Islamic Lifelines Can Prevent Islamic State Dead Lines

[Published 14 October 2015]


Australia was introduced to a high school chaplain and Muslim community leader Sheikh Wesam Charkawi on one of Australia’s most widely viewed TV shows - Q and A - last Monday evening.

Australians were still trying to come to terms with the shooting murder of a 58- year-old police department accountant by a 15-year-old Muslim youth dressed in black robes shouting “Allahu Akbar” outside NSW Police Headquarters in Parramatta some 10 days earlier.

Indeed the Parramatta murder was the third such instance involving Muslims in Australia in the last year - culminating in the loss of three innocent lives and the deaths of the three perpetrators.

Yet Sheikh Charkawi told his audience:

"Our faith teaches to withhold our hands from the breaking the branch of a tree, let alone taking the life of a human being, which equates to taking the life of humanity and saving the life of one amounts to saving the life of all. These are bedrock principles"

The Sheikh’s viewpoint was a revelation - considering the widely held belief that Islam with its Koranic concepts of jihad, martyrdom and forced conversion of non-Muslims was anything but the sanctity-of-life faith portrayed by him.

Sheikh Charkawi in seeking to explain the circumstances of the Parramatta murderer opined:

"I’m seeing a lot of identity issues with the young men and women and I keep hearing from many on the streets and in the schools that I visit that they tell us that we don’t belong. They say that we’re not part of the Australian society, we’re not part of the Australian community, that we’re terrorists, that we’re extremists, that our religion is one that is of destruction and loss of life and so on and so forth. Now, you’ve got to remember that these people were born into the age of terror and they’re being told that they don’t belong. What that leads to is to marginalisation and isolation, and if you add that to the mix of the propaganda that is being put forward by the groups like ISIS, it’s a very dangerous mix and so you see that it requires a whole of society effort and that’s the reality of it."

Left unanswered by the Sheikh was why such marginalisation, isolation and propaganda could lead a 15-year-old Muslim boy to take the life of another human being had he been properly instructed in the bedrock principles of Islam as enunciated by the Sheikh.

Instead the Sheikh tried to pass the buck - stating:

"If we take this issue and we restrict it to the Muslim narrative and we say that this is a Muslim problem, what happens is you can’t then step back and look for other empirical evidence as to any underpinning or driving forces that may be at hand here."

With the greatest respect to the Sheikh it is indeed a Muslim problem resulting from failing to properly educate its adherents from an early age that:

1. the taking of life is contrary to the principles of Islam

2. negative attitudes or grievances held by a Muslim cannot be resolved by taking the lives of other Muslims or non-Muslims

3. If the religious instruction afforded Muslims is faith-based on the bedrock principles espoused by the Sheikh — then attempts by Islamic State or other groups to recruit Muslims to their murderous ranks will surely fail.

Let the Australian Muslim community condemn those who seek to violate the sanctity of life in mosques and madrassas as this video recently taken in a mosque in Gaza so chillingly demonstrates.

The silence so far has been deafening.

Gaza - Hamas Exploits Death Over Life

[Published 26 July 2014]


The failure of many Gazans to leave their homes and seek safer shelter after ignoring Israeli leaflet drops, mobile phone calls and even the firing of harmless warning shots as a last resort - has been a major contributor to the increasing number of civilian deaths and casualties in Gaza.

This phenomenon has presented a perplexing problem for Israel as it continues its determined drive to destroy the Hamas arsenal of rockets, rocket launchers, weapons caches and extensive network of tunnels located in, under or in the vicinity of densely populated housing areas of Gaza.

Former US President Bill Clinton hit the nail squarely on the head with this prescient statement on 17 July:

“Hamas was perfectly well aware what would happen if they started raining rockets on Israel. They fired a thousand of them, and they have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them…

... In the short to medium term, Hamas can inflict terrible public relations damage on Israel by forcing it to kill Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas.”

The strategy was given expression by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad in 2008:

“[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.”

