Hamas Founder Quotes

Political Islam has served as a vehicle for resistance as well as collaboration in different eras of Palestinian history, notably in the form of the grassroots combination of Islamic revival and nationalism espoused by the charismatic Shaykh ‘Iz al-Din al-Qassam, whose “martyrdom” in 1935 can be said to have inspired the revolt of 1936–39. The same can be said of the more recent Islamic Jihad movement, an offshoot of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its founders were disgusted with the Brotherhood’s quietism and passivity toward—and, some even alleged, collaboration with—the Israeli occupation. Their attacks on Israeli military personnel in 1986 and 1987 helped spark the first Palestinian popular uprising, or intifada, which broke out in December 1987 and helped provoke the transformation of the major part of the Muslim Brotherhood organization into Hamas. Hamas itself has played a major part in the resistance to Israel, although some of the tactics that both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have pioneered in the Palestinian arena, particularly suicide attacks on civilians inside Israel, have been both morally indefensible and disastrously counterproductive strategically.

Years later, the FBI issued a letter in April 2009 to the US House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security and said that it suspended contact with CAIR because of evidence introduced during the Holy Land Foundation trial, demonstrating that CAIR and its founders were part of a group set up by the Muslim Brotherhood to support Hamas.

Sons of Islam everywhere, the jihad is a duty—to establish the rule of Allah on earth and to liberate your countries and yourselves from America’s domination and its Zionist allies. It is your battle—either victory or martyrdom.” ​—Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas