Palestine Muslim Quotes

Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in recent decades. Why is religion such a potent source of violence? There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us–them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If you really believe that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism, or politics.

I tell my story as well to let the Israeli people know that there is hope. If I, the son of a terrorist organization dedicated to the extinction of Israel, can reach a point where I not only learned to love the Jewish people but risked my life for them, there is a light of hope.

It is simplistic and naive to explain jihadism merely as an inevitable growth from Islam’s ‘violent’ scripture, or as no more than a miscarried interpretation triggered solely by some tragic misreading. It cannot be separated from economic discontent, the enveloping context of US global power, America’s influence and military actions in the Muslim world and, most of all, the gaping sore of the Israel–Palestine conflict.

Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians) and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade.

The British census of Palestine in 1922 recorded 84,000 Jews and 670,000 Arabs, of whom 71,000 were Christian, most of the remainder being Muslim.

Had Jews merely wanted to live in Palestine, this would not have been a problem. In fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians had coexisted for centuries throughout the Middle East. But Zionists sought sovereignty over a land where other people lived. Their ambitions required not only the dispossession and removal of Palestinians in 1948 but also their forced exile, juridical erasure and denial that they ever existed. So, during Israel’s establishment, some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for a Jewish majority state…. This is why Palestinians have been resisting for more than seven decades: They are fighting to remain on their lands with dignity. They have valiantly resisted their colonial erasure…. This resistance is not about returning to the 1947 borders or some notion of the past, but about laying claim to a better future in which Palestinians and their children can live in freedom and equality, rather than being subjugated as second-class citizens or worse.5

I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy and impotence in the face of Netanyahu's consistent double-dealing is even more culpable.) The Islamist fanatics have their own agenda, and, as in the case of Hamas and its Iranian backers, they have already demonstrated that nothing but the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region will possibly satisfy them. No, it is more the case that justice—and a homeland for the Palestinians—is a good and necessary cause in its own right. It is also a special legal and moral responsibility of the United States, which has several times declared a dual-statehood outcome to be its objective.

The religion/ politics dichotomy is a false one. It isn't that politics has no role; it's that politics is simply inseparable from the Abrahamic religions. Religion is politics. That was the case during the Barbary confrontation in 1786, and it's the case with the Israel-Palestine conflict now. Throughout history, religion has simply been an excuse looking for a conflict.

For the Arabs, and the above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine, the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed a monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of a crime they had not committed. With few exceptions, the Jewish people had dwelt in relative security among the Arabs over the centuries. The golden age of the Diaspora had come in the Spain of the caliphs, and the Ottoman Turks had welcomed the Jews when the doors of much of Europe were closed to them. The ghastly chain of crimes perpetrated on the Jewish people culminating in the crematoriums of Germany had been inflicted on them by the Christian nations of Europe, not those of the Islamic East, and it was on those nations, not theirs, the Arabs maintained, that the burden of those sins should fall. Beyond that, seven hundred years of continuous occupation seemed to the Arabs a far more valid claim to the land than the Jews' historic ties, however deep.

Incompatible religious doctrines have Balkanised our world and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians) and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade.

On behalf of those you killed, imprisoned, tortured, you are not welcome, Erdogan! No, Erdogan, you’re not welcome in Algeria. We are a country which has already paid its price of blood and tears to those who wanted to impose their caliphate on us, those who put their ideas before our bodies, those who took our children hostage and who attempted to kill our hopes for a better future. The notorious family that claims to act in the name of the God and religion—you’re a member of it—you fund it, you support it, you desire to become its international leader. Islamism is your livelihood Islamism, which is your livelihood, is our misfortune. We will not forget about it, and you are a reminder of it today. You offer your shadow and your wings to those who work to make our country kneel down before your “Sublime Door.” You embody and represent what we loathe. You hate freedom, the free spirit. But you love parades. You use religion for business. You dream of a caliphate and hope to return to our lands. But you do it behind the closed doors, by supporting Islamist parties, by offering gifts through your companies, by infiltrating the life of the community, by controlling the mosques. These are the old methods of your “Muslim Brothers” in this country, who used to show us God’s Heaven with one hand while digging our graves with the other. No, Mr. Erdogan, you are not a man of help; you do not fight for freedom or principles; you do not defend the right of peoples to self-determination. You know only how to subject the Kurds to the fires of death; you know only how to subject your opponents to your dictatorship. You cry with the victims in the Middle East, yet sign contracts with their executioners. You do not dream of a dignified future for us, but of a caliphate for yourself. We are aware of your institutionalized persecution, your list of Turks to track down, your sinister prisons filled with the innocent, your dictatorial justice palaces, your insolence and boastful nature. You do not dream of a humanity that shares common values and principles, but are interested only in the remaking of the Ottoman Empire and its bloodthirsty warlords. Islam, for you, is a footstool; God is a business sign; modernity is an enemy; Palestine is a showcase; and local Islamists are your stunned courtesans. Humanity will not remember you with good deeds Humanity will remember you for your machinations, your secret coups d’état, and your manhunts. History will remember you for your bombings, your vengeful wars, and your inability to engage in constructive dialogue with others. The UN vote for Al-Quds is only an instrument in your service. Let us laugh at this with the Palestinians. We know that the Palestinian issue is your political capital, as it is for many others. You know well how to make a political fortune by exploiting others’ emotions. In Algeria, we suffered, and still suffer, from those who pretend to be God and act as takers and givers of life. They applaud your coming, but not us. You are the idol of Algerian Islamists and Populists, those who are unable to imagine a political structure beyond a caliphate for Muslim-majority societies. We aspire to become a country of freedom and dignity. This is not your ambition, nor your virtue. You are an illusion You have made beautiful Turkey an open prison and a bazaar for your business and loved ones. I hope that this beautiful nation rises above your ambitions. I hope that justice will be restored and flourish there once again, at least for those who have been imprisoned, tortured, bombed, and killed. You are an illusion, Erdogan—you know it and we know it. You play on the history of our humiliation, on our emotions, on our beliefs, and introduce yourself as a savior. However, you are a gravedigger, both for your own country and for your neighbors. Turkey is a political miracle, but it owes you nothing. The best thing you can do

The truth is the truth, in this context, the Muslim of the world will never be able to liberate the occupied territories as like Palestine and Kashmir until they first liberate their lands from the traitors in uniform, and dictators, who rule as the enemies of own people of the Muslim world.

According to a well-known hieroglyphic inscription, the tribes of Israel were a significant, established presence in Canaan no later than 1212 BC. There is a vast body of archaeological evidence that demonstrates the ancient Israelite/Jewish presence in Israel/Judea as far back as 925 BC.18 This historical presence is verified in the ancient records of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim empires. The Arab conquest did not occur until AD 638. An exercise in elementary arithmetic reveals that the Jewish people were there eighteen and one-half centuries before the arrival of the Arabs. Despite being conquered many times, the Jewish people have had a constant, uninterrupted presence in the land of Israel for over thirty centuries. The Arabs and Islam have been there less than fourteen centuries. It has conveniently been forgotten that the Jews and Christians were there first. Furthermore, in the thirty centuries preceding the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, there have been only two periods when there was an independent, internationally recognized state in the area that now comprises Israel. Both of them were Jewish states. Even when this land was part of the Arab empire (AD 638 through AD 1099), there was never an independent Arab state in ‘Palestine,’ by that name or any other. No wonder the Arabs are donating millions of dollars to U.S. colleges for Middle Eastern schools of study. They have a lot of hard historical evidence to rewrite in the young minds of students.

