Generalizing Muslims because an Islamic terrorist organization committed an unprecedented massacre on Israeli soil might be unfair. However, we must study and analyze several components to understand that what happened is directly related to the global Islamic doctrine.
On October 7, 2023 Hamas invaded Israel and indiscriminately killed in cold blood more than 1200 people in a few hours. Children, women, youth, babies, pregnant women, adults and the elderly were cruelly massacred. Hamas raped women, burned and destroyed villages and houses where people lived, kidnapped more than 240 people including babies, children, women and elderly, who were taken prisoner until today and placed in tunnels and cages like animals. Hamas committed a level of slaughter and destruction reminiscent of Hitler’s era.
What was the reaction of the Palestinians both in Gaza and in Samaria and Shomron (West Bank)? Total euphoria, joy, celebration, partying, a lot of pride and justification of the events.
In the Arab world and in almost all the Islamic countries, in the face of this barbaric act, the feeling of happiness and ecstasy prevailed, and the support for Hamas was almost unanimous. Iran, Qatar and Turkey, which directly support Hamas, celebrated the operation and the massacre of the terrorist organization, supported it, justified it and were overjoyed.
Where does this attitude, so opposed to the Judeo-Christian values of the West, come from?
The answer is very easy, from Islam.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is spiritual rather than territorial, it could have been resolved long ago if the majority of Palestinians were Hindu, Christian, Druze, Buddhist or of any other religion. Recall that the vast majority of Palestinians practice the Islamic religion and only a very small minority are Christian. The Palestinians had their chances in the past to have their own state and they wasted their chances because of the Islamic obsession to eliminate Israel completely.
The most rigid Islamic doctrines prohibit reaching a peace treaty with Israel, that is why despite the fact that Israel has cold peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, its citizens continue to hate Jews and Israel. In the classical doctrine of Islam the world is divided into two hostile camps: the sphere of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the sphere of war (dar al-harb). Dar al-Islam (house of Islam) are the territories or countries under the control of an Islamic state or government and Dar al-Harb (house of war) the territories where a non-Islamic country rules, which is allowed to wage war or jihad to subdue and conquer them.
Most Muslims justify everything in the name of their religion to attack Israel and the “infidels” (those who do not practice Islam). That is why they use all available means, among them: terrorist acts of all kinds, financial and arms support to radical extremist groups that are at war with the Jewish state, kidnappings, beheadings, rape of women, defamation, propaganda in their countries on television, radio, graphic, digital, artistic, cultural, sports, educational especially in primary schools, high schools and universities, with the aim of brainwashing and teaching their citizens to hate Jews and Israel, manipulation of the national media of their governments, at the international level almost everything is allowed to vilify and put pressure on the enemy country, in this case Israel, alliances with radical leftist groups and communist authoritarian regimes, use of the UN to manipulate and carry the Arab-Muslim agenda to harass Israel in all international fora, economic boycotts (BDS), etc.
In history there was already a very important and outstanding boycott by the Arab oil lobby that affected the world economy in 1973 and created an international crisis that led to the increase of crude oil prices to exorbitant values.
Qatar, curiously, organizer of the last Football World Cup in 2022 and current organizer of the Asian Football Cup 2024, plays a very important role in cultivating propaganda against Israel and in the total political economic support and sympathy with Hamas terrorists using its international news channel called Al Jazeera installed in Doha and which also operates in the Palestinian territories and in the Arab world as propaganda and spokesman for Hamas.
Politicians in Muslim countries carry the Palestinian issue as a banner everywhere to win votes and sympathy from their citizens, inflaming the discourse of violence against Israel. In the mosques, this sentiment is fervently encouraged and families are educated to cultivate this hatred. The level of discrimination in the Islamic world towards Jews and Israel is in the blood, in the heart, it is breathed, it is the only thing that unites Arabs and it is irrational.
It does not matter how many wars were fought between Muslim countries themselves as for example the war between Iraq and Iran in the 80’s that cost after almost nine years the lives of more than 1,000,000 Muslim brothers.
It does not matter if Iraq led by Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait another Arab country in 1990 and thousands of Arabs died creating a war where the intervention of an international alliance of countries was necessary to stop the usurpation of Iraq.
Never mind that Saddam Hussein killed thousands of Muslim Kurds during his rule.
Never mind that the Islamic Kurds who have far more history and reasons than the Palestinians cannot achieve their independence from the Islamic countries that have oppressed and oppress them in the territories that belonged to them in part of what is now Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Azerbaijan.
Never mind the civil war that Syria suffered where they killed each other under the government of Bashar al-Assad and more than 350,000 Arabs died.
Never mind that from 1516 to 1917 the Ottoman Turkish Islamic empire took over portions of Europe, North Africa, Asia, invaded and dominated the Arabs for 400 years.
Never mind the violent struggles between Lebanon and Syria that cost thousands of dead in the past.
Never mind the civil war between Muslims in Sudan that has left more than 13,000 dead.
Never mind that the Jordanians killed a few thousand Palestinians in the 1970s.
Never mind that more than 1 million Muslim Uighars are persecuted in China.
Never mind that the Russians invaded and killed Muslim Afghans in the war that took place between 1979 and 1989 where it is estimated that the population of Afghanistan fell from 13.41 million in 1979 to 11.61 million in 1988 as a result of the violence of the war and the refugee crisis.
Never mind the hatred between Shiites and Sunnis since the origin of Islam in the 7th century that led to countless wars and massacres between brothers of the same Islamic faith throughout its history.
They do not care that most of their societies are living in permanent backwardness with low educational level, with poverty, with ignorance, with women being second class objects, discriminated, humiliated, beaten and victims of family deaths perpetrated to preserve the honor of the Islamic family, they do not care about the little scientific or technological progress in which they live, remembering that if it were not for oil the Muslim countries of the Gulf would not enjoy their tremendous wealth that is concentrated exclusively in their family monarchies and government leaders who buy from the West everything they are not able to create.
In reality all this does not matter much to the Islamic world, because what really matters a lot to them and obsesses them day and night is that there is a small country that has more history than Islam on a small piece of land, that is Jewish, prosperous, non-Muslim, that has the audacity to want to survive and is called Israel.
In the most sacred and important book of Islam which is the Koran it is written in Sura (chapter) 5:20-21 that Allah (God) gave the Holy Land (Israel) to the Jews. This is a very disturbing fact for many Muslims, which they will never address because of all the anti-Israel propaganda they are subjected to.
Until Islam applies a religious reform that will free them from their bigotry, something that has been applied throughout history in other religions such as Judaism and Christianity, it is very likely that we will continue to see the same face of Islam.
Author
Adiel Wajsman
Licensed Tour Guide
February 2, 2024.