A Muslim Scholar Criticizes Hamas: Sooner Would Have Been Better

A recent article published by the BBC reports that one of Gaza’s top Islamic scholars, Professor Dr Salman al-Dayah, former Dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Law at the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, has issued a fatwa condemning Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. The fatwa, a non-binding legal ruling based on the Quran, criticizes Hamas for violating Islamic principles with respect to jihad (Arabic, for struggle). Dr. al-Dayah cites the Quran in specifying that jihad should avoid actions leading to disproportionate reactions from the enemy. He takes Hamas to task for not keeping its fighting forces away from civilians and for not “providing security and safety as much as possible in the various aspects of life … security, economic, health, and education, and saving enough supplies for them.”

The fatwa points to the brutality of the Hamas attack, the disregard for the lives of men, women, children and babies, the raping and mutilation of women, the kidnapping of 251 Israelis, and the firing of thousands of explosive rockets toward Israeli civilian centers, as a strategy meant to elicit a strong Israeli military response. In effect, the fatwa connects the civilian death toll in Gaza to Hamas, and to its disregard for the lives of its own people.

While I am not a military historian, I wonder if the Gaza War is the first case in history in which the deaths and injuries of its own people are a statistic used as a weapon by one of the protagonists. Hamas has maximized its own casualty numbers, not those of its enemy, by making it impossible to distinguish between combatants and civilians and by placing and using weapons in civilian homes, in schools and in hospitals—all war crimes. Nothing emphasizes the disregard by Hamas for the welfare of ordinary Palestinians more than the extensive tunnels built over many years to protect Hamas combatants and weapons, not civilians.

This is not to say that Israeli casualties during the Gaza war have been negligible. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed and thousands injured from ambushes and booby-traps set by an enemy that intentionally embeds itself in a civilian population.

In the immediate aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on Israel, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported that at least 44 nations condemned Hamas and its terrorist tactics. However, the report also noted that few words of compassion for Israelis, or condemnation of Hamas, emanated from the Arab world. Statements from countries including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Syria pinned the blame on Israel. Only Bahrein and the UAE, two of Israel’s Abrahamic Accords partners, offered mild criticism of Hamas.

This is why the fatwa issued by Dr Salman al-Dayah is an important and welcome change. (In fact, it was not the first fatwa criticizing Hamas. Months before the Oct. 7 attack, The Jerusalem Post published an account of a fatwa by the Islamic Fatwa Council stating that Hamas’s corrupt conduct and use of terror against Palestinian civilians violates the Laws of the Quran.)

While Arab governments and diplomats have been reticent to criticize Hamas, a number of courageous Palestinian bloggers and journalists have not hesitated to do so. These include Yosef Haddad, an outspoken Arab–Israeli journalist, Mosab Hassan Yousef (also known as the Green Prince) whose father was a co-founder of Hamas, and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib a Palestinian-American blogger and activist. There are others.

While Arab governments and diplomats have been reticent to criticize Hamas, a number of courageous Palestinian bloggers and journalists have not hesitated to do so.

One writer I follow is Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist from the West Bank, who has written extensively about human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Eid’s views on the Gaza War appear in a number of publications such as Newsweek and in social media, particularly Instagram. Eid has pointed out that Hamas is responsible for the bloodshed in Gaza and for hampering the distribution of food and other supplies to the people of Gaza.

While Dr. al-Dayah’s fatwa is welcome, it is too late to have prevented or mitigated the tragedy experienced by Gazans. I can’t help but think of an unattributed but chilling quotation that has been circulating on social media for the past year:

“Imagine if on October 8, 2023 the UN Security Council voted unanimously to condemn Hamas for war crimes, demanded the immediate return of all hostages, and ordered Qatar to extradite Hamas leadership to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they could have been tried for War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and Genocide. Had that occurred, think of how many people in Gaza would be alive today.”

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.