Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement). The party is a Suni-Islamic fundamentalist Palestinian nationalist organization. It is one of the two major political parties within the Palestinian territories, and it has been the de facto authority in the Gaza strip since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel, despite a 2018 United Nations resolution rejecting this characterization. Shortly after the first intifada (a series of Palestinian protests and violent riots), Hamas published the Hamas Charter on August 18, 1988, wherein they called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in historic Palestine. Hamas would later publish a revised edition of the charter in 2017, but for the purposes of this analysis, we will look at the language of the 1988 edition exclusively.
At its core, the 1988 Hamas charter is a religious nationalist call to arms. Its primary emphasis is on the oneness of Palestinian and Islamic identity. However, despite being a chiefly political document, it contains a substantial amount of religious language that does not constitute religious nationalism. It is absolutely critical to distinguish between standard Islamic political language and Islamic religious nationalism—lest we mistakenly demonize the entirety of Islamic political philosophy.
The Islamic world is full of Islamic iconography, art, and phraseology. As such, Islamic government charters, constitutions, and legal statutes often contain a diverse assortment of Qur’anic motifs. For example, the Qur’anic phrase, بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ (bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi), “in the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful” is the most prolific invocation of Islamic faith in the Muslim world, and it is extremely common in daily religious practice and government documentation. This invocation is known as the Bismilla, and it can be found in the constitution of virtually every majority Muslim country, including Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). Due to the frequency of the Bismilla’s use in Muslim legislative practice, the Bismilla does not equate to religious nationalism, despite its frequent invocation in Jihadist literature, such as the Hamas Charter. Rather, the religious nationalism of the Hamas Charter is found in its Jihadist language, where it deviates from standard Islamic political language. The Charter’s requisites for membership, its expectations of members, its standard operating philosophy and its chief goal of eliminating the State of Israel all constitute a level of Islamic loyalty and violent methodology that set it apart from larger sovereign Islamic states.
Beginning in Article 3, the charter delineates the basic structure and formation of Hamas as an organization, starting with its requisites for membership. Members must give their allegiance to Allah, “whom they truly worship… [and] raise the banner of Jihad in the face of oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” Article 3 makes two direct references to the Qur’an in support of these demands. The first reference is to Qur’an 51:56, which emphasizes the orientation of mankind toward Allah as being created for the purpose of worship. However, it places the verse within the context of duty towards self, family and country, effectively re-contextualizing the verse into a nationalist agenda by synthesizing worship with national loyalty to Palestine. Next, the Article references Jihad within the context of verse 21:18. Verse 21:18 posits a conflict between truth and vanity (alternate translations use falsehood or untruth). This verse establishes a clear distinction between good (Palestine) and evil (Israel). By reducing the conflict to a binary struggle between the righteous and the unclean, Article 3 makes the idea of Jihad more palatable as a legitimate form of armed resistance.
Article 8 of the charter directly prescribes Jihad as the primary methodology of Hamas. “Allah is its [Islamic Resistance Movement] target, the Prophet is its model, the Qur’an its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” This call to arms falls directly in line with Article 13, which dispenses with any and all notions of peaceful negotiation. “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Interestingly, the Hamas Charter does not direct its aggression toward Israel itself, but rather, toward Zionism as the guiding philosophy of the Israeli State. It seems to condemn Israel only as a manifestation of Zionism, which poses a direct threat to Islam and the Muslim people. Article 28 of the charter characterizes Zionism as “a vicious invasion.” Article 28 further calls on all Arab countries to open their borders to help “consolidate their efforts with those of their Moslem brethren in Palestine… [and to] facilitate the movement of the fighters from and to it.”
A significant portion of the Hamas Charter is written as an appeal to other nations and peoples. It is clear from the language (and the historical context) that Hamas—and the Palestinian people—are desperate for external support, having been recently decimated in the first intifada. Articles 28-31 make appeals to other Arab countries, nationalist and religious groupings, institutions, intellectuals and other religions. Article 30 makes the first major appeal, wherein it calls on the leaders of the Islamic world to help resist the Zionist offensive. Notably, Article 30 withdraws from the more violent aspects of Jihad, suggesting that foreign nations can still participate in Jihadic resistance via peaceful means of solidarity. “Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and solidarity—together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah’s banner higher and higher—all these are elements of the Jihad for Alla’s sake.”
In support of this notion of solidarity and intellectual resistance, the Charter makes an appeal to authority. Article 30 concludes with a quote by Al-Bukhari, a prominent medieval Muslim scholar: “Whosoever mobilized a fighter for the sake of Allah is himself a fighter. Whosoever supports the relatives of a fighter, he himself is a fighter.” This appeal to the diplomatic side of Jihad seems to run contradictory to Article 13, where the Charter aggressively resists any notion of a negotiated peace with the Zionist movement. If Islamic elites and intellectuals are called to engage in Jihad via the power of the pen, why are such methods excluded from the operating procedures of Hamas? This apparent contradiction between peaceful and violent Jihad is not rational—it is the result of Hamas’s deluded understanding of itself and how the world works, as illustrated in Article 31.
Article 31 is, perhaps, the most fascinating Article of the entire Charter. It reveals the Islamic Resistance Movement’s twisted image of itself and its understanding of the world. Article 31 appeals to the non-Islamic world to comply with the ambitions of Islam as determined by Hamas. It reframes the Charter’s Jihadist ambitions as a humanist movement for the human rights of all parties involved. According to the Article, “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement… Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are best witnesses to that. It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.”
This Article is where the Charter’s argument falls apart completely. Hamas falls victim to the same ideological oversight that plagues Zionist ideology and caused the very situation they are now resisting. The language of Article 31 can be easily tweaked to support any religious movement, including Zionism. It is a textbook framework for religious nationalism that assumes an inherent superiority over other groups. It suggests that the road to peace is obvious: simply stay out of our way, and we won’t have a problem.
The obviousness assumed by the Article can be found in half-baked political ideologies all over the world. How many times have you heard someone say, “we wouldn’t have so many problems if only they would…” or “we aren’t the ones stirring things up; it’s that group over there.” When groups fail to recognize the sovereignty of alternative beliefs, they fall into a self-confirming ideological spiral where conquest and control begin to look like legitimate solutions. Zionists and Hamas fighters are equally convicted of their right to conquest and control; the only difference is that Zionists are more organized, have popular support from western powers and have access to significant economic, military and social resources. Hamas may think it is acting in the best interest of human rights, but Articles 1-27 of the Charter suggest otherwise.