Andrew G Bostom. Israel Affairs. Volume 13, Issue 4, October 2007.
Edward Said’s ridiculous polemic, The Question of Palestine, quotes the following observation by a Dr. A. Carlebach published in Ma’ariv in October 1955: ‘The danger stems from the [Islamic] totalitarian conception of the world… Occupation by force of arms, in their own eyes, in the eyes of Islam, is not at all associated with injustice. To the contrary, it constitutes a certificate and demonstration of authentic ownership.’
Said cites Carlebach with ostensibly self-evident derision. Unwittingly, Said thus reveals his own belligerent obliviousness to Carlebach’s acute perceptions about the ugly realities of jihad war, the resultant imposition of dhimmitude, and their brutal legacy in historical Palestine and the greater Middle East.
As elucidated by Jacques Ellul, the jihad is an institution intrinsic to Islam, and not an isolated event, or series of events: ‘[I]t is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world… The conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the shari’a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change “owners”.’
The essential pattern of the jihad war is captured in the great Muslim historian al-Tabari’s recording of the recommendation given by Umar b. al-Khattab to the commander of the troops he sent to al-Basrah (636 ce), during the conquest of Iraq. Umar reportedly said:
Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it from them, [This is to say, accept their conversion as genuine and refrain from fighting them] but those who refuse must pay the poll tax out of humiliation and lowliness [Qur’an 9:29]. If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what you have been entrusted.
Jihad was pursued century after century, because jihad, which means ‘to strive in the path of Allah’, embodied an ideology and a jurisdiction. Both were formally conceived by Muslim jurisconsults and theologians from the eighth to ninth centuries onward, based on their interpretation of Qur’anic verses and long chapters in the Traditions (i.e., ‘hadith’, acts and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, especially those recorded by al-Bukhari (d. 869) and Muslim (d. 874)).
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), jurist (Maliki), renowned philosopher, historian, and sociologist, summarized these consensus opinions from five centuries of prior Muslim jurisprudence with regard to the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad:
In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force… The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defence … Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.
Indeed, even al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the famous theologian, philosopher, and paragon of mystical Sufism (who, as noted by W. Montgomery Watt, has been ‘acclaimed in both the East and West as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad’), wrote the following about jihad:
one must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year… one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them… If a person of the Ahl al- Kitab [People of The Book-Jews and Christians, typically] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked… One may cut down their trees… One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide… they may steal as much food as they need.
By the time of the classical Muslim historian al-Tabari’s death in 923, jihad wars had expanded the Muslim empire from Portugal to the Indian subcontinent. Subsequent Muslim conquests continued in Asia, as well as Eastern Europe. The Christian kingdoms of Armenia, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Albania, in addition to parts of Poland and Hungary, were also conquered and Islamized. Arab Muslim invaders engaged, additionally, in continuous jihad raids that ravaged and enslaved sub-Saharan African animist populations, extending to the southern Sudan. When the Muslim armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683, over a millennium of jihad had transpired. These tremendous military successes spawned a triumphalist jihad literature. Muslim historians recorded in detail the number of infidels slaughtered, or enslaved and deported, the cities and villages which were pillaged, and the lands, treasure, and movable goods seized. Christian (Coptic, Armenian, Jacobite, Greek, Slav, etc.), as well as Hebrew sources, and even the scant Hindu and Buddhist writings which survived the ravages of the Muslim conquests, independently validate this narrative, and complement the Muslim perspective by providing testimonies of the suffering of the non-Muslim victims of jihad wars.
In TheLaws of Islamic Governance, al-Mawardi (d. 1058), a renowned jurist of Baghdad, examined the regulations pertaining to the lands and infidel (i.e., non-Muslim) populations subjugated by jihad. This is the origin of the system of dhimmitude. The native infidel population had to recognize Islamic ownership of their land, submit to Islamic law, and accept payment of the poll tax (jizya). He notes that ‘The enemy makes a payment in return for peace and reconciliation. ‘Al-Mawardi then distinguishes two cases: (I) Payment is made immediately and is treated like booty, ‘it does, however, not prevent a jihad being carried out against them in the future‘ (II). Payment is made yearly and will ‘constitute an ongoing tribute by which their security is established.‘ Reconciliation and security last as long as the payment is made.If the payment ceases, then the jihad resumes. A treaty of reconciliation may be renewable, but must not exceed ten years.
