Mohammed Zuhdi Jasser, Hamas, and "Human Rights”

Right Side News 4 September 2012
By Andrew Bostom

Last night (9/2/12) I was sent (unsolicited) 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, 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

Despite having been subjected to Jasser’s personalized immoral equivalences (he claimed in 2007 my extensive analyses of Islamic Antisemitism effectively made me the moral equivalent of "exploiters” of his noble faith—such as Osama bin Laden!), even I found his UCSD statement shocking. 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 3 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”) 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:

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