Understanding Hamas’ Mainstream, Genocidal, Islamic Jew-Hatred
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The willful ignorance of Hamas' motivations continues.
July 24, 2014 - 12:37 pm
During a rally
held on March 23, 2014, in Gaza to mark the tenth anniversary of the
assassination of Hamas’ founding “spiritual guide,” Sheik Ahmad Yassin,
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya admonished the gathered crowds to, “establish the balance of terror. Out of the ruins, we shall rock Tel Aviv.” The Muslim masses responded with chants of “Strike, strike Tel Aviv.” Echoing the ancient sentiments of Islam’s prophet and prototype jihadist, Muhammad*, extolled as the ultimate “Jihad Model” by “moderate” head of the International Union of Islamic Scholars, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Haniya added the jihadist matrydrom mantra**,
we are a people that yearn for death, just as our enemies yearn for life. We yearn for martyrdom for the same goal for which our leaders died
More ominously, Haniya’s speech alluded to Hamas’ now well-established massive network of underground infiltration tunnels:
From below ground and above ground, you, the Occupiers, will be dismissed. You have no place in the land of Palestine.
Currently, as Israel’s Operation Protective Edge continues, necessitated by Hamas’ latest round of unprovoked missile barrages targeting civilian population centers, the Israeli counter-attack is appropriately focused on an aggressive campaign against the tunnels. Monday, 7/21/14, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) thwarted a jihad terror assault after two groups of Hamas terrorists (about ten in number) infiltrated from Gaza to Israel through a tunnel, ostensibly on their way to conduct a mass casualty attack at Kibbutz Erez and/or Kibbutz Nir Am. Earlier, IDF forces halted several other attempted attacks by Hamas near Kibbutz Sufa and Kibbutz Nirim which also utilized attack tunnels. Dozens of tunnels in Gaza, adjacent to Israel’s border, have been uncovered, and destroyed. Reaching lengths of up to 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles), some of these tunnels penetrate deep into Israeli territory.
Hamas Prime Minister Haniya’s explicit March 23, 2014 reference to jihad terrorism waged “from below ground,” unmasked what Israeli President Shimon Peres observed with regard to the recently thwarted attack on Kibbutz Sufa: a planned campaign by Hamas to inflict wholesale, deliberate slaughter of Israeli non-combatants.
Notwithstanding over a quarter century of morally bereft wishful ignorance, and deliberate obfuscation, the enduring motivations for Hamas’ genocidal wishes—and accompanying actions—vis-à-vis Jews, were laid out unambiguously in its August 18, 1988 covenant. Moreover, within 6-months of the publication of Hamas’ foundational covenant, the late historian David Littman waged a unique, heroic personal campaign—in public, at the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), beginning January, 1989 (see “Human Rights and Human Wrongs,”
World Union for Progressive Judaism, Geneva, 1989, N° 6, p. 3, statement by David G. Littman, E/CN.4/1989/SR.2)—to elucidate key aspects of the jihad terror organization’s genocidal ideology.
Addressing the UNHRC January 31, 1989, less 6-months after the Hamas covenant was made public, Littman warned that the document was,
a blatant blueprint for genocide, undoubtedly inspired by its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. I have with me a copy of the Arabic text and an English translation. Its aims are clearly defined in article 8, under the title, “Slogan”: “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of wishes.” Article 13 declares: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.” And article 28 does not beat about the bush: “Israel, Judaism, and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’”
Twenty-five years ago, Littman observed then, as now, how Hamas was “operating mainly in Gaza—but also in the West Bank—in collaboration with PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] groups.” David Littman concluded by excoriating alleged “peacemakers,” whose delusions about Hamas’ openly professed ideology are still wreaking calamitous consequences, repeated by their equally witless policymaking successors today.
These realities cannot be brushed aside simply because they are embarrassing, but should rather serve as a serious warning to the gullible for whom an appeasing, misguiding, “peace in our time,” will-o’-the-wisp remains a constant obsession.
In subsequent presentations on the Hamas covenant, Littman demonstrated, unapologetically, how its annihilationist hatred was sanctioned by Islam’s primary, canonical texts. He also reminded us why it is so critical to focus on Hamas’ odious covenant as a binding documentary record of the organization’s specific beliefs and goals:”
Hitler understood this when he wrote in the preface to Mein Kampf: “the basic elements of a doctrine must be set down in permanent form in order that it may be represented in the same way and in unity.” [Hitler, Preface to Mein Kampf (Reynal and Hitchcock translation)]. After his release from an Israeli prison and return to Gaza in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual head of Hamas, declared that Israel must “disappear from the map.” He added: “We have an aim and an enemy, and we shall continue our jihad against the enemy. A nation without a jihad is a nation without a purpose.”
The following discussion is indebted to David Littman’s prescient analyses (summarized here, and here), supplementing and updating his original insights.
Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2008 explained that the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews, “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times.” These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah.
And Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement of the document. [Here is the Arberry translation of 3:112: “Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God's anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God's signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors”]
In classical and modern Koranic exegeses by seminal, authoritative Islamic theologians (for details, see here) this central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322), “He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘…curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’”.
Salah al-Khalidi (fl. late 20th century) makes plain how these motifs of Koranic Jew-hatred are interpreted by Hamas in a manner that is entirely consistent with classical exegeses. Extracts (translated from the original Arabic by Dr. Michael Schub in my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) are provided below from Khalidi’s major work Haqa’iq Koraniyya al Qadiyya al-Filastinniya [“Koranic Facts Regarding the Palestinian Issue”] which was first published in 1991 by the Hamas Publishing House Manshūrāt Filastin al-Muslima, and translated into Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Russian, and English (formerly available online at www.assabeel.com) due to its international popularity.
Humiliation is attached to the Jews for their entire lifetime: they were humiliated in Egypt, and when they arrived in [sic] Palestine, and when they were exiled from Palestine, and when they dispersed into the valleys of the earth. What concerns us here-in our discussion of the Jewish character-is to indicate that this humiliation is to be considered as an inveterate Jewish character trait, and a destructive Jewish perversion. Humiliation is one of their historical attributes, a fixed fact of their existence, and a qaa`ida, basis of their life… (Koran 2:61) The Jews are humiliated because they disbelieved in God, killed His prophets, disobeyed His emissaries, transgressed His prohibitions-all of this is humiliation. They are humiliated-and this is why they search out lustful indulgences, and have become their slaves. All of this is humiliation.
