Muslim Reformer in Denial

While no one can doubt that the Muslim world needs reform, those who would lead the charge must have clear eyes. I was recently sent the video link to a conference held 3-months ago at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), entitled, "Rescuing Human Rights." During his talk, one of the featured speakers, Dr. Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser, much ballyhooed as a "brave Muslim reformer," opined (at 11:00 to 11:25) that Hamas's openly declared annihilationist jihad against Israel was merely

...a tool for Hamas [and Hamas alone] to create a faith-based conflict...Us versus. them...Collectivist thinking which exploits human rights to oppress its own [ i.e., Palestinian Arab Muslim] people

I found his UCSD statement shocking. Dr. Jasser blithely ignores that Hamas was elected by a landslide vote in Gaza during 2006, and due to its prevailing popularity, would likely dominate any proposed Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation government" for all the Palestinian Muslim enclaves in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

Regardless, last July, 2011, data were released from an analysis by American pollster Stanley Greenberg who 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."

The salient, pathognomonic findings, were as follows:

First, 73% of the Palestinians surveyed agree with the annihilationist dictates of this canonical hadith (the words and deeds of Islam's prophet Muhammad which have a weight often equal to the Koran), quoted in the Hamas Covenant.

As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology -- end of times theology -- 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, or Jerusalem, 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). The hadith-- which ¾ of those surveyed agree should be acted upon -- 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)

Second, 80% agreed with the quoted sentiments expressed in article 15 of the Hamas Covenant (subtitled, "Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is a Personal Duty") which elucidates classical jihadist theory -- including jihad martyrdom (i.e., homicide bombing) operations -- as well as its practical modern application to the destruction of Israel by jihad,  and the need to recruit the entire global Muslim community, or "umma" in this quintessential Islamic cause:

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)

Third, 72% backed denying the thousands of years of Jewish history in Jerusalem.

Fourth, 62% supported kidnapping IDF soldiers and holding them hostage

Fifth, 53% were in favor or teaching songs about hating Jews in Palestinian schools.

Moreover, Dr. Jasser's equivalence at UCSD exculpates the "non-Hamas" Palestinian Muslims, and the rest of the Arab and non-Arab global Muslim umma incited for almost a century by mainstream, institutional Islam to a hydrophobic, annihilationist Islamic Jew-hating fury.  Particularly edifying examples of this incitement were two fatwas produced by Sunni Islam's Vatican, Al-Azhar University, 9-months before the 1956 Sinai war when Israel was a rump state of 1949 armistice borders, and fully 32-years before Hamas was founded in 1988. Issued at the height of so-called secular Arab nationalism, these two complementary fatwas, one written on January 5, 1956, by then grand mufti of Egypt Sheikh Hasan Ma'moun, and another dated January 9, 1956, signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar University and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence, elaborated the following key points, indistinguishable from Hamas's current Weltanschauung (from my forthcoming Sharia Versus Freedom):

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.

At UCSD, Dr. Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser ignored Islam's annihilationist jihad against the Jews, animated by its mainstream conspiratorial Jew hatred. Jasser compounded that offense by pretending Hamas -- still resoundingly popular amongst the masses of Palestinian Muslims who share Hamas's Weltanschauung -- is somehow "denying" the Palestinians, not the Jews they seek to annihilate via jihad in accord with Islam's canonical hadith,  etc. -- their "rights"

Dr. Jasser's UCSD comments were emblematic of a state of denial.