A remarkable account from 1894 by an Italian Jew travelling in Morocco, demonstrates the humiliating conditions under which the jizya was still being collected in the modern era:
The kaid Uwida and the kadi Mawlay Mustafa had mounted their tent today near the Mellah [Jewish ghetto] gate and had summoned the Jews in order to collect from them the poll tax [jizya] which they are obliged to pay the sultan. They had me summoned also. I first inquired whether those who were European-protected subjects had to pay this tax. Having learned that a great many of them had already paid it, I wished to do likewise. After having remitted the amount of the tax to the two officials, I received from the kadi’s guard two blows in the back of the neck. Addressing the kadi and the kaid, I said ‘Know that I am an Italian protected subject.’ Whereupon the kadi said to his guard: ‘Remove the kerchief covering his head and strike him strongly; he can then go and complain wherever he wants.’ The guards hastily obeyed and struck me once again more violently. This public mistreatment of a European-protected subject demonstrates to all the Arabs that they can, with impunity, mistreat the Jews.
The ‘contract of the jizya‘, or ‘dhimma’ encompassed other compulsory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim ‘dhimmi’ peoples. Collectively, these ‘obligations’ formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims—Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists—subjugated by jihad. Some of the more salient features of dhimmitude include: the prohibition of arms for vanquished non-Muslims (dhimmis), and of church bells; restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches, synagogues, and temples; inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and penal law; the refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts; a requirement that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes; and the overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims. It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or shari’a. Again, the writings of the much lionized Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali highlight how the institution of dhimmitude was simply a normative, and prominent feature of the shari’a:
the dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle… Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non-Muslims]… on offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protuberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]… They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells… their houses may not be higher than the Muslim’s, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddler-work is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths… [dhimmis] must hold their tongue.
The Great Jihad and the Muslim Conquest of Palestine
September 622 ce marks a defining event in Islam—the hijra. Muhammad and a coterie of followers (the Muhajirun), persecuted by fellow Banu Quraysh tribesmen who rejected Muhammad’s authenticity as a divine messenger, fled from Mecca to Yathrib, later known as Al-Medina (Medina). The Muslim sources described Yathrib as having been a Jewish city founded by a Palestinian diaspora population which had survived the revolt against the Romans. Distinct from the nomadic Arab tribes, the Jews of the north Arabian peninsula were highly productive oasis farmers. These Jews were eventually joined by itinerant Arab tribes from southern Arabia who settled adjacent to them and transitioned to a sedentary existence.
Following Muhammad’s arrival, he re-ordered Medinan society, eventually imposing his authority on each tribe. The Jewish tribes were isolated, some were then expelled, and the remainder attacked and exterminated. Muhammad distributed among his followers as ‘booty’ the vanquished Jews’ property—plantations, fields, and houses—and also used this ‘booty’ to establish a well-equipped jihadist cavalry corps. Muhammad’s subsequent interactions with the Christians of northern Arabia followed a similar pattern, noted by Richard Bell. The ‘relationship with the Christians ended as that with the Jews [ended] in war’, because Islam as presented by Muhammad was a divine truth, and unless Christians accepted this formulation, which included Muhammad’s authority, ‘conflict was inevitable, and there could have been no real peace while he [Muhammad] lived’.
Within two years of Muhammad’s death, Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, launched the Great Jihad. The ensuing three decades witnessed Islamdom’s most spectacular expansion, as Muslim armies subdued the entire Arabian peninsula, and conquered territories which had been in Greco-Roman possession since the reign of Alexander the Great.