It is impossible that the Jews could not be cursed. How could they not be accursed when they are attributed with such degenerate inveterate character traits, twenty of which we have demonstrated above. (Note: Khalidi earlier states, ‘We have extracted from Koran twenty Jewish traits. The Jews are: liars, perverters (of the Text), envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, humiliated, dastards, misers, avid for (this) life, disloyal to their firm contracts, rush into sinful aggression, concealers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructors in God’s path.’ For specific Koranic citations confirming his litany see here). They are worthy of eternal curse because of the villainous traits they display and the corrupt evils they have perpetrated.
The Jews are in a condition of mal`ana, i.e. everyone pours out curses on them; God has cursed them, the angels have cursed them, their prophets have cursed them, the good people among them have cursed them, and everyone has cursed them. They are deserving of this eternal and continual damnation until the day of resurrection when they will encounter God’s wrath, fury, and punishment. They were accordingly exiled from God’s mercy, and kept afar from His goodness.
Many Koranic verses were revealed emphasizing…the judgment upon them of cursed damnation, and exile from His mercy, e.g. Koran 5:13: “For breaking their covenant, We curse them, and have made their hearts hard.” And Koran 5:60…And Koran 5:64…And Koran 5:78…”
The annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology], and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant. As characterized in the hadith (the words, deeds, and even unspoken gestures of Muhammad as ostensibly recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions), Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl—the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews:
…the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)
Littman cites an April 12, 2002, Friday sermon delivered by the Palestinian Authority’s Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi at the Sheikh Ijlin Mosque in Gaza City, broadcast live on Palestinian Authority television demonstrating how the destruction of Israel’s Jews heralds further Islamic conquests.
Madhi quoted from this hadith—including the curious reference to the “Jewish” Gharqad tree—and then stated: “We believe in this hadith. We are convinced also that this hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the lands… ‘from the ocean to the ocean…’”
This Judeo-centric Sunni eschatology resonates broadly, with an authoritative imprimatur, across Islamdom, in the modern era, and even within the Muslim diaspora. For example, Hajj Amin El-Husseini—“Godfather” of the modern Palestinian Muslim jihadist movement—concluded his compendious 1937 discourse on Islam’s canonical Jew-hatred by reproducing the hadith (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177; Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985) about how the destruction of the Jews is requisite for ushering in the messianic times. The current Palestinian Authority Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein repeated this canonical tradition during a January 9, 2012 sermon. Subsequently, during a May 10, 2013 sermon at Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University, and its mosque, Muhammad Al-Mahdi, a senior scholar and head of the Sharia association at Al-Azhar also proclaimed the same end of times Jew-annihilating hadith. Finally, apropos to their longstanding Islamic relevance, Ibn Kathir’s 14th century commentary on Koran 4:155-159, which discusses Isa’s (the Muslim Jesus’) role in defeating the Dajjal (the Muslim “anti-Christ”), and his Jewish minions, invokes these same apocalyptic canonical hadith of Jew annihilation.
Returning to the Hamas covenant, Article 28, which is free of any eschatological references, clearly “widens the circle of hate” towards Jews, as Littman observed, targeting all contemporary Jews: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’”
Articles 22 and 32 invoke modern conspiratorial themes reminiscent of European (secular) antisemitic motifs, especially the latter (article 32), which makes explicit mention of the Czarist Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But even these articles are peppered with Koranic citations, including references in both 22 and 32 to Koran 5:64, a sort of ancient antecedent of The Protocols. (Arberry translation, Koran 5:64: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption.“)
Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas’ foundational Jew-annihilationist ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Once again, this is already suggested in the opening statement before the preamble which includes the following quote by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: “Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it.” Hamas, it should be noted, claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood. Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, for example, states: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organisation which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times.”
But the body of the Hamas Covenant includes unequivocal statements of Hamas’ irredentist commitment to the annihilation of Israel via jihad. Jihad martyrdom is lauded in article 8 “the Hamas slogan,” (in fact borrowed from the 1928 Charter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), which states, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” Article 13 makes plain that Hamas’ jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that…There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors.
And article 15 (subtitled, “Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty”) elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad:
The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements…
It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected, for as long as heaven and earth shall endure, to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet’s nocturnal journey [from the mosque of Mecca to the Al-Aqsa mosque] and through his ascension to heaven thence. “Being stationed on the frontier for the sake of Allah for one day is better than this [entire] world and everything in it; and the place taken up in paradise by the [horseman's] whip of any one of you [jihad fighters] is better than this [entire] world and everything in it. Every evening [operation] and morning [operation] performed by Muslims for the sake of Allah is better than this [entire] world and everything in it.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja). “By the name of Him who holds Muhammad’s soul in His hand, I wish to launch an attack for the sake of Allah and be killed and attack again and be killed and attack again and be killed.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)
Unfortunately, Hamas’ views on the jihad against Israel, and Islamic Jew-hatred, are entirely concordant with those of the most authoritative religious educational institution within Sunni Islam-Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt. Consider two complementary fatwas, one written January 5, 1956, by then grand mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma’moun, and another January 9, 1956, signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar University—Sunni Islam’s Vatican—and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. These rulings elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine—modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza—having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), “fay territory”—booty or spoils—to be governed eternally by Islamic law.
Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory. [As] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants. . . . Jihad . . . to restore the country to its people . . . is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim… Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Although free of eschatological references, the January 1956 Al Azhar fatwas’ language and arguments—pronounced from Sunni Islam’s most esteemed religious teaching institution—are otherwise indistinguishable from those employed just over three decades later by Hamas (in its 1988 covenant), revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred. Furthermore, espousing these ugly Islamic religious teachings at Al-Azhar has continued unabated over the intervening six nearly decades, till now. Al-Azhar’s two most recent spiritual leaders, Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (who held that position from 1996-2010), and his successor, current Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, have reinforced this ignoble tradition of promoting jihadism and Islamic Jew-hatred directed at Israel, and Jews, generally.