TAKE THE ROOM-TEMPERATURE op-ed article that you have read lately, or may be reading now, or will scan in the future. Cast your eye down as far as the sentence that tells you there will be no terminus to Muslim discontent until there has been a solution to the problem of Palestine. Take any writing implement that comes to hand, strike out the word “Palestine,” and insert “Kashmir.” Then spend as much time as you can afford in elucidating the subject. And then . .

Religion is the most powerful entity on earth. A phenomenon that has conscripted millions to give or sacrifice their lives without so much as a minuscule query about their chosen beliefs or particular ideology. And today thousands of years on despite the huge advent, discovery and the advance of science forensic or otherwise, millions are still prepared and equipped to fall or kill in the name of their God, their Holy Scriptures, their messengers, their prophets and their faith’.

If there is ill will toward the United States in many Middle Eastern countries, it is a mistake to try to explain it by reference to Islamic doctrine, to the alleged propensity of Muslims for violence, or to the supposed centrality of the concept of jihad to Islam. One need look no further than the corrupt and autocratic regimes propped up by the United States all over the Middle East, and at American policies regarding Palestine, Iraq, and other issues that are highly unpopular in the region.

White/Western feminism's attempt at erasing the political context of Palestinian women's oppression was evident yet again around the 2017 Women's March on Washington, when liberal feminists objected to the leadership of Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, and the newly minted "Zionesses" complained of "antisemitism" because Palestinian women's circumstances were on the platform, as part of a broader discussion of US President Donald Trump's Muslim ban and the overall Islamophobia he pandered to.

If Israel is to survive as a nation state, not a pariah, it will have to get Palestine off its back; otherwise, the prognosis for the two is mutual annihilation. There is no other alternative but to end the occupation, with a complete separation of the two states. For too long, Israel has depended on cheap Palestinian labour to build the very settlements they hate. What is created by this bizarre interaction of profitability and hate is two dysfunctional societies that have put a gun to each other’s heads.

When Libya fought against the Italian occupation, all the Arabs supported the Libyan mujahideen. We Arabs never occupied any country. Well, we occupied Andalusia unjustly, and they drove us out, but since then, we Arabs have not occupied any country. It is our countries that are occupied. Palestine is occupied, Iraq is occupied, and as for the UAE islands... It is not in the best interest of the Arabs for hostility to develop between them and Iran, Turkey, or any of these nations. By no means is it in our interest to turn Iran against us. If there really is a problem, we should decide here to refer this issue to the international court of Justice. This is the proper venue for the resolution of such problems. We should decide to refer the issue of the disputed UAE islands to the International Court of Justice, and we should accept whatever it rules. One time you say this is occupied Arab land, and then you say... This is not clear, and it causes confusion. 80% of the people of the Gulf are Iranians. The ruling families are Arab, but the rest are Iranian. The entire people is Iranian. This is a mess. Iran cannot be avoided. Iran is a Muslim neighbour, and it is not in our interes to become enemies. What is the reason for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, and for killing of one million Iraqis? Let our American friends answer this question: Why Iraq? What is the reason? Is Bin Laden an Iraqi? No he is not. Were those who attacked New York Iraqis? No, they were not. were those who attacked the Pentagon Iraqis? No, they were not. Were there WMDs in Iraq? No, there were not. Even if iraq did have WMDs - Pakistan and India have nuclear bombs, and so do China, Russia, Britain, France and America. Should all these countries be destroyed? Fine, let's destroy all the countries that have WMDs. Along comes a foreign power, occupies an Arab country, and hangs its president, and we all sit on the sidelines, laughing. Why didn't they investigate the hanging of Saddam Hussein? How can a POW be hanged - a president of an Arab country and a member of the Arab League no less! I'm not talking about the policies of Saddam Hussein, or the disagreements we had with him. We all had poitlical disagreements with him and we have such disagreements among ourselves here. We share nothing, beyond this hall. Why won't there be an investigation into the killing of Saddam Hussein? An entire Arab leadership was executed by hanging, yet we sit on the sidelines. Why? Any one of you might be next. Yes. America fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Khomeini. He was their friend. Cheney was a friend of Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary at the time Iraq was destroyed, was a close friend of Saddam Hussein. Ultimately, they sold him out and hanged him. You are friends of America - let's say that ''we'' are, not ''you'' - but one of these days, America may hang us. Brother 'Amr Musa has an idea which he is enthusiastic. He mentioned it in his report. He says that the Arabs have the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and that there should be an Arab nuclear program. The Arabs have this right. They even have the right to have the right to have a nuclear program for other... But Allah prevails... But who are those Arabs whom you say should have united nuclear program? We are the enemies of one another, I'm sad to say. We all hate one another, we deceive one another, we gloat at the misfortune of one another, and we conspire against one another. Our intelligence agencies conspire against one another, instead of defending us against the enemy. We are the enemies of one another, and an Arab's enemy is another Arab's friend.

Religious intolerance is an idea that found its earliest expression in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew tribe depicts itself waging a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian peoples to steal their land. They justified this heinous behavior on the grounds that people not chosen by their god were wicked and therefore did not deserve to live or keep their land. In effect, the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian peoples, eradicating their race with the Jew's own Final Solution, was the direct result of a policy of religious superiority and divine right. Joshua 6-11 tells the sad tale, and one needs only read it and consider the point of view of the Palestinians who were simply defending their wives and children and the homes they had built and the fields they had labored for. The actions of the Hebrews can easily be compared with the American genocide of its native peoples - or even, ironically, the Nazi Holocaust. With the radical advent of Christianity, this self-righteous intolerance was borrowed from the Jews, and a new twist was added. The conversion of infidels by any means possible became the newfound calling card of religious fervor, and this new experiment in human culture spread like wildfire. By its very nature, how could it not have? Islam followed suit, conquering half the world in brutal warfare and, much like its Christian counterpart, it developed a new and convenient survival characteristic: the destruction of all images and practices attributed to other religions. Muslims destroyed millions of statues and paintings in India and Africa, and forced conversion under pain of death (or by more subtle tricks: like taxing only non-Muslims), while the Catholic Church busily burned books along with pagans, shattering statues and defacing or destroying pagan art - or converting it to Christian use. Laws against pagan practices and heretics were in full force throughrout Europe by the sixth century, and as long as those laws were in place it was impossible for anyone to refuse the tenets of Christianity and expect to keep their property or their life. Similar persecution and harassment continues in Islamic countries even to this day, officially and unofficially.

If we justify practically our claim that the establishment of a Jewish national home will bring benefit to its non-Jewish residents as well, we will find among most of the Muslim effendis, including most of their leaders, an element that will oppose the path of violence and hostility and will resign from the Muslim-Christian Associations. It will not be difficult to break the Muslim-Christian alliance, but it cannot be done by direct and open action in that direction. A frontal attack will only strengthen that unity. The only way is to win the hearts of the Muslim members one by one, by granting a part of the economic benefits they expect from the establishment of a Jewish national home. After purchasing the effendis, most of the population of Palestine, which will in the future as in the past continue to be led by this caste, will also come over to our side 4

The area occupied by the Christians in Syria and Palestine, called Outremer because of its location beyond the Mediterranean Sea, was a thin coastal strip extending from Armenia in the north to the borders of the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt in the south. By 1109, the Christian territory was divided into four large states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, extending from Gaza to Beirut; the County of Tripoli, from Beirut to Margat; the Principality of Antioch, from Margat to Alexandria; and the County of Edessa, which stretched northeast all the way to present-day Urfa. These Latin states were governed by noble courts in much the same way as their counterparts in Europe. They were often rocked by dynastic disputes, which, together with the scarcity of available troops and the latent threat of Muslim attack, put the security of the Christian population in a constant state of uncertainty.