Gil, in his monumental analysis A History of Palestine, 634-1099, emphasizes the singular centrality that Palestine occupied in the mind of its pre-Islamic Jewish inhabitants, who referred to the land as ‘al-Sham’. Indeed, as Gil observes, the sizable Jewish population in Palestine (who formed a majority of its inhabitants, when grouped with the Samaritans) at the dawn of the Arab Muslim conquest were ‘the direct descendants of the generations of Jews who had lived there since the days of Joshua bin Nun, in other words for some 2000 years’. Jews and Christians speaking Aramaic inhabited the cities and the cultivated inner regions, devoid of any unique ties to the Bedouin of the desert hinterlands, who were regarded as bellicose and threatening, in the writings of both the Church Fathers, and in Talmudic sources.
The following is a summary of the devastating consequences of the Arab Muslim conquest of Palestine during the fourth decade of the seventh century, directed by the first two Caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar b. al-Khattab (notwithstanding Pervez Musharaff’s hagiography of the latter in a recent New York City speech).
The entire Gaza region up to Cesarea was sacked and devastated in the campaign of 634, which included the slaughter of 4000 Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan peasants. Villages in the Negev were also pillaged, and towns such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea, Nablus, and Beth Shean were isolated. In his sermon on the Day of the Epiphany 636, Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, bewailed the destruction of the churches and monasteries, the sacked towns and villages, and the fields laid waste by the invaders. Thousands of people perished in 639, victims of the famine and plague wrought by this wanton destruction. The Muslim historian Baladhuri (d. 892 ce), maintained that 30,000 Samaritans and 20,000 Jews lived in Caesarea alone just prior to the Arab Muslim conquest; afterwards, all evidence of them disappears. Archaeological data confirm the lasting devastation wrought by these initial jihad conquests, particularly the widespread destruction of synagogues and churches from the Byzantine era, whose remnants are still being unearthed. The total number of towns was reduced from fifty-eight to seventeen in the red sand hills and swamps of the western coastal plain (i.e., the Sharon). Massive soil erosion from the western slopes of the Judaean mountains also occurred due to agricultural uprooting during this period. Finally, the papyri of Nessana were completely discontinued after the year 700, reflecting how the Negev also experienced destruction of its agriculture, and the desertion of its villages.
Dhimmitude in Palestine During the Initial Period of Muslim Rule
Extreme persecution, directed specifically at Christians, included executions for refusing to apostatize to Islam during the first two decades of the eighth century, under the reigns of Abd al-Malik, his son Sulayman, and Umar b. Abd al-Aziz. Georgian, Greek, Syriac, and Armenian sources report both prominent individual and group executions (e.g., sixty-three out of seventy Christian pilgrims from Iconium in Asia Minor were executed by the Arab governor of Caesarea, barring seven who apostatized to Islam, and sixty Christian pilgrims from Amorion were crucified in Jerusalem). Under early Abbasid rule (approximately 750-755 ce, perhaps during the reign of Abul Abbas Abdullah al-Saffah) Greek sources report orders demanding the removal of crosses over churches, bans on church services and teaching of the scriptures, the eviction of monks from their monasteries, and excessive taxation. Gil notes that in 772 ce, when Caliph al-Mansur visited Jerusalem, ‘he ordered a special mark should be stamped on the hands of the Christians and the Jews. Many Christians fled to Byzantium’.
Bat Ye’or elucidates the fiscal oppression inherent in eighth century Palestine which devastated the dhimmi Jewish and Christian peasantry: ‘Over-taxed and tortured by the tax collectors, the villagers fled into hiding or emigrated into towns.’ She quotes from a detailed chronicle of an eighth century monk, completed in 774: ‘The men scattered, they became wanderers everywhere; the fields were laid waste, the countryside pillaged; the people went from one land to another.’
The Greek chronicler Theophanes provides a contemporary description of the chaotic events which transpired after the death of the caliph Harun al-Rashid in 809 ce. He describes Palestine as the scene of violence, rape, and murder, from which Christian monks fled to Cyprus and Constantinople.