During an interview with Al-Tayeb, which aired on Channel 1, Egyptian TV, October 25, 2013, the Al-Azhar Grand Imam gave a brief explanation of the ongoing relevance of the Koranic verse 5:82 (sura, or chapter 5, verse 82) which has been invoked—“successfully”—to inspire Muslim hatred of Jews since the advent of Islam:
A verse in the Koran explains the Muslims’ relations with the Jews and the polytheists. The second part of the verse describes the Muslims’ relations with the Christians, and the third part of the verse explains why the Christians are the closest and most friendly to the Muslims. This is an historical perspective, which has not changed to this day. See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism, whereas our peaceful coexistence with the Christians has withstood the test of history. Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. This is a cause of great distress for the Muslims. The Koran said it and history has proven it: “You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.” This is the first part. The second part is: “You shall find the closest in love to the believers to be those who say: ‘We are Christians’.” The third part explains why the Christians are “the closest in love to the believers,” while the Jews and the polytheists are the exact opposite.
Grand Imam Al-Tayaeb’s assessment is upheld by a continuum of authoritative Koranic exegeses that span over a thousand years. The classical Koranic commentaries on Koran 5:82 by al-Tabari (d. 923), Zamakashari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. 1316), and Ibn Kathir demonstrate a uniformity of opinion regarding the animus of the Jews toward the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61 (i.e., for killing prophets, and transgressing against the will of Allah, repeated at verses including 2:90-91, 3:112, 3:181, and 4:155). Maulana Muhammad Shafi (1898-1976), a former grand mufti of India (prior to the August, 1947 partition), was the author of Maariful Qur’an, which remains the best-known Koranic commentary in Urdu. He also wrote more than three hundred books, and in addition to these literary works, broadcasted his Koranic commentary on Radio Pakistan for a number of years. Mufti Shafi’s modern gloss on Koran 5:82 in Maariful Qur’an confirms its classical exegesis, noting that the vast preponderance of Jews felt an unremitting malice toward the Muslims, and a lust for the “material pleasures of mortal life”—the rare exceptions to this rule (for example, Abdullah ibn Salam), became Muslims!
Current Al-Azhar Grand Imam al-Tayeb’s invocation of Koranic Jew-hatred (especially, 5:82) represents a modern historical continuum from Hajj Amin el-Husseini, and more directly his immediate predecessor, the late Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi—Grand Imam of Al-Azhar from 1996, till his death in March, 2010. My extensive and fully representative extracts in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism from Tantawi’s magnum opus—an utterly vile 700 pp. tract glorifying Islam’s incomparable output of doctrinal Jew-hatred from its core texts, i.e. the Koran, most important Koranic commentaries, and Sunna (i.e., alleged “traditions” of Islam’s prophet Muhammad and the nascent Muslim community)—is irrefragable proof of his convictions. Here an extract that bears repeating:
the Jews always remain maleficent deniers….they should desist from their negative denial…some Jews went way overboard in their denying hostility, so gentle persuasion can do no good with them, so use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil. One may go so far as to ban their religion, their persons, their wealth, and their villages.
Tantawi also wrote these words in his 700 page treatise—originally, his Al-Azhar University Ph.D. thesis—rationalizing Muslim Jew-hatred:
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.
In the spring of 2002, both Tantawi (then Grand Imam) and Tayeb (then Al-Azhar Mufti) both extolled Palestinian jihadist homicide bombing “martyrdom operations” against Israeli Jews—including civilian non-combatants—as reported by an Al-Azhar affiliated Arabic website.
The great Imam of Al Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, demanded that the Palestinian people, of all factions, intensify the martyrdom operations [i.e. homicide attacks] against the Zionist enemy, and described the martyrdom operations as the highest form of Jihad operations. He says that the young people executing them have sold Allah the most precious thing of all. [Sheikh Tantawi] emphasized that every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat…
[Al Tayeb declared that] the solution to the Israeli terror lies in a proliferation of Fidai [martyrdom] attacks that strike horror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah. The Islamic countries, peoples and rulers alike, must support these martyrdom attacks.
I won’t dignify the repellant, egregiously counterfactual “Final Communique” of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—Sharia supremacist avatar of the Islamintern, and largest voting block in the U.N.—which purports to examine the ongoing Hamas-instigated conflagration in Gaza and Israel, by extracting its contents.
This Orwellian statement, “Final Communique Expanded Extraordinary Meeting Of The Executive Committee At A Foreign Ministers Level On The Grave Situation In The Occupied State Of Palestine Including Al-Quds Al- Sharif,” issued July 10, 2014, can be read in its entirety here.
Prior to re-casting itself as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, when it was dubbed the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the OIC’s intentions vis-à-vis Israel were pellucid: this ecumenical bloc of Sharia-supremacist states sought the jihad destruction of Israel.
That remains the OIC’s goal, a jihad, as the 1981 formulation of this genocidal intent proclaimed, “that all Islamic States must wage, each according to its means”.
Extracted from my 2008, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (p. 55) are two candid expressions of the OIC’s self-proclaimed mission of “liberation”—i.e., genocide, 22-years apart from 1981, and 2003, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and Putrajaya, Malaysia.
From the Mecca Islamic Summit Conference, 1981:
The undertaking by all Islamic countries of psychological mobilization through their various official, semi-official, and popular mass media, of their people for Jihad to liberate Al-Quds. . . . Ensuring military coordination among the front-line statesand the Palestine Liberation Organization, on the one hand, and the Islamic States on the other, to ensure full utilization of the potentialities of the Islamic States in the service of the military effort; and setting up a military office in the Islamic Secretariat to be responsible for such coordination, in agreement with the Committee on Al-Quds. . . .
Resolution No.2/3.P (IS) on the Cause of Palestine and the Middle East: Considering that the Liberation of Al-Quds and its restoration to Arab sovereignty, as well as the liberation of the holy places from Zionist occupation, are a pre-requisite to the Jihad that all Islamic States must wage, each according to its means. . . .
