A few days ago a horrific incident took place in Gaza City. Few media outlets published the news, and strangely, no one commented on the incident. Two brothers in the impetuosity of youth set their bodies on fire in protest against the inhumane treatment by the Hamas authority toward them and their families. Fortunately for the families of the two young men, some passersby extinguished the bodies before it was too late. The brothers and their families make their living from a brick factory the family had built years earlier on Musha'a land belonging to the Gaza municipality. The family had leased the land from the state and works hard to feed its children, as is the case for hundreds of thousands of families in occupied Palestine.
Several weeks ago they received a letter from the Hamas authority calling on them to vacate the plot of land, because the Hamas authority intends to build a mosque on it. The brothers expressed their objection and tried to convince the officials that their families' fate was tied to continuing work in the factory, and they appealed to those close to the decision-makers, but without result. The benefactor who donated the construction of the mosque insisted on his position, as did the Hamas authority, which insists on rewarding the benefactor who donates the building of a house of God without any other considerations. God and his house, according to the law of the Brotherhood, come before every consideration!
It is possible that the Hamas authority acted within the law! But we see that this action is characterized by an absence of both responsibility and humanity, and it is not an isolated, orphaned act, but an additional link in a chain of successive and intensified attempts to Islamize society according to the Hamas vision and agenda – and this agenda, in any case, is among the most important pillars of the ideologies of the Muslim Brotherhood in general, not only in Palestine. Also, the ”vice police” operating in the Gaza Strip – as the forces enforcing Islamization are called, for purposes of camouflage – are merely an additional means of realizing and imposing the Brotherhood way of life on society by force and bullying. Add to these practices, for the same purpose, that the Hamas authority and its apparatuses after the coup enacted laws alien to Palestinian society, its customs and its ancient heritage – such as those forbidding women from smoking the water pipe in public places, and others forbidding listening to certain types of youth music, forbidding the mixing of genders at weddings and in restaurants, and monitoring beach recreation areas, all the way to forbidding and pursuing young people if they wear certain types of jeans. The Hamas authority has also instructed its security forces to pursue violators of public morality and those who offend the Islamic way of life. Hamas has tried, even before taking power, at times through enticement and at other times through intimidation, to force Palestinian society to abandon its ancient heritage and its free way of life and move to living in a regressive Brotherhood style – as if they had learned nothing from history or from the experiences of other peoples who went down this path and destroyed their societies and civilization in the name of religion and religiosity. And although the Hamas authority was forced, under repeated popular pressure, to retreat from a number of repellent laws and directives, the visitor to the Gaza Strip today clearly notices the social changes that have been imposed on society by the Hamas authority.
Returning to the topic of this article: the exaggerated mosque construction likewise corresponds to the Brotherhood philosophy of Islamizing society by force. The number of mosques in Gaza has doubled in the last two decades to more than 1,200 mosques, compared with their number in 1967, which was limited to 200 mosques. It is also worth noting that during this period – from the beginning of the occupation until today – the number of new classrooms built in the Strip has doubled only once, while the number of mosques has increased fivefold!
The attempt of the aforementioned brothers to resist the decision of the Hamas authority and save their families' sole source of livelihood is another rejection of the practices of forced Islamization and a loud cry of ”Enough!” in the face of the Hamas theorists. The brothers' protest by self-immolation is another demonstration against the Brotherhood way of life, and a gesture of endorsement and support for Palestinian heritage and the legendary steadfastness of Gaza and the authentic Arab way of life that the Zionist occupation, despite its power, failed to break.
This attempt, despite its tragedy, is conclusive proof that the priorities of the Palestinian people differ completely from those retrograde Brotherhood-Hamas ones. Faith, piety and worship are all spiritual, personal matters directly between the Creator, mighty and exalted, and his servants on earth. That is how God wanted them, and that is how he sent them down to us in his heavenly books. The attempts of Islamic groups like the Brotherhood, the Salafists and others to play the role of the legitimate and sole representative of the Creator's desire on earth and to fix his will are nothing but distortion and falsification of the will of God, mighty and exalted, and of his capacity for spiritual communication with his servants. Faith, piety, worship and love of goodness for others need no intermediary and do not need the thousands of houses of worship, and we believe without the slightest doubt that children's bread and the safety of the family are more important to the Creator, mighty and exalted, than edifices costing millions!
Yes, brothers in Hamas: we are, first of all, Palestinians, then Arabic-speaking Arabs, and then Muslims and Christians. These are the gradations of Palestinian national identity that we have defended for more than sixty-five years against attempts to erase and falsify them, and we will defend, until our last breath, against every attempt to distort and falsify them.