It was also opposed by a Tory. Curzon reminded his colleagues that the British Empire was ‘the greatest Mahometan power on earth’, and was dismayed at the effect the Declaration would have on those hundreds of millions of Muslim subjects of the Crown. He presciently asked how it was proposed ‘to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and introduce the Jews in their place’, and he foresaw that the Arabs would not be happy ‘either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water’. As to the Jews themselves, Curzon told Montagu, ‘I cannot conceive a worse bondage to which to relegate an advanced and intellectual community than to exile in Palestine.’ Churchill was also conscious of the many ‘Mahometan’ subjects of the empire, but disdainful of them, and he was completely indifferent to the wishes or interests of the Palestinian Arabs.

There was justice, ultimately, he said, but it would not necessarily arrive in this life. Allah would provide it in the Hereafter. In Islamic politic circles, rather too much can be made of it, he said, and that hurt Muslims. " Think of Palestine," he suggested. "We have no doubt that there has been wrongdoing against the Palestinians by the Jews. But one has to really think about helping what is a very weak community. The way to help is not to bring justice." "No?" "No. If you insist on justice, then the weak community becomes weaker, because those in power won't give it. They will just hate them more." "But what can Muslims do without seeking justice?" I asked. Compromise, said the Sheikh. That will bring peace, which in turn will give a battered community the time and space to heal. "Weak people, if they don't admit they are weak, it's going to destroy them more and more," he noted. "Some people say, 'When we make peace, we accept injustice.' I'm saying, when we make peace, we buy time." The Quran, he reminded me, says "Peace is better.

In this first decade of the twentieth century, a large proportion of the Jews living in Palestine were still culturally quite similar to and lived reasonably comfortably alongside city-dwelling Muslims and Christians. They were mostly ultra-Orthodox and non-Zionist, mizrahi (eastern) or Sephardic (descendants of Jews expelled from Spain), urbanites of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin who often spoke Arabic or Turkish, even if only as a second or third language. In spite of marked religious distinctions between them and their neighbors, they were not foreigners, nor were they Europeans or settlers: they were, saw themselves, and were seen as Jews who were part of the indigenous Muslim-majority society.6 Moreover, some young European Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Palestine at this time, including such ardent Zionists as David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (one became prime minister and the other the president of Israel), initially sought a measure of integration into the local society. Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi even took Ottoman nationality, studied in Istanbul, and learned Arabic and Turkish.

First, the biblical descriptions regarding the coming of Jesus the Jewish Messiah bear many striking resemblances to the coming Antichrist of Islam, whom Muslims refer to as the al-maseeh al-dajjaal (the counterfeit Messiah). Second, the Bible’s Antichrist bears numerous striking commonalities with the primary messiah figure of Islam, who Muslims call the Mahdi. In other words, our Messiah is their antichrist and our Antichrist is their messiah. Even more shocking to many readers was the revelation that Islam teaches that when Jesus returns, He will come back as a Muslim prophet whose primary mission will be to abolish Christianity. It’s difficult for any Bible believer to read of these things without becoming acutely aware of the satanic origins of the Islamic religion. In 2008, I also had the opportunity to coauthor another book on the same subject with Walid Shoebat, a former operative for the Palestine Liberation Organization. This book, entitled God’s War on Terror, is an almost encyclopedic discussion of the role of Islam in the last days, as well as a chronicle of Walid’s journey from a young Palestinian Muslim with a deep hatred for the Jews, to a Christian man who spends his life standing with the Jewish people and proclaiming the truth concerning the dangers of radical Islam. Together these two books have become the cornerstone of what has developed into a popular eschatological revolution. Today, I receive a steady stream of e-mails and reports from individuals expressing how much these books have affected them and transformed their understanding of the end-times. Students, pastors, and even reputable scholars have expressed that they have abandoned the popular notion that the Antichrist, his empire, and his religion will emerge out of Europe or a revived Roman Empire. Instead they have come to recognize the simple fact that the Bible emphatically and repeatedly points us to the Middle East as the launchpad and epicenter of the emerging empire of the Antichrist and his religion. Many testify that although they have been students of Bible prophecy for many years, never before had anything made so much sense, or the prophecies of the Bible become so clear. And even more important, some have even written to share that they’ve become believers or recommitted their lives to Jesus as a result of reading these books. Hallelujah!

If elimination of the native population is not a likely outcome in Palestine, then what of dismantling the supremacy of the colonizer in order to make possible a true reconciliation? The advantage that Israel has enjoyed in continuing its project rests on the fact that the basically colonial nature of the encounter in Palestine has not been visible to most Americans and many Europeans. Israel appears to them to be a normal, natural nation-state like any other, faced by the irrational hostility of intransigent and often anti-Semitic Muslims (which is how Palestinians, even the Christians among them, are seen by many). The propagation of this image is one of the greatest achievements of Zionism and is vital to its survival. As Edward Said put it, Zionism triumphed in part because it “won the political battle for Palestine in the international world in which ideas, representation, rhetoric and images were at issue.”5 This is still largely true today. Dismantling this fallacy and making the true nature of the conflict evident is a necessary step if Palestinians and Israelis are to transition to a postcolonial future in which one people does not use external support to oppress and supplant the other.

Prisons are racism incarnate. As Michelle Alexander points out, they constitute the new Jim Crow. But also much more, as the lynchpins of the prison-industrial complex, they represent the increasing profitability of punishment. They represent the increasingly global strategy of dealing with populations of people of color and immigrant populations from the countries of the Global South as surplus populations, as disposable populations. Put them all in a vast garbage bin, add some sophisticated electronic technology to control them, and let them languish there. And in the meantime, create the ideological illusion that the surrounding society is safer and more free because the dangerous Black people and Latinos, and the Native Americans, and the dangerous Asians and the dangerous White people, and of course the dangerous Muslims, are locked up! And in the meantime, corporations profit and poor communities suffer! Public education suffers! Public education suffers because it is not profitable according to corporate measures. Public health care suffers. If punishment can be profitable, then certainly health care should be profitable, too. This is absolutely outrageous! It is outrageous. It is also outrageous that the state of Israel uses the carceral technologies developed in relation to US prisons not only to control the more than eight thousand Palestinian political prisoners in Israel but also to control the broader Palestinian population. These carceral technologies, for example, the separation wall, which reminds us of the US-Mexico border wall, and other carceral technologies are the material constructs of Israeli apartheid. G4S, the organization, the corporation G4S, which profits from the incarceration and the torturing of Palestinian prisoners, has a subsidiary called G4S Secure Solutions, which was formerly known as Wackenhut. And just recently a subsidiary of that just have one more page of notes corporation, GEO Group, which is a private prison company, attempted to claim naming rights at Florida Atlantic University by donating something like $6 million, right? And, the students rose up. They said that our football stadium will not bear the name of a private prison corporation! And the students won. The students won; the name came down from the marquee.