Resolution No.5/3-P (IS)—Declaration of Holy Jihad: Taking these facts into consideration, the Kings, Emirs, and Presidents of Islamic States, meeting at this Conference and in this holy land, studied this situation and concluded that it could no longer be tolerated that the forthcoming stage should be devoted to effective action to vindicate right and deter wrong-doing; and have unanimously.
Decided: To declare holy Jihad, as the duty of every Muslim, man or woman, ordained by the Shariah and glorious traditions of Islam; To call upon all Muslims, living inside or outside Islamiccountries, to discharge this duty by contributing each according to his capacity in the case of Allah Almighty, Islamic brotherhood, and righteousness; To specify that Islamic states, in declaring Holy Jihad to save Al-Quds al-Sharif, in support of the Palestinian people, and to secure withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, wish to explain to the world that Holy Jihad is an Islamic concept which may not be misinterpreted or misconstrued, and that the practical measures to put into effect would be in accordance with that concept and by incessant consultations among Islamic states.
From the 2003 Putrajaya Islamic Summit speech by former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammad:
To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand. . . on Palestine. . . . We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships. . . . We may want to re-create the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.
Finally, Hamas also reflects the triumph of contemporary jihadist movements that openly avow their desire to re-establish a Caliphate, and submit the world to Islamic rule—all in accord with classical jihad doctrine, and popular Muslim sentiment. While voluminous additional evidence could be adduced in support of this premise, three particularly salient illustrations are provided below.
Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita was interviewed July 13, 2008 on Al-Aqsa TV. After reminding listeners that the Koran’s opening prayer itself (the Fatiha, at 1:7), which pious Muslims repeat five times daily, declares that the Jews are “those who incur Allah’s wrath,” (re-affirming the standard Islamic exegeses, across a millennium), he declared:
The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God.
Three months earlier Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, had made these more elaborate remarks during a speech which aired on Palestinian Al-Aqsa TV April 11, 2008:
Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs [i.e., Jews, Koran 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166, and other foundational Muslim texts] in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs [Rome] will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe. I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our Jihad…
Most importantly, alarming recent polling data indicate that these traditionalist Islamic views—espoused across a continuum of 75 years by el-Husseini, Al Azhar University, and Hamas—resonate with the Palestinian Muslim population. American pollster Stanley Greenberg performed what was described as an “intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” As reported in July, 2011 these data revealed that seventy-three percent of Palestinian Muslims agreed with the dictates of the apocalyptic hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985; included in both el-Husseini’s 1937 declaration, and the 1988 Hamas Covenant) calling for the annihilation of the Jews, to bring on the messianic age. Eighty percent supported the destruction of Israel by jihad, and the need to recruit the entire global Muslim community, or “umma” in this quintessential Islamic cause.
All these words, and the concrete actions they engender—via both political means, and jihad terrorism—debunk widely accepted tropes that Hamas is merely a nationalist movement, albeit religious, desiring a “Palestinian homeland” in the territories of Gaza (which it already possesses), Judea, and Samaria. Hamas’ blatantly annihilationist rhetoric towards Jews and Israel within the 1949 armistice borders, indicates that the jihadist organization wishes to replace Israel. Moreover the monotonous rhetoric of Jew hatred espoused by Hamas—which is Islamic, and specifically Koranic, in origin—is seamlessly interwoven with Hamas’ unabashed desire to wage global jihad.
Almost 12-years ago, David Littman made this plaintive warning:
It will be hard enough to strive for the creation of stable, democratic states in the Middle East even without widespread conspiracy theories and the Hamas genocidal charter – a charter denounced neither by Muslim spiritual and political leaders nor by the United Nations…if Hamas refuses to scrap its genocidal charter and renounce the ideology of jihad-war – there can be no possibility of serious progress toward a Middle East peace, with two states coexisting side by side.
Littman’s nearly quarter century of appeals and admonitions having gone entirely unheeded, the global community must now grapple with the bloodthirsty, Jew-annihilationist aspirations of an unreformed Hamas. Israel’s continuing Operation Protective Edge is an eminently just and reasonable response to the unconscionable menace posed by a Hamas the rest of the world, ignores, appeases, or abets.
Notes
* Koran 9:111 provides an unequivocal, celebratory invocation of martyrdom during jihad:
Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain.
And Muhammad himself celebrated jihad martyrdom as the supreme act of Islamic devotion in the most important canonical hadith collection [Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Numbers 53 and 54]:
Narrated Anas bin Malik: The Prophet said, “Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah’s Cause).”
Narrated Abu Huraira: “The Prophet said, ‘By Him in Whose Hands my life is! Were it not for some men amongst the believers who dislike to be left behind me and whom I cannot provide with means of conveyance, I would certainly never remain behind any Sariya’ (army-unit) setting out in Allah’s Cause. By Him in Whose Hands my life is! I would love to be martyred in Allah’s Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.”
Imbuing such tactics with supreme “holiness,” Muhammad became the ultimate prototype sanctioning jihad terror, as recorded in this canonical hadith:
(Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220): Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy).”
** According to Islam’s seminal early historian, al-Tabari (d. 923), during Abu Bakr’s reign as Caliph (i.e., immediately after Muhammad’s death), his commander Khalid b. al-Walid’s wrote a letter in 634 to a Persian leader in Iraq identified as “Hurmuz,” warning of a prototypical expansionist jihad campaign, spearheaded by Muslim warriors enamored of death.
Now then. Embrace Islam so that you may be safe, or else make a treaty of protection for yourself and your people, for I have brought you a people who love death as you love life [emphasis added].
“Martyrdom operations” have always been intimately associated with the institution of jihad. Professor Franz Rosenthal, in a magisterial 1946 essay (titled, “On Suicide in Islam”), observed that Islam’s foundational texts sanctioned such acts of jihad martyrdom and held them in the highest esteem:
…death as the result of “suicidal” missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since [such] death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts.
we are a people that yearn for death, just as our enemies yearn for life. We yearn for martyrdom for the same goal for which our leaders died
More ominously, Haniya’s speech alluded to Hamas’ now well-established massive network of underground infiltration tunnels:
From below ground and above ground, you, the Occupiers, will be dismissed. You have no place in the land of Palestine.
