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| Volume VII, June 2000, Number 3 |
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| Book Review |
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For a printable version of this book review, click here.
Islamic Politics in Palestine, by Beverly Milton-Edwards. London: I.B. Tauris, 1999. 256 pages. $22.50, paperback.
Ghada Talhami
D.K. Pearsons professor of Politics and chair of the Politics Department, Lake Forest College
After reading this book, one has to conclude that of all the current Islamic revivalist movements around the world, the Palestinian case is the most worthy of study. This is not due to the greater merit of the Palestinian cause but rather to the contextual peculiarities of the Palestinian Islamic movement. Beverly Milton-Edwards underscores this particularism well by focusing on the Islamic resurgence from the onset of the modern Palestinian nationalist struggle. Locating this revival in the proper historical narrative has allowed the author to provide a sound explanation of the timing of this movement, which developed almost a decade after the general eruption of similar Islamist challenges in the Arab World. The author also emphasizes the difficulty of competing with a secular nationalist ideology, namely that of the PLO, which monopolized the international arena as the most authentic and representative nationalism of the Palestinian people. After completing this book, no one will be able to debate the resiliency of the secular brand of Palestinian nationalism or, for that matter, the strength and tenacity of the movement with which it is now locked in a deadly struggle. Neither can one continue to theorize that Palestinian Islamic fundamentalism resulted from the ideological vacuum left by the demise of Arab nationalism following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the decline of Nasserism throughout the Arab world.
Milton-Edwards achieves a tour de force by tracing the Islamic movement in Palestine back to the earliest decades of the modern Palestinian national experience. Beginning with Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, she proceeds to describe the rise of the Islamic Brotherhood and its Egyptian antecedents. During the early Jordanian phase of the history of Palestine, the Brotherhood became a domesticated loyal opposition entrusted with weaning the masses, particularly the youth, away from leftist ideologies. She shrewdly hypothesizes, and this is a major theme in her book, that what enabled the Jordanian regime to contain and defang the Brotherhood was the weakening of institutional Islam in the West Bank. Having witnessed the entrenchment of the pre-1948 Palestinian leadership in the Supreme Muslim Council, the Jordanians saw to it that this powerful institution through which Haj Amin al-Husseini channeled his anti-British and anti-Zionist campaign was never to rise again. The dismantling of the Supreme Muslim Council in January 1951, and the placing of all the Palestinian waqf (charitable institutions) and juridicial system under the aegis of the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf, dealt a death blow to an institution already crippled by the loss of vast properties in western Palestine. The picture in Egyptian-controlled Gaza during the same period was similar, although the decline of the waqf was due as much to Nasser's hostility toward Islamic activities in general as to the isolation and impoverishment of Gaza. She also describes the rise of the Islamic Liberation party (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami) and its politicized platform as an important link in the nationalist-Islamist phenomenon in Palestine, which never seems to fade away.
Some of the book's most fascinating sections are those that describe the intimate relationship and de facto alliance with Israel of the Gaza Muslim Brotherhood and its charitable arm, al-Mujama al-Islami (the Islamic Congress). The latter organization came to life under the direction of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in the late 1970s and began to spread its control over Gaza's mosques and educational institutions with the tacit approval of the Israeli occupying authorities. Partly a tactical move designed to deflect the wrath of Israel's harsh rule by posing as a non-political movement, this alliance was also necessary if the Brotherhood was to wrest control of Gaza from the PLO and its own network of charitable and other institutions. The war on the PLO-supported establishments like the Gazan Red Crescent Society was waged with the direct assistance of the Israelis, who saw this as a golden opportunity to divide and rule. So was the struggle to wrest away control of the Islamic University of Gaza from pro-PLO elements. Perhaps one of the most controversial periods in the history of the Brotherhood and the career of Sheikh Yassin, the Mujama's hegemonic bid with the support of the Israelis is still hotly denied by pro-Islamist elements today. Milton-Edwards, however, documents this period thoroughly through interviews with Palestinians and statements by Israeli officials.
The deadly clash with the secular forces of the PLO, nevertheless, illustrates one of the main dilemmas of successive Islamic organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. Of all the Islamist movements in the Arab world, the Palestinian resurgence turned out to be the most nationalist in nature. No matter how hard the Brotherhood and its offshoots tried to seek a reformist path based on personal salvation and Islamic re-education, they were never able to side-step the national question. Thus, the Brotherhood eventually spawned other groups like al-Jihad al-Islami (led by Fathi Shiqaqi and Abd al-Aziz Audeh), which quickly spread to the West Bank and adopted a militant stance towards the occupation regime. When two of the Jihad's leaders, Shiqaqi and Hani Abed, were assassinated, the Islamic mantle of military resistance fell to Hamas. Founded in February 1988, Hamas (an acronym for the Arabic Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) was led by some of Sheikh Yassin's closest associates and came to be identified with his leadership. Hamas' military wing, the Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade, played an important role during the intifada and joined the United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU). Later, Hamas and its parent organization in Gaza stood apart by denouncing the Oslo accords and continued the intifada as a religiously sanctioned Jihad.
This is certainly a major research work and probably the most comprehensive study of the subject to date. No serious student of Palestinian history and politics can afford to bypass it. Nevertheless, some of the author's contentions will raise some eyebrows. Milton-Edwards's treatment of Izz al-Din al-Qassam's Palestinian Jihad and his quarrel with the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, are unnecessarily exaggerated and presented as a case of class conflict. Haj Amin is also casually portrayed as an Islamic figure whose brand of institutional Islam was an early manifestation of the Islamic movement. "Institutional Islam represented by Haj Amin al-Husseini and his supporters," writes Milton-Edwards, "denotes the most enduring example of political Islam in Palestine" (p.35). One has to admit that this is an unnecessarily Islamist reading of the historical record, given the fact that Haj Amin's leadership included many Christian Palestinians and was always considered, above all else, a Palestinian nationalist movement. Similarly, her statement that "in terms of translating Islamic political ideas into a mobilizing force among the Muslim community, institutional Islam failed" (p.35), cannot be supported by historical facts. This is certainly contrary to the totality of the Mufti's message and nationalist career, in which the emphasis was not on the vision of an Islamic state but on a state shared equally by Palestine's Muslim and Christian populations.
Similarly, the author eschews the issue of Palestine's religiously diverse population, particularly in the discussion of the ideology of Jihad. One of the best sections in this book, the Jihad discussion reveals the dilemma of reconciling the national struggle with the universalistic Islamic message. Only by emphasizing the Jihad as an Islamic obligation was the gap between nationalism and Islamic universalism bridged. In the opinion of Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Audeh, the occupation of the Islamic land of Palestine by infidels is the "central issue for local Muslim organizations. To ignore Palestine was to ignore the call to Jihad as a religious obligation" (p.118). Yet nowhere in this wide-ranging treatment of the various factions that evolved from the Muslim Brotherhood over a period of 70 years does the author broach the topic of the Islamic movement's view of Palestine's religious diversity. For, unlike any other Islamic movement in the Arab World, the national struggle has been waged both as a battle for the advancement of the vision of a secular state and as an affirmation of the political rights of Palestine's Christians. This is a crucial issue, not one to be subsumed in the umbrella term of Palestinian secular nationalism, since, more than any other Christian Arabs, Palestinian Christians boast strong and historic nationalist credentials. Does the obligation of Jihad apply to them? Will they be equal citizens in a future, Islamist-dominated Palestine? These are some of the silent questions begging for an answer.
Finally, despite the obvious merits of this work, and they are numerous, it is marred by some misspellings of names. Still, this will surely be viewed as a valuable reference work on a movement that is both regional and local at the same time.
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