Muhammad’s violent end years and final violent words were quickly followed by those who succeeded him in power, after his death in 632 AD.          “Within thirty years after Muhammad’s death Islam achieved the most spectacular expansion in its history. During the caliphate of Muhammad’s immediate successors from 632 to 661, Islam conquered the whole Arabian peninsula and invaded territories which had been in Greco-Roman hands since the reign of Alexander the Great….Damascus fell in 635. Jerusalem was captured in 638. In the same year Antioch fell, and the other great Hellenistic capital, Alexandria, became a permanent Arab possession in 646. Coastal cities in Syria, Palestine and Egypt, as well as the island of Cyprus were successively occupied by Arabs in a short period of time…The rapid advance of Islam spread panic and consternation among the Christians in the Greek Near East…The Arabic wars against the Greeks were not only political and economic wars, but holy wars of Islam against Christianity.” (“Greek Christian and Other Accounts of the Muslim Conquests of the Near East,” Demetrios Constantelos, article in The Legacy of Jihad, Prometheus Books, 2005, Edited by Andrew Bostom, MD).

Hamas is for Muslims who favor Jihad. ...Hamas aims for every inch of Palestine. ...No part of it should be given up. ...Hamas is opposed to initiatives, peaceful solutions and international conferences. Jihad is the only solution.

Accordingly, the Hamas Charter calls the existence of the state of Israel on the land that was formerly held by Muslims a “Zionist invasion.”163 It therefore pledges to wage “jihad in the face of the oppressors, in order to deliver the land and the believers from their filth, impurity, and evil”164 in order to “[return the homeland to its rightful owner] and “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine”165 no matter how long it takes.166 Hamas does not want “peace” with Israel, and it will not negotiate a permanent peace agreement with Israel. Instead, it will only agree to intermittent “truces” when its military capabilities have been so degraded that it needs time to recuperate and rearm.

This use of the war on terror as a broad designation of the project of 21st-century western democracy has served as a justification of anti-Muslim racism; it has further legitimised the Israeli occupation of Palestine; it has redefined the repression of immigrants; and has indirectly led to the militarisation of local police departments throughout the country.

To understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, we need to look into the past in more detail. For Israelis, this past starts many thousands of years ago, back in the days of Moses and Noah and David and Solomon. But more importantly, it branches out to include the history of Europe in the mid-20th century and the rise of global anti-Semitism. For Palestinians, the relevant history is more recent, contained in the years and generations since the British Mandate of Palestine. And yet nowadays, both sides seem to overlook one significant detail: Jews and Muslims once coexisted. It was not always peaceful coexistence, or even coexistence free from discrimination, but coexistence it was.

In a predictable Catch-22 situation, the more Jews moved into Palestine from Europe, the more the tide started turning against the Arab Jews who had been living across the Middle East too, despite the fact that these people were traditionally something of a protected minority in Muslim states. Arab nationalism, fuelled by a new anti-Western outlook, spurred the xenophobic violence that caused many Arab Jews to flee their ancient homes and head for the hills of Palestine. For those Jews, gone were the days of barbecued fish on the banks of the Tigris, of watching belly dancers with other Arab friends, as fascist propaganda loaded with anti-imperialist sentiments hit the receptive ears of Muslim and Christian leaders across the Arab world. In 1941, the Farhoud massacre in Bagdad killed around 170 Jewish Arabs, and it wasn’t an isolated event.

The non-Jewish Arab population of mandate Palestine, initially twice the size of the Yishuv, supported by Muslims throughout the Middle East, strongly resisted the Jewish intrusion into what they perceived as their nation.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood denounced the UN decision, called for volunteers for Palestine and contributions, and announced that "it is a ... battle either for life or death to a nation of 70 million souls ... whom the vilest, the most corrupt, tricky and destructive people wish to conquer and displace. " 198

the New Atheists echo the neo-conservative myth that “the roots of Muslim rage” are rooted in Islamic culture itself, rather than political issues such as Western imperialism, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, colonial legacy racism, and the oppression forced upon them by U.S. backed autocratic despots.

The truth is the truth; in this context, the Muslim of the world will never be able to liberate the occupied territories as like Palestine and Kashmir until they first liberate their lands from the traitors in uniform, and dictators, who rule as the enemies of own people of the Muslim world.

The Arab people are second to none in regretting the woes which have been inflicted on the Jews of Europe by Europeans. But the question of these Jews should not be confused with Zionism, for there can be no greater injustice than solving the problems of the Jews of Europe by committing another injustice on us, the Palestinian Arabs. The Europeans should not solve their own problems by creating problems for other people.” During the hearings, four UNSCOP members went to Haifa just as the Exodus was being towed into port by British ships. They watched as British soldiers used rifle butts, hose pipes, and tear gas on the death camp survivors. These people were then locked up in cages and shipped out of Palestine. The four UNSCOP members returned to Jerusalem pale with shock. Ultimately, UNCSOP recommended the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. On November 29, 1947, all of Palestine—Arab and Jew—gathered around their radios to listen to the General Assembly of the United Nations vote on the UNSCOP proposal for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. If it passed, the Jews would finally have their state. If it failed, the Jews would be forced to live in a single state of Palestine as a minority dominated by the Arabs. The outcome of the vote was very much in doubt. The entire Muslim world opposed partition. Moreover, a two-thirds majority was required for the motion to pass. Behind the scenes, however, American diplomats worked hard to push it through. In the end, the tally was thirty-three in favor, thirteen opposed, and ten abstentions. The motion carried.

The conflict between Arabs and Jews had been an open sore on the region for almost a century, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British, who were then occupying Palestine, committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in a region overwhelmingly populated by Arabs. Over the next twenty or so years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine and organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements. In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body. Zionist leaders embraced the plan, but Arab Palestinians, as well as surrounding Arab nations that were also just emerging from colonial rule, strenuously objected. As Britain withdrew, the two sides quickly fell into war. And with Jewish militias claiming victory in 1948, the State of Israel was officially born.

This critical distinction between Palestine as a country and Palestinian nationality should also be kept in mind when reflecting on the fact that some historians of modern Palestinian nationalism have overlooked the links between land and country (and Palestine-based territorial consciousness) which was evident in the works of Palestinian Muslim scholars and writers such al-Maqdisi (Shams al-Din Abi ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Muqaddasi, ) (1866, 1994, 2002), Mujir al-Din al-‘Ulaymi (c. 1495), Khair al-Din al-Ramli (1585–1671) and Salih ibn Ahmad al-Tumurtashi in the 10th‒17th centuries and the reimagining of Palestine in modern Palestinian territorial nationalism.

Because the Arabic-Muslim accounts of the Prophet and early Islamic history are based on later materials, some scholars reasoned that the only way to know the true history is to use non-Muslim sources. One result was an account of the origin of Islam as a messianic Jewish sect in Palestine and North Arabia that much later was redefined as a new religion. In general, however, this effort has failed, because the non-Muslim sources are themselves fragmentary, poorly informed, and prejudiced.

Palestine (the Muslims) squaring off in this epic battle of the ages. Ironically, many Muslims despise ‘Jews,’ not realizing that they are, themselves, ‘Hebrews’ if they truly believe their own Quran. The three Pentateuch-reading religions—Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—are referred to as the ‘Abrahamic’ religions. What separates the three is, the ‘denial’ of Christ being our ‘Lord and Savior’—the ancient mechanism of antichrist. If you will remember, this was one of the central requirements for partaking in the ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’ : ‘the denial of the existence of God.’ Most readers never catch on to any of these scriptural nuances, (‘tweaks’) and head to their respective temples every week simply to play church.

Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter.

