Page 2 of 2 The perils of 'one size fits
all' By Sami Moubayed
duty
for every Muslim, who can do it in any country, in
which it is possible to do it."
Hamas was
born out of the Arab defeat in the wars of 1948,
1967 and 1982. Al-Qaeda was born out of the
invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in
1979.
For years, bin Laden named his three
priorities (in order), saying they would be: (1)
expel the "infidels" from the Arabian Peninsula
(in
reference to the Americans who came to Saudi
Arabia during the Gulf War of 1991); (2)
protection (and later liberation) of Iraq; (3)
liberation of Jerusalem. The fact that Jerusalem,
which ranks No 1 on the agenda of Hamas, came in
third on that of bin Laden is very telling. Only
in the past two years have bin Laden and his
deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, increased their
rhetoric against the Israelis, in an attempt to
broaden their power base in the Arab street.
Another clear and fundamental difference
is that Hamas is not ideologically committed to
(or even interested in) combating the Shi'ites. On
the contrary, it sees them as allies and has
received funds and support from Iran, and
coordinates with Shi'ite movements such as
Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Mahdi Army in Iraq.
Speaking once from Tehran, Hamas leader Khaled
Meshaal said: "Iran's role in the future of
Palestine should continue and increase." He added
that Hamas has its own agenda, and doesn't need
the advice of al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden would
die before making such a conciliatory remark
toward the Shi'ites, because he sees them as
heretics who must be rooted out of Islam. Prior to
his death last June, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi once
even called on his followers in Iraq to engage in
holy war against the Shi'ites. Ismail Abu Shanab,
a commander in Hamas, once said: "Al-Qaeda has a
different struggle from the Palestinian struggle."
When members of al-Qaeda launched a
terrorist attack in the Saudi capital in 1996,
Hamas leader Ahmad Yassin strongly condemned it as
an act of terrorism. Speaking to Newsweek in
September 2005, Mahmud al-Zahhar, a Hamas
commander who was later to become the Palestinian
minister of foreign affairs, said: "We are not in
need of Zarqawi, al-Qaeda, or others. We have our
own agenda." When asked if he would welcome
Zarqawi to Palestine, Zahhar said: "He will not
come."
Probably the link being drawn
between Hamas and al-Qaeda is because at some
intervals in their political history, both groups
received funds from similar, or overlapping,
sources. One was prominent Yemeni cleric Sheikh
Mohammad Hasan al-Moayad. He claimed to have
provided funds for both movements, but this was
never confirmed either by Hamas or al-Qaeda.
The US says Saudi businessman Yasin
al-Qadi funded both groups and so did the
Benevolence International Foundation, which in
turn worked with the Holy Land Foundation. The
latter was believed to have funded Hamas at one
point. The US Treasury Department said Bank
al-Takwa, which channeled US$60 million to Hamas
in 1997, has also been involved in financing
al-Qaeda.
In the Philippines, there is the
International Islamic Relief Organization, which
was headed by bin Laden's brother-in-law Mohammad
Jamal Khalifa in 1986-94 and once donated money to
Hamas. But al-Qaeda also undoubtedly received
funds from the US. Can it be accused today of
being an agent of the Americans? The Middle East
is a place of contradictions - and overlap.
The US refuses to tolerate a movement like
Hamas, claiming it is a terrorist organization,
while it nevertheless works with someone like
Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, who launched a
war against the Americans in Iraq in 2004. More
recently, Sadrist ex-minister of health Ali
al-Shummary requested asylum in the United States.
According to the Iraqi government daily Al-Sabah,
the US Department of State has accepted his
request and he has already arrived in New York.
This raises eyebrows on the "one size fits all"
policy and US double-dealing when it comes to
Islamic groups and the Middle East.
Hamas
is a political and military group that has a
jihadist agenda. That is a fact. It wants to
liberate Palestine from the Israelis and has its
ways, which may seem unorthodox to the Western
world but are completely acceptable in the Arab
and Islamic worlds. They include suicide bombing
against the Israelis. That is how Fatah, which is
now being embraced by the Americans as a symbol of
moderation, operated in the 1960s, 1970s and
1980s.
They were born out of the war of
1967, when the late Israeli prime minister Golda
Meir said the Palestinians did not exist. Arafat
insisted that they did and carried out a series of
attacks to make his people's voice heard -
violently - in the international community. He
hijacked airplanes, ordered targeted
assassinations, kidnapped Israelis, and killed
Western diplomats, raising the slogan that every
part of the world was a battlefield for the
Palestinians and every Israeli was an enemy.
It was only that back then, the attackers
were not called jihadis (the term was not yet
popular) but rather fedayeen (the secular
term popular from the 1950s onward). The United
Nations recognized Arafat's pain and invited him
to address its General Assembly in 1974, where he
raised his famous phrase: "I come to you carrying
an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Don't
let the olive branch fall from my hand."
After winning last year's elections, Hamas
leaders (who were dying to be recognized as
statesmen rather than guerrillas) were on the
verge of saying that, not out of conviction but of
helplessness. Al-Qaeda would never come out with
such a statement, nor do its members seek
recognition as statesmen. They want the world to
see them only as jihadis and to accept their
distorted version of Islam.
Hamas does not
try to enforce its views on anybody. The mistakes
made over recent days in Gaza were described as
such by Khaled Meshaal at a press conference in
Damascus, where he expressed full support for the
secular President Abbas and described him as a
"partner", insisting that the goal of Hamas was
not a coup to topple the Fatah-led government.
Again, bin Laden would never have made
such a statement or described any of al-Qaeda's
doings as a mistake. Nor would he describe his
opponents as "partners". So the "one size fits
all" policy is actually a mistake. When it comes
to al-Qaeda and the Islamic world, one size does
not fit all. It fits al-Qaeda and groups that are
publicly inspired by al-Qaeda. It does not apply
to Hamas.
Sami Moubayed is a
Syrian political analyst.
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