), inside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Every part of it: the Qibli, the Dome of the Rock, the courtyards, the prayer halls, the gates, the Buraq Wall, all of it is Masjid al-Aqsa.

Allah named this sanctuary directly in His Book:

﴿سُبْحَانَ الَّذِي أَسْرَىٰ بِعَبْدِهِ لَيْلًا مِنَ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ إِلَى الْمَسْجِدِ الْأَقْصَى الَّذِي بَارَكْنَا حَوْلَهُ لِنُرِيَهُ مِنْ آيَاتِنَا﴾

“Glory be to the One who took His servant by night from al-Masjid al-Ḥarām to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, whose surroundings We have blessed, that We might show him of Our signs.”

Allah Himself called it al-Masjid al-Aqṣā. He Himself blessed its surroundings. He Himself made it the destination of the Isrā’ of His Messenger ﷺ. This is not a designation that any human authority, Jordanian, Israeli, American or otherwise, has the right to revise.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

«لَا تُشَدُّ الرِّحَالُ إِلَّا إِلَى ثَلَاثَةِ مَسَاجِدَ: الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ، وَمَسْجِدِي هَذَا، وَالْمَسْجِدِ الْأَقْصَى»

“Do not set out on a journey except for three Mosques: al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, this Mosque of mine, and Masjid al-Aqsa.”

Al-Aqsa is named here alongside the two Ḥaramayn, the Sacred Mosque in Makka and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madina. It is set apart from every other mosque on the earth. To imagine that this sanctuary can be transferred to non-Muslim management is to imagine the same for the Kaʿba or the Rawḍa of the Prophet ﷺ.

Al-Aqsa was also the first qibla of the Muslims. For around sixteen to eighteen months after the Hijra, the Prophet ﷺ and the Companions prayed facing Bayt al-Maqdis before Allah commanded the change to the Kaʿba in Sūrat al-Baqara (2:144). Every Muslim who has prayed since the early years of Islam owes a debt to this sanctuary; it stood as the direction of their forefathers’ prostrations.

What a Waqf Is, and Why Al-Aqsa Cannot Be Transferred

The plan rests on the assumption that custodianship over Al-Aqsa is a political arrangement that can be renegotiated. This is the lie at the heart of the proposal. Custodianship is not the issue; ownership is. And in the Sharī’ah, a mosque is not owned by Jordan, nor owned by the Hashemites, nor owned by Israel, and not owned by any state or any committee. It is waqf, dedicated to Allah.

The Prophet ﷺ instructed ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb regarding his land:

“Give it in charity as a waqf, that is not to be sold, given as a gift, or inherited.”

This is reported by al-Bukhārī (2764) and Muslim (1632). The Muslim version adds: “it is not to be sold or bought.” Ibn Ḥajar transmits the addition of al-Dāraquṭnī through ʿUbaydullāh ibn ʿUmar from Nāfiʿ: “A waqf that will remain as long as the heavens and the earth remain.”

The jurists summarise three legal consequences of a property becoming waqf:

“Perpetuity: In a Waqf, the property is settled permanently so that its usufruct is always available for an indefinite period… 

Irrevocability: Once it is created, the Waqf cannot be revoked. As the property is deemed to vest in God. 

Inalienability: When a Waqf is created, the property vests in the implied ownership of the God. Therefore, Waqf property cannot be sold, transferred or encumbered.”

Islamweb, citing the position of the majority of the fuqahā’, states plainly:

“If someone builds a mosque and allows the people to pray in it, then it is no longer his/her property, and it becomes Waqaf (an endowment) for Allah.”

And IslamQA reports the consensus drawn from the Bukhari narration:

“It is not permissible to transfer ownership of it, or to dispose of it in a way that will lead to transfer of ownership. Rather it is to remain as it is, and is to be managed in accordance with what was stipulated by the one who set up the waqf.”

If this is the ruling for a date grove that ʿUmar gave in charity, what is the ruling for the third sanctuary of Islam, the qibla of the Anbiyā’, the place from which the Prophet ﷺ ascended to the heavens? A Muslim ruler cannot give it away. A non-Muslim government certainly cannot legislate its transfer. No “rotational oversight” by Bahrain or the UAE can legalize the seizure. No paper drafted in Washington can dissolve a waqf established for Allah.

The classical authorities are explicit on this. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Ibn Qudāma, al-Nawawī and Ẓafar Aḥmad al-ʿUthmānī are all reported to have stated:

“It is ruled that if a person dedicates his land to a mosque, it will pass from his property to Allah Almighty’s. Once established, a mosque cannot be bought, sold, or given as a gift. It is likewise forbidden to inherit a mosque.”

Al-Aqsa, then, is in the legal ownership of no one but Allah. The Muslim Ummah is its guardian. The role of any caretaking authority is custodianship under the Sharī’ah, not ownership. And custodianship can only be exercised by Muslims, under Islamic law, for the benefit of the Muslims. Any other arrangement is a legal nullity, regardless of how many treaties cover it.