Currently, as Israel’s Operation Protective Edge continues, necessitated by Hamas’ latest round of unprovoked missile barrages targeting civilian population centers, the Israeli counter-attack is appropriately focused on an aggressive campaign against the tunnels. Monday, 7/21/14, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) thwarted a jihad terror assault after two groups of Hamas terrorists (about ten in number) infiltrated from Gaza to Israel through a tunnel, ostensibly on their way to conduct a mass casualty attack at Kibbutz Erez and/or Kibbutz Nir Am. Earlier, IDF forces halted several other attempted attacks by Hamas near Kibbutz Sufa and Kibbutz Nirim which also utilized attack tunnels. Dozens of tunnels in Gaza, adjacent to Israel’s border, have been uncovered, and destroyed. Reaching lengths of up to 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles), some of these tunnels penetrate deep into Israeli territory.
Hamas Prime Minister Haniya’s explicit March 23, 2014 reference to jihad terrorism waged “from below ground,” unmasked what Israeli President Shimon Peres observed with regard to the recently thwarted attack on Kibbutz Sufa: a planned campaign by Hamas to inflict wholesale, deliberate slaughter of Israeli non-combatants.
Notwithstanding over a quarter century of morally bereft wishful ignorance, and deliberate obfuscation, the enduring motivations for Hamas’ genocidal wishes—and accompanying actions—vis-à-vis Jews, were laid out unambiguously in its August 18, 1988 covenant. Moreover, within 6-months of the publication of Hamas’ foundational covenant, the late historian David Littman waged a unique, heroic personal campaign—in public, at the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), beginning January, 1989 (see “Human Rights and Human Wrongs,”
World Union for Progressive Judaism, Geneva, 1989, N° 6, p. 3, statement by David G. Littman, E/CN.4/1989/SR.2)—to elucidate key aspects of the jihad terror organization’s genocidal ideology.
Addressing the UNHRC January 31, 1989, less 6-months after the Hamas covenant was made public, Littman warned that the document was,
a blatant blueprint for genocide, undoubtedly inspired by its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. I have with me a copy of the Arabic text and an English translation. Its aims are clearly defined in article 8, under the title, “Slogan”: “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of wishes.” Article 13 declares: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.” And article 28 does not beat about the bush: “Israel, Judaism, and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’”
Twenty-five years ago, Littman observed then, as now, how Hamas was “operating mainly in Gaza—but also in the West Bank—in collaboration with PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] groups.” David Littman concluded by excoriating alleged “peacemakers,” whose delusions about Hamas’ openly professed ideology are still wreaking calamitous consequences, repeated by their equally witless policymaking successors today.
These realities cannot be brushed aside simply because they are embarrassing, but should rather serve as a serious warning to the gullible for whom an appeasing, misguiding, “peace in our time,” will-o’-the-wisp remains a constant obsession.
In subsequent presentations on the Hamas covenant, Littman demonstrated, unapologetically, how its annihilationist hatred was sanctioned by Islam’s primary, canonical texts. He also reminded us why it is so critical to focus on Hamas’ odious covenant as a binding documentary record of the organization’s specific beliefs and goals:”
Hitler understood this when he wrote in the preface to Mein Kampf: “the basic elements of a doctrine must be set down in permanent form in order that it may be represented in the same way and in unity.” [Hitler, Preface to Mein Kampf (Reynal and Hitchcock translation)]. After his release from an Israeli prison and return to Gaza in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual head of Hamas, declared that Israel must “disappear from the map.” He added: “We have an aim and an enemy, and we shall continue our jihad against the enemy. A nation without a jihad is a nation without a purpose.”
The following discussion is indebted to David Littman’s prescient analyses (summarized here, and here), supplementing and updating his original insights.
Hamas cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2008 explained that the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews, “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times.” These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah.
And Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement of the document. [Here is the Arberry translation of 3:112: “Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God's anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God's signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors”]
In classical and modern Koranic exegeses by seminal, authoritative Islamic theologians (for details, see here) this central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322), “He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘…curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’”.
Salah al-Khalidi (fl. late 20th century) makes plain how these motifs of Koranic Jew-hatred are interpreted by Hamas in a manner that is entirely consistent with classical exegeses. Extracts (translated from the original Arabic by Dr. Michael Schub in my The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism) are provided below from Khalidi’s major work Haqa’iq Koraniyya al Qadiyya al-Filastinniya [“Koranic Facts Regarding the Palestinian Issue”] which was first published in 1991 by the Hamas Publishing House Manshūrāt Filastin al-Muslima, and translated into Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Russian, and English (formerly available online at www.assabeel.com) due to its international popularity.
Humiliation is attached to the Jews for their entire lifetime: they were humiliated in Egypt, and when they arrived in [sic] Palestine, and when they were exiled from Palestine, and when they dispersed into the valleys of the earth. What concerns us here-in our discussion of the Jewish character-is to indicate that this humiliation is to be considered as an inveterate Jewish character trait, and a destructive Jewish perversion. Humiliation is one of their historical attributes, a fixed fact of their existence, and a qaa`ida, basis of their life… (Koran 2:61) The Jews are humiliated because they disbelieved in God, killed His prophets, disobeyed His emissaries, transgressed His prohibitions-all of this is humiliation. They are humiliated-and this is why they search out lustful indulgences, and have become their slaves. All of this is humiliation.
It is impossible that the Jews could not be cursed. How could they not be accursed when they are attributed with such degenerate inveterate character traits, twenty of which we have demonstrated above. (Note: Khalidi earlier states, ‘We have extracted from Koran twenty Jewish traits. The Jews are: liars, perverters (of the Text), envious, tricky, fickle, mercurial, sardonic, treacherous, in error, causing others to be in error, merchants, fools, humiliated, dastards, misers, avid for (this) life, disloyal to their firm contracts, rush into sinful aggression, concealers of true evidence, corrupters in the earth, and obstructors in God’s path.’ For specific Koranic citations confirming his litany see here). They are worthy of eternal curse because of the villainous traits they display and the corrupt evils they have perpetrated.