The execution of the strategy rests on two platforms — the religious and the psychological.

The religious platform has been articulated by Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs - Mahmoud Al-Habbash—who declared in his televised Friday sermon from the Al-Yarmouk Mosque in Ramallah on 20 December 2013:

“Pay attention, it is Allah who says: ‘They will not harm you except for [some] annoyance’ (Quran, Sura 3:111, translation Sahih International)—it is possible that they will harm you. I say to you, it is possible that they will kill us, it is possible that Allah will sentence us to Martyrdom. It is possible that we will be wounded, it is possible that terrorism will be laid on us—‘They will not harm you except for [some] annoyance’—but in the end, ‘and if they fight you, they will show you their backs’ and the conclusion—‘then they will not be aided’ (Quran, Sura, 3:111, translation, Sahih International). We ask for victory more than we ask for life. We ask for the strengthening of our people in this good and blessed land.”

Shlomi Eldar summarises this exhortation to martyrdom:

“The entire Hamas system worked to promote and advance the theme of martyrdom. It emerged as its greatest weapon and, unfortunately, the most effective and destructive weapon that the movement had, too. Preachers in mosques used their sermons to speak about the importance of martyrdom (fi sabil Allah, “in accordance with Allah’s will”), until many people throughout the West Bank and Gaza sincerely believed that Allah wanted to be sanctified through the sacrifice of believers’ lives, and that only through martyrdom could they prove their loyalty and their faith.”

Risking death for the sake of martyrdom — rather than leaving a declared danger zone for safer waters - has become a religious obligation for many Gazans.

The psychological platform is evidenced by Hamas’s Ministry of Interior spokesman Iyad Al-Buzum calling on its civilian population on 12 July to ignore Israel’s warnings and remain in their homes in spite of the danger:

“The [Hamas] Ministry of the Interior and National Security calls on our honorable people in all parts of the [Gaza] Strip to ignore the warnings [to vacate areas near rocket launching sites before Israel bombs them] that are being disseminated by the Israeli occupation through manifestos and phone messages, as these are part of a psychological war meant to sow confusion on the [Palestinian] home front, in light of the [Israeli] enemy’s security failure and its confusion and bewilderment.”

One day later the same spokesman issued another similar warning:

“Answering the occupation’s calls will merely aid it in carrying out its plans to weaken the [Palestinian] home front and to destroy property and homes as soon as you leave them. We call on all our people who have left their homes to return to them immediately.”

Kim Sengupta concludes:

“Hamas can, however, be accused of making people complacent, repeatedly stating in the media that the Israeli warnings were psychological games and asking the population to ignore them. Some mentioned this as a reason for staying behind; returning home having initially left.”

The counter-argument to that was the need to prevent panic spreading.

The discovery of the extensive network of cement strengthened tunnels throughout Gaza - with many already located snaking into Israel and in and under thousands of residential dwellings—has posed a major problem for Israel in completing its military objectives.

Staying in their homes risking possible death to achieve martyrdom or alternatively succumbing to propaganda falsely promoting a fools paradise on earth has been spectacularly exploited by Hamas.

Respect for life has become the real victim.

The West Bank - Terrorize or Jordanize?

[Published May 2007]

Gaza has become a basket case as Arab kills Arab in a fight for power and control between Fatah and Hamas.

Simultaneously Kassam rockets are being fired indiscriminately from Gaza into civilian population centres in Israel inviting retaliation by Israel that has so far been remarkably restrained but threatens to erupt into all out war.

Gaza’s population has become totally dysfunctional embracing a culture of death and martyrdom rather than engage in the project of nation building following Israel‘s unilateral withdrawal in 2005.

A Mickey Mouse look alike cartoon character called Farfur stars in a children’s television show exhorting young viewers to look forward to Islam dominating the world, one in three men carries a gun, and a bewildering number of armed groups roam the streets at will in an environment of complete lawlessness.