Perhaps the clearest outward manifestations of the inferiority and humiliation of the dhimmis were the prohibitions regarding their dress codes, and the demands that distinguishing signs be placed on the entrances of dhimmi houses. During the Abbasid caliphates of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) and al-Mutawwakil (847-861), Jews and Christians were required to wear yellow (as patches attached to their garments or hats). Later, to differentiate further between Christians and Jews, the Christians were required to wear blue. In 850, consistent with Qur’anic verses associating them with Satan and Hell, al-Mutawwakil decreed that Jews and Christians attach wooden images of devils to the doors of their homes to distinguish them from the homes of Muslims.
Muslim and non-Muslim sources establish that during the early eleventh century period of al-Hakim’s reign, religious assaults and hostility intensified, for both Jews and Christians. The destruction of the churches at the Holy Sepulchre (1009 ce) was followed by a large scale campaign of church destructions (including the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, and additional churches throughout the Fatimid kingdom), and other brutal acts of oppression against the dhimmi populations, such as forcible conversion to Islam, or expulsion. The discriminatory edicts al-Hakim imposed upon the dhimmis beginning in August 1011 ce, included orders to wear black turbans; a five pound, eighteen-inch cross (for Christians), or five-pound block of wood (for Jews), around their necks; and distinguishing marks in the bathhouses. Ultimately al-Hakim decided that there were to be separate bathhouses for the dhimmis’ use.
During the early-to-mid eleventh century, the Jews, in particular, continued to suffer frequently from both economic and physical oppression, according to Gil.
Muslim Turcoman rule of Palestine for the nearly three decades just prior to the Crusades (1071-1099 ce) was characterized by such unrelenting warfare and devastation that an imminent ‘End of Days’ atmosphere was engendered. A contemporary poem by Solomon ha-Kohen b. Joseph, believed to be a descendant of the Geonim, an illustrious family of Palestinian Jews of priestly descent, speaks of destruction and ruin, the burning of harvests, the razing of plantations, the desecration of cemeteries, and acts of violence, slaughter, and plunder.
The brutal nature of the Crusader’s conquest of Palestine, particularly of the major cities, beginning in 1098-1099 ce, has been copiously documented. However, the devastation wrought by both Crusader conquest and rule (through the last decades of the thirteenth century) cannot reasonably be claimed to have approached, let alone somehow ‘exceeded’, what transpired during the first four and a half centuries of Muslim jihad conquests, endless internecine struggles for Muslim dominance, and imposition of dhimmitude.
Moreover, we cannot ignore the testimony of Isaac b. Samuel of Acre (1270-1350 ce), one of the most outstanding Kabbalists of his time. Conversant with Islamic theology and often using Arabic in his exegesis, Isaac nevertheless believed that it was preferable to live under the yoke of Christendom, rather than that of Islamdom. Acre was taken from the Crusaders by the Mamelukes in 1291 in a very brutal jihad conquest. Accordingly, despite the precept to dwell in the Holy Land, Isaac b. Samuel fled to Italy and thence to Christian Spain, where he wrote:
they [the Muslims] strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in their tongue … ‘it is lawful to take money of the Jews’. For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew. For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, ‘Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael’.
Jihad and Dhimmitude in Pre-modern Eras
Although episodes of violent anarchy diminished during the period of Ottoman suzerainty (beginning in 1516-1517 ce), the degrading conditions of the indigenous Jews and Christians living under shari’a jurisdiction remained unchanged for centuries. For example, Samuel b. Ishaq Uceda, a major Kabbalist from Safed at the end of the sixteenth century, refers in his commentary on The Lamentations of Jeremiah, to the situation of the Jews in the Land of Israel (Palestine):
there is no town in the [Ottoman] empire in which the Jews are subjected to such heavy taxes and dues as in the Land of Israel, and particularly in Jerusalem. Were it not for the funds sent by the communities in Exile, no Jew could survive here on account of the numerous taxes… The [Muslims] humiliate us to such an extent that we are not allowed to walk in the streets. The Jew is obliged to step aside in order to let the Gentile [Muslim] pass first. And if the Jew does not turn aside of his own will, he is forced to do so. This law is particularly enforced in Jerusalem, more so than in other localities.