Now to the Excuses

Once a proposal of this size enters the public domain, three kinds of arguments emerge in the Muslim space to soften it. We will address them in turn.

The First Excuse: “It is a political arrangement between Jordan and Israel. It does not concern us.”

This is the position of those who treat the Ummah as a collection of nation-states, each minding its own borders.

The argument fails for two reasons.

The first is that Jordan does not own Al-Aqsa. The Hashemite custodianship is a relatively recent arrangement, granted in 1924 after the British Mandate authorities transferred the role following the Hashemites’ loss of Makka and Madina to the Al Saud. It was reaffirmed in the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty, Article 9. Whatever the political validity of that arrangement, it does not grant Jordan the right to dispose of a waqf that belongs to the entire Ummah. The Prophet ﷺ said:

«الْمُسْلِمُ أَخُو الْمُسْلِمِ، لَا يَظْلِمُهُ وَلَا يُسْلِمُهُ»

“The Muslim is the brother of the Muslim. He does not wrong him and does not abandon him.” (Bukhārī, Muslim)

The Muslims of Palestine are our brothers. Al-Aqsa is our sanctuary. Their being administered by a treaty between an Arab state and the occupier does not absolve us of any responsibility; it intensifies that responsibility, because the arrangement is now visibly failing.

The second is that the Sharī’ah treats the lands of the Muslims as one. 

Ibn Taymiyya, in his Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā, said regarding any attack on Muslim territory:

“If the enemy enters a Muslim land, there is no doubt that it is obligatory for the closest and then the next closest to repel him, because the Muslim lands are like one land.”

This is the language of fard ʿayn on those near, expanding outward through the Ummah until those who are needed have responded. Ibn ʿĀbidīn ruled the same in Ḥāshiyat Ibn ʿĀbidīn (3/238):

“Jihad becomes Fard Ayn if the enemy attacks one of the borders of the Muslims, and it becomes Fard Ayn upon those close by. For those who are far away, it is Fard Kifaya, if their assistance is not required. If they are needed, perhaps because those nearby the attack cannot resist the enemy, or are indolent and do not fight Jihad, then it becomes Fard Ayn upon those behind them… until the jihad becomes Fard Ayn upon the whole Ummah of Islam from the East to the West.”

Al-Ramlī said the same in Nihāyat al-Muḥtāj (8/158).  Al-Dasūqī said the same in his Ḥāshiya (2/174).

This is the position of the fuqahāʾ of the four madhāhib, without significant dispute.

If this ruling is applied to an attack on Muslim land, what is the ruling on an attack on the third holiest sanctuary of Islam, the qibla of the Anbiyāʾ? The matter is not the concern of Jordan alone; it is the concern of the entire Ummah.

The Second Excuse: “There is nothing we can do. The balance of power is what it is.”

This excuse is the one that does the most damage, because it sounds realistic. It is not realistic. It is despair wearing the costume of pragmatism.

The Muslims have faced this exact situation before. In 1099, the Crusaders took Jerusalem, slaughtered tens of thousands of its Muslim inhabitants, and turned Masjid al-Aqsa into a stable and a church. The Muslim world at that moment was politically fragmented, militarily inferior, and ruled by competing dynasties who fought one another more eagerly than they fought the invader. For 88 years, the Friday khuṭba was not given in Al-Aqsa.

Then came ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī. Then Nūr al-Dīn Zangī. Nūr al-Dīn commissioned a minbar in Aleppo, six years in the making, completed in 1168 CE, in anticipation of liberating Bayt al-Maqdis, even though he did not live to see it. When Salāḥ al-Dīn entered Jerusalem in 583 AH (1187 CE), he brought that minbar from Aleppo and installed it in Al-Aqsa. The mosque was purified, the khuṭba was given, the people wept.

That liberation did not happen because the political situation suddenly improved. It happened because individual men refused to accept that the political situation defined the limits of what was possible. They prepared. They worked. They built. They unified what they could unify. And Allah granted them victory.

The Muslims of 1099 were in a worse position than we are today. We have more people, more wealth, more weapons, more education, and more ability to communicate across distance than any generation in the history of Islam. What we lack is not capacity. What we lack is unified political authority working under the Sharīʿah for the protection of the Ummah.

What Has Already Happened

Even before this latest plan, the so-called “status quo” was being eroded month by month. Sheikh Ekrima Sabri of the Jerusalem Waqf Council has stated that the Israeli occupation has already changed the status quo on the ground and no longer recognises the Hashemite custodianship. Israeli settlers storm the compound regularly, including organised “Flag March” incursions in May of this year. Israeli police restrict the entry of Palestinian worshippers during Ramadan and on Jumuʿa. 

Settlers have sung the Israeli national anthem inside Al-Aqsa during raids. An Israeli bill aiming to ban the Muslim call to prayer has been pushed forward; the imam of Al-Aqsa has warned against it. Properties adjacent to Al-Aqsa are being confiscated.

The plan now circulated in Washington is the political formalisation of facts that the occupier has been creating on the ground for years. It is the legal sealing of a de facto takeover.

The response from the eight Muslim foreign ministers (Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia) was a joint statement of condemnation. A statement of condemnation is what is issued when there is no intention to act. The UAE has already established its own multi-faith centre in 2023 with a church, a synagogue, and a mosque under one administrative umbrella. Two Gulf sources told MEE that Saudi Arabia opposes the proposal, but the same sources noted it was “unclear how the kingdom would respond if the UAE or Bahrain publicly backed the proposal.”

This is the inheritance of the post-Khilāfa nation-state order: rulers who oppose in private and tolerate in public, statements that mean nothing, alignments that shift according to whichever wind is loudest from Washington.

Unity of the Ummah and the Obligation of the Khilāfa

Now we come to the heart of the matter. Every article we write returns to this point, because every issue in our time returns to this point.

The reason that a paper drafted in Washington can credibly threaten to dissolve a 1,400-year-old waqf is not that the enemy is exceptionally strong. The enemy is not exceptionally strong. The reason is that the Muslims are politically divided into more than fifty states, none of which has the obligation, capacity, or will to defend the sanctuaries of Islam on behalf of the whole Ummah. The structure of the modern Muslim world makes the seizure of Al-Aqsa thinkable. Under a single Khilāfa, it would not be thinkable.

Allah commanded the Muslims to remain one body. He said:

﴿وَاعْتَصِمُوا بِحَبْلِ اللَّهِ جَمِيعًا وَلَا تَفَرَّقُوا﴾

“And hold firmly to the rope of Allah, all together, and do not be divided.”

He warned them against fragmentation:

﴿وَلَا تَكُونُوا كَالَّذِينَ تَفَرَّقُوا وَاخْتَلَفُوا مِنْ بَعْدِ مَا جَاءَهُمُ الْبَيِّنَاتُ﴾

“Do not be like those who became divided and disputed after clear proofs came to them.”

The Prophet ﷺ said:

«مَنْ مَاتَ وَلَيْسَ فِي عُنُقِهِ بَيْعَةٌ، مَاتَ مِيتَةً جَاهِلِيَّةً»

“Whoever dies without having a bayʿa on his neck dies the death of jāhiliyya.”

A Muslim is required to live and die under a legitimate Islamic political authority. The absence of that authority since 1924 is not a neutral fact. It is a deficiency that the Sharīʿah commands the Ummah to remedy. The Companions, after the death of the Prophet ﷺ, considered the appointment of a leader so urgent that they did not bury the Prophet ﷺ until they had given bayʿa to Abū Bakr. This is ijmāʿ al-Ṣaḥāba: a foundational consensus that Islamic life requires Islamic political authority.

Al-Māwardī wrote in al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya that the imāma is established to succeed the prophecy in protecting the religion and governing the world. Al-Nawawī, al-Qurṭubī, Ibn Khaldūn and Ibn Ḥazm transmitted similar definitions. The Khilāfa is not an optional feature of Muslim political life. It is the framework through which the obligations of the dīn that require collective authority, including the defence of the sanctuaries, are fulfilled.

Without it, every individual Muslim ruler is structurally permitted to treat his territory as a private domain, and every issue that affects the Ummah as a whole, like Masjid al-Aqsa, falls between the cracks. The cracks are the entire system. The system is what produces papers like the Kushner-Huckabee paper, because the system is what makes the Ummah look weak enough that such papers can be drafted at all.

So what should we do?

We do what Nūr al-Dīn did when there was no realistic path to Jerusalem. We prepare. We build. We educate. We refuse to accept the legitimacy of the structures that produced this catastrophe. We teach our brothers and sisters what Masjid al-Aqsa is in the Sharīʿa, so they understand it is not Jordan’s to give and not Israel’s to take. We call openly for the re-establishment of the Khilāfa as the only political form under which the Muslims have ever, and can ever, defend their sanctuaries as one body. We expose the rulers who attended the meetings, drank the coffee, and signed off on briefings while the third sanctuary was being divided on a Washington whiteboard. We make duʿāʾ in the depths of the night for our brothers and sisters in al-Quds, who stand at the gates of Al-Aqsa with nothing but their bodies, and we ask Allah to grant the Ummah another Salāḥ al-Dīn.

﴿وَمَا النَّصْرُ إِلَّا مِنْ عِنْدِ اللَّهِ﴾

“And victory is from none but Allah.”

The minbar that Nūr al-Dīn built in Aleppo sat in his city for nineteen years before Salāḥ al-Dīn carried it into Jerusalem. He did not know who would carry it. He built it anyway. May Allah grant us the same conviction, and may He raise from this Ummah those who will carry the next minbar to Al-Aqsa, and give the khuṭba beneath its dome in a city ruled by His law alone.

Āmīn.

Sayf Al-Furqan Publications

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