The Jews are in a condition of mal`ana, i.e. everyone pours out curses on them; God has cursed them, the angels have cursed them, their prophets have cursed them, the good people among them have cursed them, and everyone has cursed them. They are deserving of this eternal and continual damnation until the day of resurrection when they will encounter God’s wrath, fury, and punishment. They were accordingly exiled from God’s mercy, and kept afar from His goodness.
Many Koranic verses were revealed emphasizing…the judgment upon them of cursed damnation, and exile from His mercy, e.g. Koran 5:13: “For breaking their covenant, We curse them, and have made their hearts hard.” And Koran 5:60…And Koran 5:64…And Koran 5:78…”
The annihilationist sentiments regarding Jews, as expressed by Hamas cleric al-Zarad, are also rooted in Islamic eschatology [end of times theology], and incorporated permanently into the foundational 1988 Hamas Covenant. As characterized in the hadith (the words, deeds, and even unspoken gestures of Muhammad as ostensibly recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions), Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl—the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ—or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered- everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews:
…the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)
Littman cites an April 12, 2002, Friday sermon delivered by the Palestinian Authority’s Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi at the Sheikh Ijlin Mosque in Gaza City, broadcast live on Palestinian Authority television demonstrating how the destruction of Israel’s Jews heralds further Islamic conquests.
Madhi quoted from this hadith—including the curious reference to the “Jewish” Gharqad tree—and then stated: “We believe in this hadith. We are convinced also that this hadith heralds the spread of Islam and its rule over all the lands… ‘from the ocean to the ocean…’”
This Judeo-centric Sunni eschatology resonates broadly, with an authoritative imprimatur, across Islamdom, in the modern era, and even within the Muslim diaspora. For example, Hajj Amin El-Husseini—“Godfather” of the modern Palestinian Muslim jihadist movement—concluded his compendious 1937 discourse on Islam’s canonical Jew-hatred by reproducing the hadith (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177; Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985) about how the destruction of the Jews is requisite for ushering in the messianic times. The current Palestinian Authority Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein repeated this canonical tradition during a January 9, 2012 sermon. Subsequently, during a May 10, 2013 sermon at Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University, and its mosque, Muhammad Al-Mahdi, a senior scholar and head of the Sharia association at Al-Azhar also proclaimed the same end of times Jew-annihilating hadith. Finally, apropos to their longstanding Islamic relevance, Ibn Kathir’s 14th century commentary on Koran 4:155-159, which discusses Isa’s (the Muslim Jesus’) role in defeating the Dajjal (the Muslim “anti-Christ”), and his Jewish minions, invokes these same apocalyptic canonical hadith of Jew annihilation.
Returning to the Hamas covenant, Article 28, which is free of any eschatological references, clearly “widens the circle of hate” towards Jews, as Littman observed, targeting all contemporary Jews: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’”
Articles 22 and 32 invoke modern conspiratorial themes reminiscent of European (secular) antisemitic motifs, especially the latter (article 32), which makes explicit mention of the Czarist Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But even these articles are peppered with Koranic citations, including references in both 22 and 32 to Koran 5:64, a sort of ancient antecedent of The Protocols. (Arberry translation, Koran 5:64: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption.“)
Jihad is the other pillar of Hamas’ foundational Jew-annihilationist ideology featured in the 1988 Covenant. Once again, this is already suggested in the opening statement before the preamble which includes the following quote by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: “Israel will exist, and will continue to exist, until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished that which was before it.” Hamas, it should be noted, claims to be a wing of the International Muslim Brotherhood. Article 2 of the Hamas Charter, for example, states: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a universal organisation which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times.”
But the body of the Hamas Covenant includes unequivocal statements of Hamas’ irredentist commitment to the annihilation of Israel via jihad. Jihad martyrdom is lauded in article 8 “the Hamas slogan,” (in fact borrowed from the 1928 Charter of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood), which states, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” Article 13 makes plain that Hamas’ jihadism is completely incompatible with any meaningful Middle East peace settlement:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that…There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavors.
And article 15 (subtitled, “Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty”) elucidates classical jihadist theory, as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad:
The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jewish occupation of Palestine, it is necessary to raise the banner of jihad. This requires the propagation of Islamic consciousness among the masses, locally [in Palestine], in the Arab world and in the Islamic world. It is necessary to instill the spirit of jihad in the nation, engage the enemies and join the ranks of the jihad fighters. The indoctrination campaign must involve ulama, educators, teachers and information and media experts, as well as all intellectuals, especially the young people and the sheikhs of Islamic movements…
It is necessary to establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue, and that it must be dealt with as such, for [Palestine] contains Islamic holy places, [namely] the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is inseparably connected, for as long as heaven and earth shall endure, to the holy mosque of Mecca through the Prophet’s nocturnal journey [from the mosque of Mecca to the Al-Aqsa mosque] and through his ascension to heaven thence. “Being stationed on the frontier for the sake of Allah for one day is better than this [entire] world and everything in it; and the place taken up in paradise by the [horseman's] whip of any one of you [jihad fighters] is better than this [entire] world and everything in it. Every evening [operation] and morning [operation] performed by Muslims for the sake of Allah is better than this [entire] world and everything in it.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja). “By the name of Him who holds Muhammad’s soul in His hand, I wish to launch an attack for the sake of Allah and be killed and attack again and be killed and attack again and be killed.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim)
Unfortunately, Hamas’ views on the jihad against Israel, and Islamic Jew-hatred, are entirely concordant with those of the most authoritative religious educational institution within Sunni Islam-Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt. Consider two complementary fatwas, one written January 5, 1956, by then grand mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma’moun, and another January 9, 1956, signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar University—Sunni Islam’s Vatican—and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. These rulings elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine—modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza—having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), “fay territory”—booty or spoils—to be governed eternally by Islamic law.
Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory. [As] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants. . . . Jihad . . . to restore the country to its people . . . is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim… Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Although free of eschatological references, the January 1956 Al Azhar fatwas’ language and arguments—pronounced from Sunni Islam’s most esteemed religious teaching institution—are otherwise indistinguishable from those employed just over three decades later by Hamas (in its 1988 covenant), revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred. Furthermore, espousing these ugly Islamic religious teachings at Al-Azhar has continued unabated over the intervening six nearly decades, till now. Al-Azhar’s two most recent spiritual leaders, Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (who held that position from 1996-2010), and his successor, current Grand Imam, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, have reinforced this ignoble tradition of promoting jihadism and Islamic Jew-hatred directed at Israel, and Jews, generally.