A century later Canon Antoine Morison, from Bar-le-Duc in France, while travelling in the Levant in 1698, observed that the Jews in Jerusalem are ‘there in misery and under the most cruel and shameful slavery’, and although a large community, they suffered from extortion. Similar contemporary observations regarding the plight of both Palestinian Jews and Christians subjected to the jizya, and other attendant forms of social, economic, and religious discrimination, often brutally imposed, were made by the Polish Jew, Gedaliah of Siemiatyce (d. 1716), who, braving numerous perils, came to Jerusalem in 1700. These appalling conditions, recorded in his book, Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, forced him to return to Europe in order to raise funds for the Jews of Jerusalem.
No Jew or Christian is allowed to ride a horse, but a donkey is permitted, for [in the eyes of Muslims] Christians and Jews are inferior beings… The Muslims do not allow any member of another faith—unless he converts to their religion—entry to the Temple [Mount] area, for they claim that no other religion is sufficiently pure to enter this holy spot.
In the Land of Israel, no member of any other religion besides Islam may wear the colour green, even if it is a thread [of cotton] like that with which we decorate our prayer shawls. If a Muslim perceives it, that could bring trouble.
Moreover, the Muslim law requires that each religious denomination wear its specific garment so that each people may be distinguished from another. This distinction also applies to footwear. Indeed, the Jews wear shoes of a dark blue colour, whereas Christians wear red shoes. No one can use green, for this colour is worn solely by Muslims. The latter are very hostile toward Jews and inflict upon them vexations in the streets of the city… the common folk persecute the Jews, for we are forbidden to defend ourselves against the Turks or the Arabs. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he [the Jew] must appease him but dare not rebuke him, for fear that he may be struck even harder, which they [the Arabs] do without the slightest scruple. This is the way the Oriental Jews react, for they are accustomed to this treatment, whereas the European Jews, who are not yet accustomed to suffer being assaulted by the Arabs, insult them in return.
Even the Christians are subjected to these vexations. If a Jew offends a Muslim, the latter strikes him a brutal blow with his shoe in order to demean him, without anyone’s being able to prevent him from doing it. The Christians fall victim to the same treatment and they suffer as much as the Jews, except that the former are very rich by reason of the subsidies that they receive from abroad, and they use this money to bribe the Arabs. As for the Jews, they do not possess much money with which to oil the palms of the Muslims, and consequently they are subject to much greater suffering.
These prevailing conditions for Jews did not improve in a consistent or substantive manner even after the mid-nineteenth century treaties imposed by the European powers on the weakened Ottoman Empire included provisions for the Tanzimat reforms. First introduced in 1839, these reforms were designed to end the discriminatory laws of dhimmitude for both Jews and Christians living under the Ottoman shari’a. European consuls endeavoured to maintain compliance with at least two cardinal principles central to any meaningful implementation of the reforms: respect for the life and property of non-Muslims; and the right for Christians and Jews to provide evidence in Islamic courts when a Muslim was a party. Unfortunately, these efforts to replace the concept of Muslim superiority over ‘infidels’, with the principle of equal rights, failed. Almost two decades later, British Jerusalem Consul James Finn, reported (8-11 November 1858) that the discriminatory regulations and treacherous conditions for non-Muslims in Palestine had not improved, despite a second iteration of Ottoman ‘reforms’ in 1856:
my Hebrew Dragoman, having a case for judgment in the Makhkameh before the new Kadi… was commanded to stand up humbly and take off his shoes… during the Process, although the thief had previously confessed to the robbery in the presence of Jews, the Kadi would not proceed without the testimony of two Moslems—when the Jewish witnesses were offered, he refused to accept their testimony—and the offensive term adopted toward Jews… (more offensive than Giaour for Christians) was used by the Kadi’s servants.