...the War on Terror is in fact a war against Islam. After all, this was never conceived of as a war against terror per se. If it were, it would have included the Basque separatists in Spain, the Christian insurgency in East Timor, the Hindu/Marxist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoist rebels in eastern India, the Jewish Kach and Kahane underground in Israel, the Irish Republican Army, the Sikh separatists in the Punjab, the Marxist Mujahadin-e khalq, the Kurdish PKK, and so on. Rather, this is a war against a particular brand of terrorism: that employed exclusively by Islamic entities, which is why the enemy in this ideological conflict gradually and systematically expanded to include not just the persons who attacked America on September 11, 2001, and the organisations that supported them, but also an ever-widening conspiracy of disparate groups such as Hamas in Palestine, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the clerical regime in Iran, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Chechen rebels, the Kashmiri militants, the Taliban, and any other organisation that declares itself Muslim and employs terrorism as a tactic.

Article 11 of the Hamas Covenant states: Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgment Day. . . . The same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgment. . . . Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia . . . is null and void.63 All Muslims are considered brothers; thus the fight is intensely personal. This is why Muslims of all nations are enraged over Palestine. They see Israel as an invader. The Quran refers to Muhammad’s journey to “the Farthest Mosque,” which Muslims believe is referring to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and states that Allah blessed its “precincts”; Muslims have interpreted this to mean that Allah set apart Palestine as holy.64 As long as Israel and other Western powers remain in Palestine and the Middle East, they cause a continual shame on the entire Muslim world.65

Starting with the First Crusade in 1096, thousands of soldiers were sent to the Holy Land by the church to reclaim Jerusalem. At first they were successful; the crusading armies managed to establish a Christian-ruled kingdom in Muslim Palestine. However, ultimately the crusades were futile, culminating with the fiasco of the Fourth Crusade (1204), during which the European armies sacked Constantinople (Byzantium). By the late 1200s the region had reverted to uniform Muslim rule.

Then there were those who were thrilling to Senator Sanders, who believed that Bernie would be the one to give them free college, to solve climate change, and even to bring peace to the Middle East, though that was not an issue most people associated with him. On a trip to Michigan, I met with a group of young Muslims, most of them college students, for whom this was the first election in which they planned to participate. I was excited that they had come to hear more about HRC's campaign. One young woman, speaking for her peers, said she really wanted to be excited about the first woman president, but she had to support Bernie because she believed he would be more effective at finally brokering a peace treaty in the Middle East. Everyone around her nodded. I asked the group why they doubted Hillary Clinton's ability to do the same. "Well, she has done nothing to help the Palestinians." Taking a deep breath, I asked them if they knew that she was the first U.S. official to ever call the territories "Palestine" in the nineties, that she advocated for Palestinian sovereignty back when no other official would. They did not. I then asked them if they were aware that she brought together the last round of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians? That she personally negotiated a cease-fire to stop the latest war in Gaza when she was secretary of state? They shook their heads. Had they known that she announced $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and $300 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza in her first year at State? They began to steal glances at one another. Did they know that she pushed Israel to invest in the West Bank and announced an education program to make college more affordable for Palestinian students? More head shaking. They simply had no idea. "So," I continued, "respectfully, what is it about Senator Sander's twenty-seven-year record in Congress that suggests to you that the Middle East is a priority for him?" The young woman's response encapsulated some what we were up against. "I don't know," she replied. "I just feel it.

In 1867 a French Jew, Charles Netter, suggested to the Alliance a means to help Jews from Persia and Eastern Europe build new lives as farmers in Ottoman Palestine. With the organisation’s support, he went to Istanbul a year later and met the Grand Vizier of the Imperial State Council. Netter persuaded the Grand Vizier to procure a decree from the Sultan allowing the Alliance to lease land near Jaffa for a Jewish agricultural school. The Governor of Syria, Rashid Pasha, then authorised the purchase of a ninety–nine–year lease on 2,600 dunams (650 acres) of land.14 Netter built a school on this land in 1870, which he named Mikve Israel (‘The Hope of Israel’), serving as both principal and instructor there, and witnessing the beginnings of Jewish agricultural settlement in Ottoman Palestine.15

Churchill was right on both counts. Between 1922 and 1939 more Arabs had entered Palestine than Jews. These were Muslim immigrants, including many illegals, from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Syria–as well as from Transjordan, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.37 These immigrants were drawn to Palestine by its opportunities for work and its growing prosperity–opportunities and prosperity often created by the Jews there. In 1948 many of these Arab immigrants were to be included in the statistics of ‘Palestinian’ Arab refugees.

Some Nadir Jews took refuge a hundred miles northwest of Medina in the oasis of Khaibar, where a mainly Jewish community lived. Others continued northward for a further five hundred miles, travelling as far as Palestine–their Holy Land and the ancestral home from which they had come more than 1,600 years earlier.

another Muslim woman took office alongside her. Rashida Tlaib, representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, was the other first Muslim woman in Congress. Rashida boasted yet another first: She was first in her family to graduate from high school. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, a single mother of two boys, and the oldest of fourteen children, Rashida had blasted through other people’s expectations of what it meant to be a Palestinian American woman. And at every step, she was taking all of her heritage with her, proudly representing Michigan and Palestine. At her congressional swearing-in ceremony, Rashida wore a floor-length, long-sleeved black and red thobe, the quintessentially Palestinian dress, which is typically hand-embroidered by women from Palestinian villages. The stitching and styles vary across Palestine, but thobes with lavish designs are worn to mark special occasions, such as puberty, motherhood, and now entry of a Palestinian American woman into the United States Congress. Rashida posted a close-up of her thobe on Instagram.

The conflict between Arabs and Jews had been an open sore on the region for almost a century, dating back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British, who were then occupying Palestine, committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in a region overwhelmingly populated by Arabs. Over the next twenty or so years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine and organized highly trained armed forces to defend their settlements. In 1947, in the wake of World War II and in the shadow of the Holocaust’s unspeakable crimes, the United Nations approved a partition plan to establish two sovereign states, one Jewish, the other Arab, with Jerusalem—a city considered holy by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike—to be governed by an international body.

Meanwhile, Facebook censors Palestinian groups so often that they have created their own hashtag, #FBCensorsPalestine. That the groups have become prominent matters little: in 2016, Facebook blocked accounts belonging to editors at the Quds News Network and Shehab News Agency in the West Bank; it later apologized and restored the accounts.30 The following year, it did the same to the official account of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.31 A year after Facebook’s relationship with the Israelis was formalized, the Guardian released a set of leaked documents exposing the ways the company’s moderation policy discriminates against Palestinians and other groups. Published in a series called “The Facebook Files,” the documents contained slides from manuals used to train content moderators. On the whole, the leaks paint a picture of a disjointed and disorganized company where the community standards are expanded piecemeal, and little attention is given to their consequences. Anna, the former Facebook operations specialist I spoke with, agrees: “There’s no ownership of processes from beginning to end.” One set of documents demonstrate with precision the imbalance on the platform between Palestinians and Israelis (and the supporters of both). In a slide deck entitled “Credible Violence: Abuse Standards,” one slide lists global and local “vulnerable” groups; alongside “foreigners” and “homeless people” is “Zionists.”32 Interestingly, while Zionists are protected as a special category, “migrants,” as ProPublica has reported, are only “quasi-protected” and “Black children” aren’t protected at all.33 In trying to understand how such a decision came about, I reached out to numerous contacts, but only one spoke about it on the record. Maria, who worked in community operations until 2017, told me that she spoke up against the categorization when it was proposed. “We’d say, ‘Being a Zionist isn’t like being a Hindu or Muslim or white or Black—it’s like being a revolutionary socialist, it’s an ideology,’” she told me. “And now, almost everything related to Palestine is getting deleted.

