The picture was captioned: “One of the most disturbing images of today. This is inside Masjid Al Aqsa!! Palestinians were not allowed to pray inside but these people are allowed to play!”

Attached to it were pictures of what look like smouldering Korans and a woman defiling a Koran by standing on it with her bare feet and painted toenails.

The picture of badminton being played “inside Masjid Al Aqsa” is false and appears to have come from Turkish media reports in July 2013 showing badminton (and karate and soccer) being played — not in Jerusalem — but in the Milas Mosque in the Mugla province of Turkey. A simple Google search would have alerted Mr Qadir to his error. But more than that it displays a predisposition to believe the inflammatory propaganda promoted by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority that Israel intends to change the status quo of the site on which Al-Aqsa is built. The site is administered by the Jordanian (religious) Waqf authority, as it was before Israel captured east Jerusalem during the Six Day War in 1967. Israel has repeatedly insisted that will continue.

It is, of course, true that to Jews, the site is just as precious as it is to Muslims — if not more so. While Al-Aqsa is Islam’s third holiest site (after Mecca and Medina), it stands on Judaism’s holiest site because it was built in the seventh century (when Muslims conquered the city) over the sites of the first and second Jewish Temples, the latter destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The site also houses an Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock. So while Muslims call the site the “Noble Sanctuary” (“Al-Haram-al-Sharif”) Jews call it the “Temple Mount.”

In recognition of how important the site is to both Muslims and Jews, Israelis often refer to it as Al-Haram-al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Precisely because the 37-acre site is such a powder keg, Israel prohibits Jews from praying there. Non-Muslims are allowed to visit the site, accompanied by police, but only Muslims are allowed to pray and those from other faiths who try are escorted away. Visiting times are co-ordinated with the controlling body, the Waqf, so as not to clash with Muslim prayer times.

However, some rabbis and right-wing government ministers have demanded equal access to the site to pray there, and last year two Israeli MPs proposed a bill supporting this, although one of them withdrew and it got nowhere. There has also been an increase in Israeli visitors and politicians, with one minister having called for a third Temple to be built. Mainstream Jewish law prohibits this. Nonetheless, such ideas are no longer as fringe as they once were.

Equally provocative has been a demand by the Muslim Council of Clerics in Jerusalem to ban all Jewish presence from the site. Dozens of women are reported to have been hired to harass Jewish visitors and the police officers escorting them. They have been filmed shouting and trying to assault Jews and policemen. Palestinians are also reported to have smuggled stones, firebombs and pipe bombs into Al-Aqsa mosque.

On September 15, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed there would be no change to the status of the site. The following day the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas simply ignored this. In a televised address to Palestinians, he said: “We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah.”