In continuing to report concerning the apprehensions of Christians from revival of fanaticism on the part of the Mahometans, I have… to state that daily accounts are given to me of insults in the streets offered to Christians and Jews, accompanied by acts of violence… the sufferers are afraid.
Tudor Parfitt’s analysis concluded that these problems persisted through to the close of the nineteenth century:
the courts were biased against the Jews and even when a case was heard in a properly assembled court where dhimmi testimony was admissible the court would still almost invariably rule against the Jews. Inside the towns, Jews and other dhimmis were frequently attacked, wounded, and even killed by local Muslims and Turkish soldiers. Such attacks were frequently for trivial reasons.
During World War I in Palestine, the embattled Young Turk government actually began deporting the Jews of Tel Aviv in the spring of 1917—an ominous parallel to the genocidal deportations of the Armenian dhimmi communities throughout Anatolia. A contemporary Reuter’s press release discussing the deportation stated that,
Eight thousand deportees from Tel Aviv were not allowed to take any provisions with them, and after the expulsion their houses were looted by Bedouin mobs; two Yemenite Jews who tried to oppose the looting were hung at the entrance to Tel Aviv so that all might see, and other Jews were found dead in the Dunes around Tel Aviv.
Ultimately, enforced abrogation of the laws and social practices of dhimmitude required the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, which only occurred during the European Mandate period following World War I. Remarkably soon afterwards, however (i.e., within two years of the abrogation of the shari’a), by 1920, Musa Kazem el-Husseini, former governor of Jaffa during the final years of Ottoman rule, and president of the Arab (primarily Muslim) Palestinian Congress, demanded restoration of the shari’a in a letter to the British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuels:
[Ottoman] Turkey has drafted such laws as suit our customs. This was done relying upon the Shari’a (Religious Law), in force in Arabic territories, that is engraved in the very hearts of the Arabs and has been assimilated in their customs and that has been applied… in the modern [Arab] states…. We therefore ask the British government… that it should respect these laws [i.e., the Shari’a]… that were in force under the Turkish regime.
A strong Arab Muslim irredentist current, which achieved pre-eminence after the 1929 riots, promulgated the forcible restoration of dhimmitude via jihad, culminating in the widespread violence of 1936-1939. Two prominent Muslim personalities, Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and Hajj Amin el-Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, embodied this trend. And both these leaders relied upon the ideology of jihad, with its virulent anti-infidel (i.e., anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and anti-Western) incitement, to garner popular support.
Al-Qassam called for the preservation of the country’s Muslim-Arab character, exclusively, and urged an uncompromising and intensified struggle against the British Mandate and the Jewish National Home in Palestine. Palestine could be freed from the danger of Jewish domination, he believed, not by sporadic protests, demonstrations, or riots which were soon forgotten, but by an organized and methodical armed struggle. In his sermons he often quoted verses from the Qur’an referring to jihad, linking them with topical matters and his own political ideas. Al-Qassam and his devoted followers committed various acts of jihad terror targeting Jewish civilians in northern Palestine from 1931 to 1935. On 20 November 1935, al-Qassam was surrounded by British police in a cave near Jenin, and killed along with three of his henchmen. In the immediate aftermath of his death,
Virtually overnight, Izz al-Din al-Qassam became the object of a full-fledged cult. The bearded Sheikh’s picture appeared in all the Arabic-language papers, accompanied by banner headlines and inflammatory articles; memorial prayers were held in mosques throughout the country. He was proclaimed a martyr who had sacrificed himself for the fatherland, his grave at Balad al-Shaykh became a place of pilgrimage, and his deeds were extolled as an illustrious example to be followed by all. In addition, a countrywide fund-raising campaign was launched in aid of families of the fallen, and leading Arab lawyers volunteered to defend the members of the [surviving] band who were put on trial.