A newly-released series of video documentaries — The Labour Files — based on material leaked from Britain’s Labour Party revealed how the right-wing within the party mortified the former party leader, the far-left Jeremy Corbyn, costing him his position. The documentary uncovers Israel’s role in orchestrating the departure of Corbyn who had been a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights. Evidence reveals that the Israel Lobby within the Labour Party — supported by other pro-Israel camps in Britain — campaigned against the left-wing Corbyn, accusing him of antisemitism. The right-wing party establishment manipulated these allegations to its own political advantage, which eventually led to the election of the pro-Israel Keir Starmer as party leader in 2020. While the future course of Labour’s left wing is uncertain, one thing is for sure — Israel is an apartheid regime. The Zionist lobby has been using hybrid warfare techniques to procure worldwide legitimacy for Israel’s illegal actions in Palestine. As the Labour Files reveal, Israel has waged a war of fabricating narratives and counter-narratives. In this sort of warfare with limitless bounds, the only positive that can be drawn is that everyone is a soldier. At a time when great powers have given in to the deceptive Israel lobby and no Muslim state is in any position to challenge Israeli advances in Palestine using conventional methods, we need to focus on building our capacity to effectively counter the Zionist narrative. With the right-wing ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, set to return after elections next month, the plight of Palestinians will only exacerbate. It is high time we stopped blatantly labelling one another as ‘Yahoodi Agents’ and started educating ourselves. The least we can do for Palestinians is continue exposing the pro-Israel elements engaged in the widespread dissemination of Zionist propaganda.

I am many things. I don’t fit in any box. I’m Israeli, I’m Palestinian, I’m Arab, I’m Muslim, I’m a woman, a mother, and I am enjoying my life as an Israeli but cannot turn my back on my heritage. Is there a point when we will be able to move on?

Let's pray with me for the freedom of the Muslims of Kashmir and Palestine and peace, security, and brotherhood of Pakistan and the Muslim world. We Muslims should show the world that we are Peace, not Violence.

in the year 1096, European Christians heeded the call of Pope Urban II to liberate Palestine from the hands of the Muslim infidels. On their way to the Holy Land, the Crusaders encountered Rhineland Jewish communities and, without Church warrant, set about to destroy those whom they held responsible for the crime of deicide (the murder of Jesus). A number of Jewish communities (Speyer, Worms, and Mainz) were destroyed, and perhaps as many as thousands of Jews

The BDS on campus operation is organized by, among others, a group in Chicago, Illinois, called American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP. For years, AMP, through its sponsorship of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has been sending strategists, digital and communications experts, graphic designers, video editors, and legal advisors to colleges all over America and running flashy events in expensive hotels for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel, minimizing pro-Israel voices on campus, and harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students in order to deter them from supporting Israel. The embodiment of Cancel Culture. Managing such a sophisticated network of political operatives, extensive marketing, and (pre-COVID) ritzy gatherings at nice hotels is extremely expensive.11 So where is the money coming from? I

The militant Islamists, convinced of the exclusive truth of their vision of Islam, display little tolerance even towards fellow Muslims. Their monolithic vision of Islam does not allow this. Consequently, they do not develop any tools for coping with dissent among the people. Many elements, then, point out that the Islamists’ vision of democracy is quite different from the one developed in Western Europe, even though the same terminology is used.

Again and again, the Islamists stated that the Western intervention [in Iraq] was directed against the Muslim people and not against one political leader [Saddam Hussein] who did wrong. As a proof of this theory, they mentioned that the military and economic boycott, imposed by the "so-called security council", was sufficient to realise the two pretended aims of the US intervention: the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait and the destruction of the Iraqi military power. Ḥamās deplored the undifferentiated bombing of military and civilian targets that proved the "extent of the Western hatred of Islam and the Muslims" (madā ḅaqdihim ‘alā alIslām). This "ideological concept" (tas ṣawwur ‘aqā’ idī) was said to link the West and the Jews more than just economic and security interests. According to Ḥamās, one of the true goals of the Western invasion was the "establishment of the ‘Greater Israel’" as laid down in the texts of the Talmud. The invasion of Iraq should "facilitate Israel to conquer Jordan" (ghazw al-‘urdun).

Important factors included growing Muslim hostility toward Jews as a result of nationalist mobilization, the creation of Israel, rampant poverty, and the ongoing refusal of citizenship by the French as well as negative experiences with the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the war.100 Tension with the Muslim majority population started to grow in Morocco in 1947 against the backdrop of the war in Palestine. Following

The existence of Israel is called by the Qur'ånic term of batil, the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state is viewed as haqq. The dichotomous character of the worldview advanced by the Qur'än is thus applied to the conflict with Israel. But — paradoxically or as a consequence — the fact that Israel is perceived to be based on religious laws, and the efficiency of world Jewry in achieving its religious interests at the same time, inspires profound admiration and serves as a model for a coming Islamic Palestinian state.

Ḥamās sketches out an ideological alternative to the PLO’s new moderate position by defending with religious arguments the uncompromising attitude taken up by the PLO for so long. It rejects the PLO’s secular vision of statehood and opposes it with a nationalist ideology supposedly based on traditional Islam.

The father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, wrote in his seminal 1896 pamphlet, The Jewish State, “There [in Palestine] we shall be a sector of the wall of Europe against Asia, we shall serve as the outpost of civilization against barbarism.”24 Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who led the country between 1999 and 2001, used a metaphor with a similar meaning: Israel is a “villa in the middle of a jungle,” arguing that Israel was a civilized nation among Muslim savages in the Middle East. This language matters because it displays a contempt for non-Jews that is carried into its relations with outsiders. It was common for Jews to be taught at school or in religious education, as I was told at home by my liberal Jewish parents, that Jews are the chosen people and have a unique relationship with God and society. We could and should help others (though there were set limits to this sympathy, namely excluding Palestinians). It is a belief system that allows racial supremacy against non-Jews to thrive and justifies disregard for their lives. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2010, referencing the phrase from verses in the Book of Isaiah, that Israel is “a proud people with a magnificent country and one which always aspires to serve as ‘light unto the nations.

While Israel’s exact role in the Rwandan genocide remains hidden from public view, the Jewish state was happy to support another regime in its ethnic cleansing. Myanmar was credibly accused by the United Nations in 2018 of committing genocide against the Muslim Rohingya minority: the country’s military had used arson, rape, and murder as weapons of war in its brutal campaign. None of this had bothered Israel, and in 2015 a secret delegation from Myanmar visited Israel’s defense industries and naval and air bases to negotiate deals for drones, a mobile phone-hacking system, rifles, military training, and warships.

This use of the war on terror as a broad designation of the project of twenty-first-century Western democracy has served as a justification of anti-Muslim racism; it has further legitimized the Israeli occupation of Palestine; it has redefined the repression of immigrants; and has indirectly led to the militarization of local police departments throughout the country.

Many people in the West who stereotype all Muslims as terrorists don't know about the side of Islam that reflects love and mercy. It cares for the poor, widows, and orphans. It facilitates education and welfare. It unites and strengthens.

