Turkey Opens Gaza Mosque Named for al-Qaeda Founder
You know, our NATO ally, moderate, secular Turkey.
February 19, 2026
By
Reprinted from Frontpage Magazine
American leaders, and the greater part of the American public, have labored under various delusions about Islam ever since George W. Bush walked into a mosque six days after 9/11 and proclaimed that Islam was peace, and even before that as well. These delusions are not harmless; they have had a profound effect upon both foreign and domestic policies, and that effect has not been positive. One manifestation of our ongoing willful ignorance regarding Islam, jihad and Sharia is that the Republic of Turkey, despite its ongoing re-Islamization under President and would-be Caliph Recep Tayyip Erdogan, remains ostensibly a friend and ally of the United States.
The folly of the failure to reevaluate the U.S. relationship with Turkey in light of its reorientation toward jihadist aggression was demonstrated yet again on Sunday, when it came to lightthat the Republic of Turkey has constructed a new mosque in Gaza, and named it for none other than Abdullah Azzam, the co-founder, with Osama bin Laden, of al-Qaeda.
JNS reported Tuesday that “Turkey recently inaugurated a mosque in the Gaza Strip in the name of Salafi theologian Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli said on Sunday.” Chikli stated: “What a ‘gesture’ from Turkey: Funding a mosque in Gaza named after Abdullah Azzam—the man who mentored Osama bin Laden and co-founded Al-Qaeda.”
JNS noted that Azzam, “an Islamic scholar from Silat al-Harithiya, a village near Jenin in Samaria, is widely considered the ‘father of the global jihad,’ having been bin Laden’s mentor before being assassinated by a car bomb detonated by unidentified assailants in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1989.” As if that weren’t enough, Azzam “also laid the groundwork for the establishment of Al-Qaeda and the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008, killing 166 people and wounding 300. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who ran the Nariman House Chabad center in the city, were among those murdered.”
Azzam was also influential in the Muslim Brotherhood and aleader of Hamas. Born in a Palestinian Arab village in 1941, Azzam was raised in a pious Muslim household and had impeccable Islamic credentials, having earned a degree in Sharia from the Sharia College of Damascus University in 1966. In 1973, he received a Ph.D. in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest, most respected, and most influential institute of higher learning in the Muslim world.
Azzam then joined the jihad against Israel, but soon grew frustrated. His fellow mujahedin spent their off-hours gambling and playing music, both forbidden activities according to Islamic law — particularly in the interpretation of the Shafi’i school which holds sway at al-Azhar. Ultimately Azzam decided that “this revolution has no religion behind it” and traveled to Saudi Arabia to teach. There he taught that the Muslim’s philosophy in conflicts with non-Muslims ought to be “jihad and the rifle alone. NO negotiations, NO conferences and NO dialogue.”
In 1980, attracted by the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, he went to Pakistan to get to know the movement’s leaders. He taught for a while at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, but soon resigned in order to devote himself full-time to jihad. Azzam and his “dear friend” Osama bin Laden founded the Mujahedin Service Bureau in order to give aid to those fighting in Afghanistan. However, he desired to be on the front line of jihad, and ultimately went to Afghanistan himself.
Joining the fight in Afghanistan, he declared: “Never shall I leave the Land of Jihad, except in three cases. Either I shall be killed in Afghanistan. Either I shall be killed in Peshawar. Or either I shall be handcuffed and expelled from Pakistan.” And indeed, in 1989 he was killed under mysterious circumstances in Peshawar.
This is the man whom “secular Turkey” decided to honor by naming its Gaza mosque after him. (And why is Turkey building a mosque in Gaza anyway? That’s thanks to Donald Trump holding back Israel from achieving its goal of defeating Hamas utterly.) Amichai Chikli said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had made Turkey into “a dangerous Trojan horse, actively advancing Al-Qaeda-linked networks in Gaza, Syria and Mogadishu, Somalia. The West’s continuing blindness to Erdoğan’s game is extremely dangerous. Wake up before it’s too late.”
Indeed.
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