Hajj Amin el-Husseini was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British High Commissioner, in May 1921, a title he retained, following the Ottoman practice, for the remainder of his life. Throughout his public career, the Mufti relied upon traditional Qur’anic anti-Jewish motifs to arouse the Arab street. For example, during the incitement which led to the 1929 Arab revolt in Palestine, he called for combating and slaughtering ‘the Jews’, not merely Zionists. In fact, most of the Jewish victims of the 1929 Arab revolt were Jews from the centuries-old dhimmi communities (for example, in Hebron), as opposed to recent settlers identified with the Zionist movement. With the ascent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the Mufti and his coterie intensified their anti-Semitic activities to secure support from Hitler’s Germany (and later Bosnian Muslims, as well as the overall Arab Muslim world), for a jihad to annihilate the Jews of Palestine. Following his expulsion from Palestine by the British, the Mufti fomented a brutal anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad (1941), concurrent with his failed effort to install a pro-Nazi Iraqi government. Escaping to Europe after this unsuccessful coup attempt, the Mufti spent the remainder of World War II in Germany and Italy. From this sanctuary, he provided active support for the Germans by recruiting Bosnian Muslims, in addition to Muslim minorities from the Caucasus, for dedicated Nazi SS units. The Mufti’s objectives for these recruits—and Muslims in general—were made explicit during his multiple wartime radio broadcasts from Berlin, heard throughout the Arab world: an international campaign of genocide against the Jews. For example, during his 1 March 1944 broadcast he stated: ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion.’
Invoking the personal support of such prominent Nazis as Himmler and Eichmann, the Mufti’s relentless hectoring of German, Romanian, and Hungarian government officials caused the cancellation of an estimated 480,000 exit visas which had been granted to Jews (80,000 from Romania, and 400,000 from Hungary). As a result, these hapless individuals were deported to Polish concentration camps. A United Nations Assembly document presented in 1947 which contained the Mufti’s 28 June 1943 letter to the Hungarian Foreign Minister requesting the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Poland, includes this stark, telling annotation: ‘As a Sequel to This Request 400,000 Jews Were Subsequently Killed.’ The Mufti escaped to the Middle East after the war to avoid capture and possible prosecution for war crimes.
The Mufti’s legacy of virulent anti-Semitism continues to influence Arab policy towards Israel. Yasser Arafat, beginning at the age of 16, worked for the Mufti, performing terrorist operations. Arafat always characterized the Mufti as his primary spiritual and political mentor.
Yasser Arafat orchestrated a relentless campaign of four decades of brutal jihad terrorism against the Jewish state, beginning in the early 1960s, until his recent death, interspersed with a bloody jihad (during the mid-1970s and early 1980s) against the Christians of Lebanon. Chameleon-like, Arafat adopted a thin veneer of so-called ‘secular radicalism’, particularly during the late 1960s and 1970s. Sober analysis reveals, however, that shorn of these superficial secular trappings, Arafat’s core ideology remained quintessentially Islamic, i.e., rooted in jihad, throughout his career as a terrorist leader. And even after the Oslo accords, within a week of signing the specific Gaza-Jericho agreements, Arafat issued a brazen pronouncement (at a meeting of South African Muslim leaders) reflecting his unchanged jihadist views: ‘The jihad will continue and Jerusalem is not for the Palestinian people alone…. It is for the entire Muslim umma. You are responsible for Palestine and Jerusalem before me…. No, it is not their capital, it is our capital.’
During the final decade of his life, Arafat reiterated these sentiments on numerous occasions. He also acted upon them, orchestrating an escalating campaign of jihad terrorism which culminated in the heinous orgy of Islamikaze violence that led to Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield military operations in the West Bank two days after the Netanya Passover massacre on 27 March 2002. Moreover, throughout Arafat’s tenure as the major Palestinian Arab leader, his efforts to destroy Israel and replace it with an Arab Muslim shari’a-based entity were integrated into the larger Islamic umma jihad against the Jewish state, as declared repeatedly in official conference pronouncements from various clerical or political organizations of the Muslim (both Arab and non-Arab) nations, for over five decades. These excerpts from the recent 2003 Putrajaya Islamic Summit speech by former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammad highlight the official, collective sentiments of Muslim leaders reiterated adnauseum since the creation of Israel:
To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand if not on all issues, at least on some major ones, such as on Palestine…. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships…. We may want to recreate 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 l.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.
