Deviation from “sermon topic demanded by the Ministry” only permitted if preacher can “convince” minister
Official PA TV program Topic of the Day hosted PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash.
PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “We determined more than four years ago that the [Friday] sermon would have a unified theme - not that the sermon [itself] would be unified. There’s a difference between the two things. For example, [in a sermon] about the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the importance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the preacher can decide how to express the content of this sermon. Apart from this, if [the preacher has decided] there is a social, human or national issue more important than the sermon topic demanded by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, he can change it… he only needs to convince me that the topic he has chosen is more important than the one we chose; he shouldn’t say: ‘this came from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, I don’t want to listen to them.’ You are a clerk, after all.”
PA Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “We determined more than four years ago that the [Friday] sermon would have a unified theme - not that the sermon [itself] would be unified. There’s a difference between the two things. For example, [in a sermon] about the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the importance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the preacher can decide how to express the content of this sermon. Apart from this, if [the preacher has decided] there is a social, human or national issue more important than the sermon topic demanded by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, he can change it… he only needs to convince me that the topic he has chosen is more important than the one we chose; he shouldn’t say: ‘this came from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, I don’t want to listen to them.’ You are a clerk, after all.”