Many western intellectuals and politicians claim that the Middle East groups advocating violence are not really religious, but rather political fascists. This directly contradicts the claims made by these groups themselves, who do not separate religion from politics, and fight expressly in the name of God.
The Middle East Media Research Institute has published a clear translation of the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) of Palestine.
Here is what HAMAS itself says about the connection between religion and politics. To support its claims, the text quotes from the Koran 19 times:
“It is from Islam that the Islamic Resistance Movement derives its ideas, concepts, and perceptions concerning the universe, life, and man, and it refers to Islam’s judgment in all its actions. It is from Islam that it seeks direction so as to guide its steps.”
“Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model to be followed, the Koran its constitution, Jihad its way, and death for the sake of Allah its loftiest desire.”
Comment: this is religious, and they mean it.
“The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood movement is a global organization and is the largest of the Islamic movements in modern times. It is distinguished by its profound understanding and its conceptual precision and by the fact that it encompasses the totality of Islamic concepts in all aspects of life, in thought and in creed, in politics and in economics, in education and in social affairs, in judicial matters and in matters of government, in preaching and in teaching, in art and in communications, in secret and in the open, and in all other areas of life.”
Comment: this world-wide movement is totalitarian in its acceptance of Islam. The election of Muslim Brotherhood to offices in Egypt is part and parcel to the success of HAMAS in the Palestinian elections.
“The day the enemies conquer some part of the Muslim land, jihad becomes a personal duty of every Muslim . . . 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 establish in the minds of all the Muslim generations that the Palestinian issue is a religious issue . . ..”
Translation: Like Lenin, they recognize that many people do not agree with them. To overcome this, they want to brainwash the entire Muslim world into a frenzy of holy war [and blame it on a Danish cartoonist].
“This is the legal status of the land of Palestine according to Islamic law. In this respect, it is like any other land that the Muslims have conquered by force, because the Muslims consecrated it at the time of the conquest as a religious endowment for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection.”
Comment: their legal claim to Palestine, like the entire world from Spain to Indonesia, is based on invasions over the past 1400 years. Their claims are based on naked violence, and given a religious sanction.
“Nationalism(9), as seen by the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the [Islamic] religious creed . . . Whereas the various other nationalist [ideologies] are connected to physical, human and regional factors, the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is [likewise] characterized by all of the above, and in addition – and most importantly – it is characterized by divine motives which endow it with spirit and life, since it is related to the source of the spirit, and to Him who gives life.”
So much for this movement being political and not religious. The source of its motivations–and of the world-wide suicide movement that has erupted in the past thirty years–is its claim to divine sanction.