After more than thirteen centuries of almost uninterrupted jihad in historical Palestine, it is not surprising that the finalized constitution for the proposed Palestinian Arab state declares all aspects of Palestinian state law to be subservient to the shari’a, while contemporary Palestinian Authority religious intelligentsia also openly support the restoration of the oppressive system of dhimmitude within a Muslim-dominated Israel. An appropriate assessment of such anachronistic, discriminatory views was provided by the Catholic Archbishop of the Galilee, Butrus Al-Mu’alem, who, in a June 1999 statement, dismissed the notion of modern dhimmis submitting to Muslims: ‘It is strange to me that there remains such backwardness in our society; while humans have already reached space, the stars, and the moon… there are still those who amuse themselves with fossilised notions.’ A strange notion for our modern times, certainly, but very real, ominous, and sobering.
Ibn Warraq’s trenchant critique of Edward Said pointed out the bizarre evolution of this Christian agnostic into, ‘a de facto apologist and protector of Islam, the least Christian and certainly the religion least given to self-doubt’. Moreover, as Warraq observed, despite Said’s admission, ‘that he does not know anything about Islam, and … the fact that he has never written a single scholarly work devoted to Islam, Said has always accepted the role in the West of an Islamic expert, and has never flinched from telling us what the real Islam is’.
Warraq highlighted this tragic irony, just prior to Said’s death, which, even had Said lived, is unlikely to have ever been resolved. It is almost certain, for example, that Said would have reacted with hypocritical silence to the early September 2005 Palestinian Muslim pogrom against the small West Bank Christian village of Taiba.
As a secularist defending Islam, one wonders how he will be able to argue for a nontheocratic state once Palestine becomes a reality. If Islam is such a wonderful religion, why not convert to it, and why not accept it as the basis for any new constitution? At some stage, Said will have to do what he has been avoiding all his adult life, criticize Islam, or at least indirectly the idea of a theocracy.
Ibn Warraq has also noted how Said—the Literature Professor and literary critic—made a distressingly stupid error in Orientalism (both in the 1979 and 1994 editions), confusing the words ‘eschatological’ and ‘scatological’. A revealing, even pathognomonic error to this medically trained observer.
In closing, let me move, mercifully, from the ridiculousness of Edward Said to the penetrating insights of Bat Ye’or. Noting the ceaseless calls for jihad in Palestine during modern times, from 1920 through to the present era, Bat Ye’or observed that jihad remained,
the main cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since Israelis are to be regarded, perforce, only as a religious community, their national characteristics—a geographical territory related to a past history, a system of legislation, a specific language and culture—are consequently denied. The ‘Arab’ character of the Palestinian territory is inherent in the logic of jihad. Having become fay territory by conquest (i.e., ‘taken from an infidel people’), it must remain within the dar al-Islam. The State of Israel, established on this fay territory, is consequently illegal.
And she concluded:
Israel represents the successful national liberation of a dhimmi civilization. On a territory formerly Arabized by the jihad and the dhimma, a pre-Islamic language, culture, topographical geography, and national institutions have been restored to life. This reversed the process of centuries in which the cultural, social and political structures of the indigenous population of Palestine were destroyed. In 1974, Abu Iyad, second-in-command to Arafat in the Fatah hierarchy, announced: ‘We intend to struggle so that our Palestinian homeland does not become a new Andalusia.’ The comparison of Andalusia to Palestine was not fortuitous since both countries were Arabized, and then de-Arabized by a pre-Arabic culture.