Muslim worshipers visit the Temple Mount
Muslim worshipers visit the Temple MountSliman Khader/Flash90

Jewish Temple Mount activists seeking to pray at the holy site are posing as Muslims to skirt restrictions imposed by police and Muslim authorities, the BBC reported Tuesday.

According to a report by the BBC Tuesday morning, Raphael Morris, chief of the ‘Returning to the Mount’ organization, said that he and other members of his organization learn Arabic and dress up as Muslims in order to enter the Temple Mount without the limits imposed on non-Muslim visitors.

Despite coming under Israeli sovereignty after the Six Day War in 1967, the Temple Mount is administered by the Jordanian Waqf, an Islamic trust which tightly controls visitation by non-Muslims, and prohibits worship or prayer by non-Muslims on the site.

“The mission is to reconquer the Temple Mount,” Morris told the BBC. “You change your clothing, change your hat. Sometimes you need to paint your hair or have a haircut.”

Morris said that he and other members of ‘Returning to the Mount’ either join Muslim prayer groups, quietly reciting Jewish prayers, or “just stand wherever you want in the temple and pray.”

“At the beginning it is quite scary, but you get used to it very fast.”

“You can pray and walk around the Temple Mount without having policemen walking after you.”