For the past two or three months various people have asked me for recommendations on what to read, re: Palestine and/or Hamas. This is a difficult question for me to answer, if for no other reason than Though I am flattered folks ask me, I am by no means an expert on Palestine, and others are far more qualified than I to speak on and make recommendations on the subject. But also, things in Palestine are complex and move quickly, so though there are a handful of decent texts out there for Western digestion, almost all of them are out of date to some degree before its even published. Ill use for example the works of the late Edward Said, who arguably was one of the most instrumental, articulate and critical voices for the Palestinian cause, his texts are almost all a decade or more old, none of which deal directly with Islamist movements or Gaza, and he himself takes a sophisticated,but secular intellectual position, thus I cannot in good faith say, Read Said, then you will be up to date! Its simply untrue. Simultaneously however, current events dictates a historic, and regional understanding of the Palestinian conflict cum resistance, regional geopolitical dynamics, and a contextual and conceptual understanding of Islam, not just as religion or cultural form but as resistance itself. Pair these two factors with understanding the Zionist Project of Israel, and the various phases of Palestinian resistance over a period at a minimum beginning in 1967, 1948, or WWI and the fall of the Caliphate, rise of the House of Saudi, the Ikwhan-I-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) and the overt European colonization of the region to demarcate nation-states, and what folks ask becomes a near impossible task to simplify into a singular recommendation, comment or brief. As a friend of mine once put it: Wow, Anthony you just gave me an entire modern history of the Middle East in an 8 hour car ride! If only that were true, though such a conversation did occur, that same conversation explained very little about how Islam itself functioned and the foundations of resistance and being in the world it creates, which is absolutely integral in not only understanding Hamas, and resistance in Gaza, but to understanding how and why a 9/11 and/or a War on Islam (Terror) not only has, but must occur. And even the tail end of my previous statement is heavily loaded and difficult to unpack without a lot of topical literacy, and all of this is precisely why I shared Abdel Malik Alis recent post regarding the secularization of resistance in Palestine by the uninitiated, uncritical, and intentionally misleading. What needs to be understood, first and foremost is that Hamas is Islamist and Gaza supports and embraces them unequivocally. Hamas furthermore is not alone, all of the truly armed wings of contemporary resistance be them affiliated with Fatah or not are Islamists. By that, I do not mean these happen to be Muslims in resistance, I mean to say the resistance is straight up, Jihadist and you, as someone curious or trying to understand cannot and will not get it until you accept and digest this and break through your requisite Islamophobia. You have to understand Islam not as some deviancy of the crazed, but as the foundations of all cultural life in the region, and the total embodiment of resistance to Zionist Occupation, of all types. The likes of Hezbullah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas to name but four all dont just make Islam central to their resistance, but are birthed from the very ontology and historical specificity of Islam as resistance itself. The same notion can be argued about most if not all the various movements and organizations in upheaval and targeted by the War on Terror be them considered deviant or not. This artificial notion of good versus bad Muslims obfuscates the incapacity and handicap of secular logic to not just understand, but to conceptualize beyond the orientalist fantasy image of the Islamic other and place it into its own self determinate framework of struggle. Even Leftists need to de-Islamify the resistance from its so called religious foundations in order to find it palatable, the problem with this outcome is that its an utterly artificial construction, that distorts the reality into a more acceptable fantasy image in favor of embracing a foundationally racist, prejudicial, imperialist gaze of the Islamic world. This gaze, is in and of itself Zionist, its just Secular Zionist. What I have written thus far just outlines the problems for the most part. Not the actualities, nor the necessary language and ponderings needed to make sense of Gaza, Palestine,nor Resistance itself. Allow me to give you an example, if this were the 1970s we wouldnt be talking about Islamic Resistance in the formal sense to whichI am referring to it now, though it was most definitely there. What we would have been talking about in that era is nationalist movements and/or decolonization. In Palestine, this is the era of the PFLP (Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine), (Al) Fatah, Black September, and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) which is/was Fatah, all of which is its own convoluted set of histories. To understand the present, without getting too deep into the details of it, is to understand how, by, and with whom Islamic movements and organizations emerged and were used as leverage against and as a counter weight to the Marxian (Socialist) Nationalist ambitions by Western powers and their proxies during the Cold War era. It is to understand how and why yesterdays allies are now todays enemies and vice versa. It is to understand why Fanon, got it wrong, missing the elephant in the room - Islam. Why Islamists are/were repressed, violently so in post-Colonial nations like Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the like. Why it is that this admixture of propaganda, double speak, and misinformation is necessary to waylay critical understanding why and how things actually have worked on the ground. In simpler terms, if you dont understand why Anwar Al Sadat was assassinated by Islamists, or why Gamal Abdel Nasser and the CIA needed the Muslim Brotherhood as an ally to dethrone King Farouk. Why the Hizbullahi volunteered to leave Iran and go to Lebanon, and why today they have made an open declaration of alliance and support for Hamas, then you cannot and will not understand what is going on today, as all of this history is deeply intertwined. There is no such thing as an objective view, some kind of nonimmersive posture you can take to stare down on and soak in whats going on Palestine without understanding how it interacts with and develops from the regional whole and its history. What you can attempt to do instead is not antiseptically look up the ideology of Hamas, or what have you, but instead read Islamic sources for their development, try and get terminologically grounded. What is the fiqh of/behind Hamas, what are its tactical and strategic military options and conditions for combat operations? What does Urban Guerrilla/Tunnel warfare look like? What do these things like Taqwa, Tawheed, Ibadah, Iman, Ramadan, Shaheed, Muslimeen, Jihad, jahillyiah, dunyah, etc., etc., etc. mean within their Arabic origins. The serious Muslims reading this already know and many are uncomfortable with what I just wrote now, because they know precisely what these things mean, and how far short they come to fullfilling their obligations when contrasted to the likes of those struggling in Palestine. Others, will read this and go Right on brother! Folks really dont get this? No, brother, they do not. The Western paradigm of understanding is such that it must soften, reframe, and secularized all it engages with, this is that moderate Muslim you hear about, those folks in the suit and tie, and without a hijab, who constantly flounder for yet another mechanism to explain away a luxury or deviancy they enjoy all the while knowing its completely contrary to all they claim to practice and believe. I dont mean to say this to pass judgment, I mean to say that someone offering you a bunch of convenient secular answers to the cause and situation of Palestine, right now, is straight up lying to you or a fool. You asked me what to read, to understand, start with the Quran, then we can really start to talk, cause anything else is just superficial shallow pretext, and you simply wont ever get it.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 15:03:52 +0000
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