Their most notable effort was a series of seven Palestine Arab congresses planned by a country-wide network of Muslim-Christian societies and held from 1919 until 1928. These congresses put forward a consistent series of demands focused on independence for Arab Palestine, rejection of the Balfour Declaration, support for majority rule, and ending unlimited Jewish immigration and land purchases.

Neville Chamberlain’s government issued a White Paper in an attempt to appease outraged Palestinian, Arab, and Indian Muslim opinion. This document called for a severe curtailment of Britain’s commitments to the Zionist movement. It proposed strict limits on Jewish immigration and on land sales (two major Arab demands) and promised representative institutions in five years and self-determination within ten (the most important demands).

Musa ho, isaa ho , ya khatmun-nabi Mohammad Ae aadam, ae Abraham teri aualado ke dil ki gaflate mitaa —Wajid shaikh Be you Moses, Jesus Christ, or Muhammad divine, O Adam, O Abraham, in your grace we entwine, Forgive the hearts of your kin, let your light shine.” —Wajid Shaikh Translation: "Whether you are Moses, Jesus, or the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammad, O Adam, O Abraham, erase the errors of your descendants' hearts." Explanation: This verse appears to be expressing a plea to figures from various religious traditions, such as Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the final Prophet, Muhammad. It suggests a desire for them to help remove the mistakes or sins from the hearts of their descendants. It reflects a universal and spiritual message of seeking guidance, forgiveness, and purity in the context of different religious beliefs.

Ḥamās is a modern political movement involved in a struggle for power, whose oppositional discourse is based on religious references. It is a national organization that is surprisingly pragmatic and clear-sighted in its analysis of international politics. Despite the repetitive use of supposedly fixed concepts, it demonstrates an impressive ideological flexibility.

Important factors included growing Muslim hostility toward Jews as a result of nationalist mobilization, the creation of Israel, rampant poverty, and the ongoing refusal of citizenship by the French as well as negative experiences with the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the war.100 Tension with the Muslim majority population started to grow in Morocco in 1947 against the backdrop of the war in Palestine. Following the June 1948 pogroms in Oudjda and Djérada in eastern Morocco on the border with Algeria, emigration of Jews from Morocco to Israel became a more widespread phenomenon.101 When the French colonial rulers realized that the constant illegal flow of migrants could not be stopped, they allowed for the organized emigration of Jews, giving the Jewish Agency free rein in processing and selecting the migrants. For this purpose, the Jewish Agency–operated Kadima (forward) office was created in April of that year.102 A similar office had operated in Tunis since the second half of 1948, when the French authorities had started tolerating, if initially not fully legalizing, Aliyah.103

The stationing of American and European troops in Saudi-Arabia and the following military fight against the Iraqi army brought the Arab world into their closest contact with the ominous "West" since colonial times. The broad public in most Arab countries sided with Iraq, thus contrasting in the most obvious way with their governments’ positions. For the Islamists in all Arab states, especially those in Palestine, the Gulf-War was a great moment because it seemed to confirm their world view in an impressive manner; and those views were shared in an unprecedented way by the majority of the Arab population. In fact, the reaction of the population often pushed the Islamists to a more open position of support for Saddam Hussein than they had wished to take with regards to their main financiers, the Gulf-states and Saudi-Arabia. Nevertheless, the Western military intervention gave the Islamists the chance to become—for a short time—the leaders of the masses against their "corrupt" governments to an extent which they only had dreamt about until then.

Perhaps one possible explanation for the elevation of Saddam as a Muslim hero is the centrality of the Palestine question in Palestinian Islamism. Whoever seems to defend the Palestinian interests, a core duty for every true Muslim since it goes far beyond a simple territorial dispute, is accepted with open arms.

Perhaps we should reverse the demand. I think it is entirely appropriate for people in the Arab world to demand that those of us in the West prevent our governments from bolstering repressive regimes—and especially Israel. The so-called war on terror has done inestimable damage to the world, including the intensification of anti-Muslim racism in the United States, Europe, and Australia. As progressives in the Global North, we certainly have not acknowledged our major responsibilities in the continuation of military and ideological attacks on people in the Arab world.

The main problem for the Muslims to resolve is the existence of the Jewish state of Israel in the middle of the Arab-Muslim world. It constitutes a constant reminder of the weakness and deep crisis of the Islamic Umma that does not have the strength to get rid of this 'cancer' (saraṭān). The Jewish state is presented by Ḥamās as a purely religious state which is part of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy against the Muslims in particular and the whole world in general. On these grounds, all Muslims have the duty to fight the Jewish enemy.

Ḥamās is convinced that Islam corresponds to the "real nature" of the Palestinians and consequently a solution to the Palestinian problem has to be Islamic and achieved by means based on Islamic beliefs. Together with this conviction goes the call for a democratisation of political life. This call was mainly made in connection with a harsh criticism of the existing Arab regimes, but it also applied to the situation in the Occupied Territories.

Ḥamās preferred the "prolongation of the present situation with all its weaknesses" to joining the US-Zionist arrangement because they believed that the present weakness of the Muslims will be followed by a period of strength—"this is the logic of history.

Hamas was an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Egypt in 1928 with reformist aims, but which turned to violence in the 1940s and 1950s, only to reconcile with the Egyptian regime under Sadat in the 1970s. Hamas was begun in Gaza by militants who felt that the Brotherhood had been too accommodating toward the Israeli occupier in return for lenient treatment. Indeed, in the first two decades of the occupation, when the military authorities severely repressed all other Palestinian political, social, cultural, professional, and academic groups, they had allowed the Brotherhood to operate freely. Because of its utility to the occupation in splitting the Palestinian national movement, Israeli indulgence of the Brotherhood was extended to Hamas, notwithstanding its uncompromising and anti-Semitic program and commitment to violence.8

In his report to the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Ministry), Wolff wrote that Husseini said, “Muslims inside and outside Palestine welcome the new regime in Germany and hope for the spread of fascist, antidemocratic state leadership to other countries.” In his view,” current Jewish influence on economy and politics” was “damaging everywhere and needed to be fought.” In the hope of doing economic damage to the Jews, Husseini opined that “Muslims hope for a boycott of the Jews in Germany because it would then be adopted with enthusiasm in the whole of the Muslim world.” Further, he was willing to spread the boycott message among Muslims traveling through Palestine and to “all Muslims.” He also looked forward to trade with “non-Jewish merchants” dealing in German products.3 Husseini’s remarks on March 1933 demonstrated his early enthusiasm for the Nazi regime based on his ideological support for its antidemocratic and anti-Jewish policies.

From the eighth or ninth centuries, Muslim Arabs have been politically dominant in the Islamic world and have grown accustomed to that position; the notion of sharing power or being a minority in a non-Muslim Arab polity is alien to the Muslim Arab mentality.

The mindset and basic values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of binational statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds.

The Palestinian national movement started life with a vision and goal of a Palestinian Muslim Arab-majority state in all of Palestine—a one-state “solution”—and continues to espouse and aim to establish such a state down to the present day.

Though Hamas’s operations over the years have focused on Israel and the occupied territories, the movement’s ideology has potential universal reach or, as the covenant puts it, “its extent in place is anywhere that there are Muslims who embrace Islam as their way of life everywhere in the globe. This being so, it extends to the depth of the earth and reaches out to the heaven . . . the movement is a universal one”—so Americans and Europeans should not be overly surprised if, at some point, Hamas suicide bombers arrive on their doorstep.

