Al-Albānī: Is It Allowed to Put Up Pictures of the Dome of the Rock?

Shaikh Al-Albānī: My brother, this picture–it is upon you to remove it from this place.

One of the students of knowledge: Which picture?

Shaikh Al-Albānī: This picture, the one bigger than which you have no other! Do you know why?

One of the students of knowledge: May Allāh reward you with good.

Shaikh Al-Albānī: The reason–[and] ask [Allāh] to reward me with good after I’ve explained the reason to you–is this picture has misled the Islāmic world and turned [this] rock into a sacred rock, when it’s [just] a rock from among rocks, having no value whether it were there [in Jerusalem] or in Britain. It has absolutely no value.

So when its picture is taken–and those responsible over it directly are the kings who spend vast amounts of wealth toward its ornamentation and adornment–and in [doing] that there is a deluding of the Islāmic public–this rock has become a sacred rock in a sense, after which it has become used for political advantage, it not being enough for them to take advantage of the fact that the Aqṣá Mosque is one of the mosques to which setting out on a journey [is permitted in Islām]. This is enough for them if they did want to take advantage of the situation politically and stir up the fervor of Muslims, even though, regrettably, [the general body of Muslims] are, as has been said:

Were you to call out, anything alive you would have caused to hear,
But there is no life [stirring] in the one you [now] call to;

And were onto a fire, you were to blow, it would have set alight,
But you are [just] blowing [now] onto dead cinders.

So if they want to stir up the emotions of Muslims, if this were [going] to stir [them] up [at all], then the Aqṣá Mosque, with consideration of its being one of the Three Mosques, is enough. As for this rock, it is a source of misguidance and deception, and from the things that enable it [to be so], is putting it up and affixing it in [various] assemblies. And We, O community of Salafīs: Allāh, Almighty and Majestic, has kept us safe from revering a stone that has no value in Islām. Clear?

Silsilah Al-Hudá wa-l-Nūr, Tape 514, Question 14.

N.B.: Title mine (Tr.)