During an interview with Al-Tayeb, which aired on Channel 1, Egyptian TV, October 25, 2013, the Al-Azhar Grand Imam gave a brief explanation of the ongoing relevance of the Koranic verse 5:82 (sura, or chapter 5, verse 82) which has been invoked—“successfully”—to inspire Muslim hatred of Jews since the advent of Islam:
A verse in the Koran explains the Muslims’ relations with the Jews and the polytheists. The second part of the verse describes the Muslims’ relations with the Christians, and the third part of the verse explains why the Christians are the closest and most friendly to the Muslims. This is an historical perspective, which has not changed to this day. See how we suffer today from global Zionism and Judaism, whereas our peaceful coexistence with the Christians has withstood the test of history. Since the inception of Islam 1,400 years ago, we have been suffering from Jewish and Zionist interference in Muslim affairs. This is a cause of great distress for the Muslims. The Koran said it and history has proven it: “You shall find the strongest among men in enmity to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.” This is the first part. The second part is: “You shall find the closest in love to the believers to be those who say: ‘We are Christians’.” The third part explains why the Christians are “the closest in love to the believers,” while the Jews and the polytheists are the exact opposite.
Grand Imam Al-Tayaeb’s assessment is upheld by a continuum of authoritative Koranic exegeses that span over a thousand years. The classical Koranic commentaries on Koran 5:82 by al-Tabari (d. 923), Zamakashari (d. 1143), Baydawi (d. 1316), and Ibn Kathir demonstrate a uniformity of opinion regarding the animus of the Jews toward the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61 (i.e., for killing prophets, and transgressing against the will of Allah, repeated at verses including 2:90-91, 3:112, 3:181, and 4:155). Maulana Muhammad Shafi (1898-1976), a former grand mufti of India (prior to the August, 1947 partition), was the author of Maariful Qur’an, which remains the best-known Koranic commentary in Urdu. He also wrote more than three hundred books, and in addition to these literary works, broadcasted his Koranic commentary on Radio Pakistan for a number of years. Mufti Shafi’s modern gloss on Koran 5:82 in Maariful Qur’an confirms its classical exegesis, noting that the vast preponderance of Jews felt an unremitting malice toward the Muslims, and a lust for the “material pleasures of mortal life”—the rare exceptions to this rule (for example, Abdullah ibn Salam), became Muslims!
Current Al-Azhar Grand Imam al-Tayeb’s invocation of Koranic Jew-hatred (especially, 5:82) represents a modern historical continuum from Hajj Amin el-Husseini, and more directly his immediate predecessor, the late Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi—Grand Imam of Al-Azhar from 1996, till his death in March, 2010. My extensive and fully representative extracts in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism from Tantawi’s magnum opus—an utterly vile 700 pp. tract glorifying Islam’s incomparable output of doctrinal Jew-hatred from its core texts, i.e. the Koran, most important Koranic commentaries, and Sunna (i.e., alleged “traditions” of Islam’s prophet Muhammad and the nascent Muslim community)—is irrefragable proof of his convictions. Here an extract that bears repeating:
the Jews always remain maleficent deniers….they should desist from their negative denial…some Jews went way overboard in their denying hostility, so gentle persuasion can do no good with them, so use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil. One may go so far as to ban their religion, their persons, their wealth, and their villages.
Tantawi also wrote these words in his 700 page treatise—originally, his Al-Azhar University Ph.D. thesis—rationalizing Muslim Jew-hatred:
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.
In the spring of 2002, both Tantawi (then Grand Imam) and Tayeb (then Al-Azhar Mufti) both extolled Palestinian jihadist homicide bombing “martyrdom operations” against Israeli Jews—including civilian non-combatants—as reported by an Al-Azhar affiliated Arabic website.
The great Imam of Al Azhar Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, demanded that the Palestinian people, of all factions, intensify the martyrdom operations [i.e. homicide attacks] against the Zionist enemy, and described the martyrdom operations as the highest form of Jihad operations. He says that the young people executing them have sold Allah the most precious thing of all. [Sheikh Tantawi] emphasized that every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat…
[Al Tayeb declared that] the solution to the Israeli terror lies in a proliferation of Fidai [martyrdom] attacks that strike horror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah. The Islamic countries, peoples and rulers alike, must support these martyrdom attacks.
I won’t dignify the repellant, egregiously counterfactual “Final Communique” of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—Sharia supremacist avatar of the Islamintern, and largest voting block in the U.N.—which purports to examine the ongoing Hamas-instigated conflagration in Gaza and Israel, by extracting its contents.
This Orwellian statement, “Final Communique Expanded Extraordinary Meeting Of The Executive Committee At A Foreign Ministers Level On The Grave Situation In The Occupied State Of Palestine Including Al-Quds Al- Sharif,” issued July 10, 2014, can be read in its entirety here.
Prior to re-casting itself as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, when it was dubbed the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the OIC’s intentions vis-à-vis Israel were pellucid: this ecumenical bloc of Sharia-supremacist states sought the jihad destruction of Israel.
That remains the OIC’s goal, a jihad, as the 1981 formulation of this genocidal intent proclaimed, “that all Islamic States must wage, each according to its means”.
Extracted from my 2008, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (p. 55) are two candid expressions of the OIC’s self-proclaimed mission of “liberation”—i.e., genocide, 22-years apart from 1981, and 2003, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and Putrajaya, Malaysia.
From the Mecca Islamic Summit Conference, 1981:
The undertaking by all Islamic countries of psychological mobilization through their various official, semi-official, and popular mass media, of their people for Jihad to liberate Al-Quds. . . . Ensuring military coordination among the front-line statesand the Palestine Liberation Organization, on the one hand, and the Islamic States on the other, to ensure full utilization of the potentialities of the Islamic States in the service of the military effort; and setting up a military office in the Islamic Secretariat to be responsible for such coordination, in agreement with the Committee on Al-Quds. . . .
