And I was so sure that – per this characteristic Times of London description from last December – “Gaza is a secular society where people listen to pop music, watch TV and many women walk the streets unveiled.” I was even considering acceding to the headline’s demand that I “adjust my distorted image of Hamas.” And now I find out they’re a pack of political Islamists driven by a fetishistic obsession with the unclean flesh of their Christian enemies. Who knew:
“Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth,” said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI), who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of parliament from Canada and religious personalities. During their visit to Israel the delegation will hold a conference on human rights and persecuted minorities at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The conference will provide new statistics on the persecution of minorities in Muslim countries.
Hamas has also recently banned women from dancing, imposed a conservative dress code on professional women and schoolgirls, and now there’s even a “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” security force.
That story about the new dress code for professional women, by the by, comes from the Guardian and includes the line “for the first time since Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections… the group is trying to Islamise Gazan society.” Now that’s very much not true. But even if it was, it still wouldn’t justify the slack jawed naivete of international apologists.
In 2006 Hamas ran and won on a platform “of implementing Islamic law in the Palestinian territories” as a replacement for Arab nationalism. As soon as they took over they began promoting global Islamic supremacy, to be achieved through the annihilation of Jews, via schoolbooks and mosque sermons and TV shows about child martyrs. So it seems like maybe – just maybe – Islamization was on the horizon. Though in fairness, they might just have been joking about all that.
References and related after the jump…
References:
* We must adjust our distorted image of Hamas [Times Online]
* Human rights group: Hamas disinters Christians in Gaza [JPost]
* Hamas Bans Women Dancers, Scooter Riders in Gaza Push (Update1) [Bloomberg]
* Hamas patrols beaches in Gaza to enforce conservative dress code [Guardian]
* Schoolgirls in Hamas-run Gaza told to wear Islamic dress [AFP]
* Analysis: The Islamic republic of Gaza [JPost]
* Confirmed: Hamas Goals And Tactics Now Officially Indistinguishable From Al Qaeda [MR]
* Some Palestinians See End of Secular Dream [WaPo]
* The Hamas Ideology of Hatred and Genocide: Islamic supremacy over the world, destroying Israel and Jews, promoting terror and violence [Itamar Marcus]
Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Political Islam
* Palestinians
* Women In Islam