Murders, kidnappings and torching of public buildings are happening with regular frequency.

Now the web site Debkafile has reported (May 21) that Hamas military chief Mohammad Jabari has instructed all West Bank cells to launch suicide attacks in Israeli towns forthwith and that sniper teams should target roads on the West Bank as well as Jerusalem and the Sharon district in Israel.

Not one word protesting such a call to arms has been heard from Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, or Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

The West Bank’s Arab residents now face a real dilemma as a result Jabari’s proclamation, which comes precisely at the time that Jordan’s King Abdullah has been taking tentative steps to re-enter the West Bank, which it last occupied between 1948-1967.

Jordan is the key to resolving the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank - just five per cent of historic Palestine and the only area remaining unallocated between the Arabs - who currently hold 78% called Jordan and Gaza - and the Jews - who currently hold 17% called Israel.

Jordan ceded all claims to the West Bank in 1988. At that time Jordan’s then monarch, King Hussein, in an address to the nation on 31 July 1988 said this action was “taken only in response to the wish of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the prevailing Arab conviction that such measures will contribute to the struggle of the Palestinian people and their glorious uprising”

That decision has turned out disastrously for the Arab residents of Gaza and the West Bank, who have seen their hopes and aspirations wrecked on the dreams of a leadership that has always had the destruction of the State of Israel as its goal, despite frequently claiming that it had abandoned that policy.

Brought back to Gaza and the West Bank in 1994 from exile in Tunisia where they had been plotting and murdering since being expelled from Lebanon in 1982 to which they had gone after being driven out of Jordan in 1970, that leadership including Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, has turned “the glorious uprising” into a bewildering number of lost opportunities in the last 13 years to cement a peace treaty with Israel and end the Arab-Israel conflict.

The insistence of that leadership that Israel surrender every square inch of Gaza and the West Bank to them to allow the creation of a second Arab State in Palestine -in addition to Jordan - with Jerusalem as its capitol, as well as allowing millions of Arabs to go and live in Israel, have proved to be stumbling blocks that were and will always be incapable of resolution.

What then should happen with the Arab populations of Gaza and the West Bank?

Unless there are radical changes in Gaza, it will continue to be a hotbed of rejectionism and hatred of Israel. The population has become so traumatised by the ongoing struggles of the last 13 years that it is impossible to see how moderation and reason can prevail that will lead to the inhabitants breaking the pattern of hatred and violence that has become a feature of every aspect of their lives.

The West Bank Arabs have better choices as Israel has kept a tighter lid on the development of terrorist cells, armed gangs and the smuggling and supply of weapons to the region.

The just announced arrest by Israel of a Palestinian Cabinet Minister and 32 other Hamas leaders in the West Bank signals a determined approach by Israel to maintaining that policy.

No one should be complacent. The situation in the West Bank could well explode if Jabari’s path of terrorism is heeded. Its prevention will require the wholehearted co-operation of the population in exposing those who would seek to impose on the population the same kind of misery and suffering presently occurring in Gaza.

Jordan is now poised to return to centre stage in the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority loses all semblance of control and the two state solution proposed by the Quartet and the Arab League involving the creation of a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel slowly sinks into oblivion.

Jordan offers the best hope to end the Israeli occupation of the Arab populated areas of the West Bank.

Jordan is the most suitable negotiating Arab partner to resolve with Israel - within the framework of their existing peace treaty - the competing claims by Jews and Arabs to sovereignty in the West Bank.

The Arab League and the Quartet need to understand that the West Bank in 2007 is a vastly different place to what it was in 1988 or 1994 and need to actively support and encourage Jordan to enter into and assume sovereignty over the Arab populated areas of the West Bank within the boundaries of an expanded state of Jordan.

The Arab residents of the West Bank now have a stark choice to make - become citizens of Jordan or heed Jabari’s advice and proceed down the path of madness and terrorism taken by their Gaza brethren.

To terrorize or Jordanize? - that is the question.