Resolution No.2/3.P (IS) on the Cause of Palestine and the Middle East: Considering that the Liberation of Al-Quds and its restoration to Arab sovereignty, as well as the liberation of the holy places from Zionist occupation, are a pre-requisite to the Jihad that all Islamic States must wage, each according to its means. . . .
Resolution No.5/3-P (IS)—Declaration of Holy Jihad: Taking these facts into consideration, the Kings, Emirs, and Presidents of Islamic States, meeting at this Conference and in this holy land, studied this situation and concluded that it could no longer be tolerated that the forthcoming stage should be devoted to effective action to vindicate right and deter wrong-doing; and have unanimously.
Decided: To declare holy Jihad, as the duty of every Muslim, man or woman, ordained by the Shariah and glorious traditions of Islam; To call upon all Muslims, living inside or outside Islamiccountries, to discharge this duty by contributing each according to his capacity in the case of Allah Almighty, Islamic brotherhood, and righteousness; To specify that Islamic states, in declaring Holy Jihad to save Al-Quds al-Sharif, in support of the Palestinian people, and to secure withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, wish to explain to the world that Holy Jihad is an Islamic concept which may not be misinterpreted or misconstrued, and that the practical measures to put into effect would be in accordance with that concept and by incessant consultations among Islamic states.
From the 2003 Putrajaya Islamic Summit speech by former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammad:
To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand. . . on Palestine. . . . We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships. . . . We may want to re-create the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.
Finally, Hamas also reflects the triumph of contemporary jihadist movements that openly avow their desire to re-establish a Caliphate, and submit the world to Islamic rule—all in accord with classical jihad doctrine, and popular Muslim sentiment. While voluminous additional evidence could be adduced in support of this premise, three particularly salient illustrations are provided below.
Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita was interviewed July 13, 2008 on Al-Aqsa TV. After reminding listeners that the Koran’s opening prayer itself (the Fatiha, at 1:7), which pious Muslims repeat five times daily, declares that the Jews are “those who incur Allah’s wrath,” (re-affirming the standard Islamic exegeses, across a millennium), he declared:
The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God.
Three months earlier Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, had made these more elaborate remarks during a speech which aired on Palestinian Al-Aqsa TV April 11, 2008:
Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs [i.e., Jews, Koran 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166, and other foundational Muslim texts] in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs [Rome] will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe. I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our Jihad…
Most importantly, alarming recent polling data indicate that these traditionalist Islamic views—espoused across a continuum of 75 years by el-Husseini, Al Azhar University, and Hamas—resonate with the Palestinian Muslim population. American pollster Stanley Greenberg performed what was described as an “intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” As reported in July, 2011 these data revealed that seventy-three percent of Palestinian Muslims agreed with the dictates of the apocalyptic hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985; included in both el-Husseini’s 1937 declaration, and the 1988 Hamas Covenant) calling for the annihilation of the Jews, to bring on the messianic age. Eighty percent supported the destruction of Israel by jihad, and the need to recruit the entire global Muslim community, or “umma” in this quintessential Islamic cause.
All these words, and the concrete actions they engender—via both political means, and jihad terrorism—debunk widely accepted tropes that Hamas is merely a nationalist movement, albeit religious, desiring a “Palestinian homeland” in the territories of Gaza (which it already possesses), Judea, and Samaria. Hamas’ blatantly annihilationist rhetoric towards Jews and Israel within the 1949 armistice borders, indicates that the jihadist organization wishes to replace Israel. Moreover the monotonous rhetoric of Jew hatred espoused by Hamas—which is Islamic, and specifically Koranic, in origin—is seamlessly interwoven with Hamas’ unabashed desire to wage global jihad.
Almost 12-years ago, David Littman made this plaintive warning:
It will be hard enough to strive for the creation of stable, democratic states in the Middle East even without widespread conspiracy theories and the Hamas genocidal charter – a charter denounced neither by Muslim spiritual and political leaders nor by the United Nations…if Hamas refuses to scrap its genocidal charter and renounce the ideology of jihad-war – there can be no possibility of serious progress toward a Middle East peace, with two states coexisting side by side.
Littman’s nearly quarter century of appeals and admonitions having gone entirely unheeded, the global community must now grapple with the bloodthirsty, Jew-annihilationist aspirations of an unreformed Hamas. Israel’s continuing Operation Protective Edge is an eminently just and reasonable response to the unconscionable menace posed by a Hamas the rest of the world, ignores, appeases, or abets.
Notes
* Koran 9:111 provides an unequivocal, celebratory invocation of martyrdom during jihad:
Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain.
And Muhammad himself celebrated jihad martyrdom as the supreme act of Islamic devotion in the most important canonical hadith collection [Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Numbers 53 and 54]:
Narrated Anas bin Malik: The Prophet said, “Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah’s Cause).”
Narrated Abu Huraira: “The Prophet said, ‘By Him in Whose Hands my life is! Were it not for some men amongst the believers who dislike to be left behind me and whom I cannot provide with means of conveyance, I would certainly never remain behind any Sariya’ (army-unit) setting out in Allah’s Cause. By Him in Whose Hands my life is! I would love to be martyred in Allah’s Cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.”
Imbuing such tactics with supreme “holiness,” Muhammad became the ultimate prototype sanctioning jihad terror, as recorded in this canonical hadith:
(Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220): Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy).”
** According to Islam’s seminal early historian, al-Tabari (d. 923), during Abu Bakr’s reign as Caliph (i.e., immediately after Muhammad’s death), his commander Khalid b. al-Walid’s wrote a letter in 634 to a Persian leader in Iraq identified as “Hurmuz,” warning of a prototypical expansionist jihad campaign, spearheaded by Muslim warriors enamored of death.
Now then. Embrace Islam so that you may be safe, or else make a treaty of protection for yourself and your people, for I have brought you a people who love death as you love life [emphasis added].
“Martyrdom operations” have always been intimately associated with the institution of jihad. Professor Franz Rosenthal, in a magisterial 1946 essay (titled, “On Suicide in Islam”), observed that Islam’s foundational texts sanctioned such acts of jihad martyrdom and held them in the highest esteem:
…death as the result of “suicidal” missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since [such] death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts.
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