Zionists’ ideology claims that they have the right to take other people’s land, to push them out. And I can’t accept this. No Palestinian can accept this. No human should accept this. It’s not racist to say this—it’s the opposite. We need a country where Jews and Christians and Muslims can live together as equals, with the same human rights and democracy. Zionism rejects this vision, demanding that all of Palestine be a “Jewish” state. And some Western countries sympathize with this because of the Holocaust.

The idea of sharing Palestine (as indeed, the sharing of any Muslim Arab land with non-Muslims and non-Arabs)—either through a division of the country into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab, or through a unitary binational entity, based on political parity between the two communities—is alien to the Muslim Arab mindset.

The idea of a “secular democratic Palestine” is as much a nonstarter today as it was three decades ago. It is a nonstarter primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, like the world’s other Muslim Arab communities, are deeply religious and have no respect for democratic values and no tradition of democratic governance.

The material in this work demonstrates that the Nazi leadership viewed radical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as indispensable points of entry into Arab and Muslim hearts and minds.29 Throughout the war, Nazi Arabic radio repeated the charge that World War II was a Jewish war whose purpose in the region was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine that would expand into and dominate the entire Arab and Muslim world. Moreover, the broadcasts asserted that the Jews in the mid-twentieth century were attempting to destroy Islam just as their ancestors had been attempting to do for thirteen centuries. They claimed that an Allied victory would be a victory for the Jews, whereas an Axis victory would bring liberation from first British and then American and also “Jewish” imperialism

One might speculate that the Islamists’ call for democracy is a tactical manoeuvre because in the current political situation in the Arab-Islamic world free elections might assure them the ascendancy to power. And as easily as it was integrated into their thought it might be rejected again if the political situation changes. This could be true, even though Islamists probably do not see it in these terms. As I have shown in the preceding section on the Intifāḍa, the Islamists genuinely believe that Islam corresponds to the "true nature" of Muslim people. If Muslims stray from their path and adhere to other ideologies, this is only a matter of ignorance and it is hoped that one day this "true nature" will regain the upper hand. The Islamists can thus be very confident and honestly support the idea of free elections.

The Islamists’ view of religious minorities is crucial for the understanding of the principles underlying their ideas about democracy and the state. Ḥamās’ position relies closely on the classical Islamic teaching on this question. There, Jews and Christians—as well as other non-Muslims possessing a scripture—are recognised as "People of the Book". Those residing in territory ruled by Muslims (dār alḅarb) were tolerated religious minorities, called dhimmīs. Dhimma means a contract which the believer agrees to respect and the violation of which makes him liable to blame (dhamm). The security of life and property and an indefinite assurance of protection (amān) are guaranteed by the Muslim state. But as dhimmīs are not true believers, they are not entitled to full membership in the Muslim brotherhood. As a sign of submission to the Islamic state, dhimmīs have to pay a poll tax.

The West is perceived as genuinely hostile towards Islam and the Muslim countries. . . . United in their common aim to harm Islam, they are considered by the Islamists as enemies of the Umma. Any strengthening of Islam represents a victory against the West. Thus every development or event in the Arab world is interpreted as reaction to the West. Furthermore, the Islamists’ attitude towards the West and its institutions is ambiguous in a similar way as their view of the Zionists and the state of Israel, where hatred mixes with admiration.

The vocabulary used to describe the Jews is highly indicative of the Qur’ānic and Western sources from which it is derived. Qur’ānic vocabulary and paraphrases are often blended with pejorative expressions from certain modern Christian anti-Semitic writings rather than from classical Islamic ones. In the Qur’ān, Ḥadīth, Tafsīr and other theoretical literature, the Jews are named as "Ban ū Isrā’īl" and "al-Yahūd", or the names of the Jewish tribes of Medina are mentioned. The Palestinian Islamists use the term "al-Yah ūd" as well as "unbelievers" (kāfirūn). They also use characterisations of the Jews as "the people upon whom God’s anger came" which can be found in many places in the Qur’ ān as well as in the Sūrat al-Fātiḅa and which are generally interpreted as designating the Jews. The Qur’ ānic terms bāṭil and ḅaqq are used to designate the two parties involved in the conflict.

There is no doubt that for the Islamists the "Zionist entity" (al-kiyān alṣ-ahyūnī) — the name "Israel" is used only exceptionally to describe the Jewish state — was founded as a religious state. Religious beliefs based on the Torah shape Zionist thought and determine life in Israel until today. The Islamists find proof of this "fundamental truth" in the slightest detail.

It is interesting to note that the Jews of Israel are presented as people truly following their religious laws and customs and thereby attaining success. In sections on the Israeli state Filastin al-Muslima rarely mentions the classical Qur'ānic view of the Jews as straying from the right godly path and as having distorted and falsified their religion. (It is nonetheless presented in other sections of the journal, as I have already shown). The Islamists seem to exclude voluntarily these aspects of the Qur'ānic teaching in order to convince their own people that only a return to the Islamic religion guarantees success. The mobilising character of the writing overrides theoretical subtleties.

The example of the Jewish state gives detailed indications of how an Islamic Palestinian state should be organised. Israel has no written constitution, but the Ministry of Religious Affairs controls every law issued by the Knesset to ensure its accordance with the Torah. If the state is sometimes too slow or unwilling to implement religious laws and to supervise their observance, truly religious people (al-qubba ‘āt al-sūd or black hats) themselves go into the street and control their fellow citizens. Nusse, Andrea. Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

It is likely that the Islamists are the only ones authorized to define those boundaries of truly Islamic behaviour; Islam is thus narrowed down to their understanding of Islam. They make clear that they won’t accept any "challenge" (ṭa’n) or denouncement (tashhīr) of individuals or the community, because believers never defame nor curse. Individuals are thus denied the right to criticise.

Ḥamās perceives Islam in a defensive position, struggling against a local as well as an international environment that is openly hostile towards Muslims. The Umma has to be protected from threatening developments such as the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The Islamic world is seen to be in a deep crisis. Nevertheless, the Islamists display self-assurance, optimism and belief in the final victory.

I felt sad when I heard the President’s words. I assumed that he believed what he was saying, but if that were true, he was profoundly ignorant of the real thoughts and feelings of people in other parts of the world. If he wanted to hear the truth, he should have listened to Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda, who was well-informed concerning the origins of the kind of fanatical hatred of the U.S. which had led to such treachery. This is his version of events: Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace be upon him. As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.

Seven years after Swirski’s social class explanation of Mizrahim oppression, Ella Shohat, a radical cultural critic, published her essay, “The Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims.”23 After mentioning Swirski’s analysis of the class divisions between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, Shohat discusses the Zionist project as a Eurocentric, Orientalist effort that oppressed its third-world subjects, Palestinians, and Mizrahim alike. Following in the footsteps of Edward Said’s Orientalism,24 Shohat emphasizes the need to consider the negative consequences of Zionism upon Mizrahim, in addition to the Palestinians. “The Zionist denial of the Arab-Muslim and Palestinian East, then, has as its corollary the denial of the Jewish Mizrahim, who like the Palestinians, but by more subtle and less obviously brutal mechanisms, have also been stripped of the right of self representation. Within Israel, and on the stage of world opinion, the hegemonic voice of Israel has almost invariably been that of European Jews, the Ashkenazim, while the Mizrahi voice has been largely muffled or silenced.” Both Edward Said’s book and Shohat’s essay made little impact on the established social sciences in Israel. Additionally, Swirski’s deviation from the cultural-based analysis of mainstream sociology was completely ignored.