Muslim World League leads Friday prayers in Warsaw with Jews in attendance

Saudi Arabian cleric Mohammed al-Issa, the head of the Mecca-based Muslim World League, led Friday prayers at the Tatarska St. Mosque in Warsaw which was also attended by Jewish delegates a day after visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial site.

“We’ve come here as a high-level Islamic delegation comprising of senior Muslim scholars from different sects to say these words and through tangible actions – not just through talk nor negative reservation, but through all of our attendance – this is our religion’s stance toward that crime,” al-Issa said to both Muslim and Jewish attendees at the Tatarska St. Mosque.

During his visit to Poland on Friday, al-Issa also addressed the Kabbalat Shabbat service at Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw.

“We should act together to make just peace a reality for all religions, countries, people, civilizations, and cultures,” al-Issa told both Jewish and Muslim attendees.

The visit to Warsaw comes days before Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27. The day marks 75 years since the Nazi German death camp at Auschwitz was liberated.

More than 1.1 million men, women, and children lost their lives at Auschwitz, built by the Nazis in occupied Poland as the largest of their concentration camps and extermination centers. Some six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.