Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Hamas, from awkward questions to inspiring models!

Ahmed Yassin...the martyr sheikh (Al Jazeera)

The experience of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was a turning point and an exceptional event in the history of Islamic movements, and in the course of the Palestinian issue, the details of which he lived through, and whose earth-shattering events of catastrophe, setback, displacement, captivity, and killing were shaped by him. Its political and military leaders await the dawn of comprehensive liberation, and believe that praying in Al-Aqsa for liberation is just around the corner in 2027.

Six months into the brutal global war on Gaza and the Palestinian people, the Hamas movement did not bother to summon and remember its founder on the twentieth anniversary of his martyrdom on March 22, 2004. The anniversary statement stated that the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” with its symbolism and violence, “is one of the fruits of Sheikh Yassin’s preparation and jihad.” .

It also stated that the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza in particular “draw inspiration from his biography and jihadist path, the signs of steadfastness and defense of the land, the preservation of constants, the defense of sacred things, the strategy of accumulating power, the sources of seizing rights and preserving the gains, managing the battle with the Zionist enemy and the thickening of his army, and confronting His aggressive plans, and achieving victory over him.”

Challenge duos

Invoking Sheikh Yassin and praising his experience now is not a matter specific to the Hamas movement alone, as there are indications that a number of Sunni Islamic movements and movements have also begun to summon Sheikh Yassin these days, and recall the success of the Hamas model in reconciling several dualities, the balance between which has remained a challenge for the awareness and reform movements in Islamic world.

Such as the duality of the charisma of the founder and the consolidation of institutionalism in the organization and movement, the duality of the depth of educational support and field effectiveness, the duality of the wisdom of taking into account the constraints of international reality and the courage to deviate from its biased framework when the horizon is blocked, and finally the duality of organizational discipline and spreading the spirit of conscious popular religiosity, in addition to the duality of possessing power and preserving Her campaign discipline.

These critical dualities reared their heads on the members of the Islamic movements when they were surprised by the “Al-Aqsa Flood” with what it represented of preparation, readiness, daring, and redemption, while they were in the throes of the games of the counter-revolutions, and immersed in its deadly propaganda, which almost convinced the Islamists that plodding down to earth and being content with worldly life is an inescapable blow. And the dark reality - which the Abraham Accords, with their Crusader and Zionist load, wanted to impose in the region - is inevitable.

The Islamists did not realize the seriousness of these intoxications and obstacles until after more than four months of fierce war on Gaza, while they were watching the Israeli killing machine destroy innocent people and demolish mosques, universities and hospitals. They were unable to create mass pressure that would lead the people, embarrass the regimes, and stop the aggression, while the The streets of Western capitals are crowded with Palestinian sympathizers and protesters against Israeli barbarism.

In this reality, in which the people of Gaza hugged the sky, and others remained more on the ground, the Islamic masses remembered the sheikh of the martyrs, Ahmed Yassin, and looked at the experience of the Hamas movement with success and satisfaction, and there were many whispers about the usefulness of the advocacy work that the Islamic movements had been doing in the past decades. Politically and socially, while declaring that the tribulations that befell the Islamists and the wars that were waged against them do not justify this absence, nor this relief. All the adversities and wars compared to the adversities of Gaza and the wars against it are insignificant. What distinguishes Yassin and Hamas?

Professor of Knights

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin played a regenerative role for the visionary Islamic jihad, resurrected the spirit of religiosity in Palestine, and rebuilt the Brotherhood thought as the martyr Imam Hassan al-Banna had left it before it was overshadowed by the veils of coercions.

Yahya Al-Sanwar believes that the most prominent transformation brought about by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in the course of the Palestinian cause was his instilling a spirit of challenge, overcoming the fear of the occupier, and preparing for confrontation with the Zionists in the various occupied territories.

In his autobiography, “Thistles and Cloves,” Yahya Al-Sinwar traces the manifestations of overcoming fear with the outbreak of the first intifada. He mentions that with the escalation of demonstrations and general clashes everywhere in Gaza, a young man woke up to the voice of his old father waking him up in the morning to participate in the demonstrations, and the young man wondered to himself, saying: “Who is this who wakes me up to participate in the demonstrations and clashes... My father? My father, who for days had been trembling with fear when he heard that there were some events against the occupation, closed the door on us and prevented us from leaving. What happened in the universe to make this dangerous transformation happen?” (Thistle and Cloves, p. 198).

Al-Sanwar mentioned in his translation of the liberated Qassamese prisoner, Ashraf Al-Baalouji, that the spirit that spread in Gaza and Palestine with the intifada was the spirit that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin instilled in them. As he says about him: “The spirit that God bestowed on us, it came with enthusiasm that ignites souls to transfer them from the victim of the project that It is intended to create groups of mercenaries with which the Jews want to control the region and rule the world, to become vanguards of a comprehensive liberation war, and a precursor to the knights of enthusiasm, to the commandos of glory, to the vanguards of the mujahideen, the makers of life, the lovers of death.” (Ashraf Al-Baalouji, p. 3).

Al-Sinwar and his generation consider Sheikh Yassin “rightly and without dispute a symbol of the image of life that imprinted in the souls of these young people. The flow of giving chases death, eludes him, performs heroics, writes glory with letters of light or fire, or say with letters of pain or hope, or letters of Ahmed Yassin.” ".

According to Al-Sinwar, the crippled sheikh with keen insight and that radiant spirit is “the teacher of the knights, their educator, their pioneer, their symbol, the one who explodes the chivalry in their chests, the heroism in their actions, the enthusiasm in their souls, and the aspiration for glory in their depths, whose act of legend pushed them to chase death and elude it from itself.” (Ashraf Al-Baalouji, p. 3).

This fighting spirit developed after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and became, two decades after his martyrdom, an elaborate martial art that dazzles the world with its good planning and tactics, and attracts the admiration of graduates of ancient military colleges. This is due to the excellence of the Palestinian resistance in “making the fighting human being,” but before the resistance reached this pioneering industry. She went through difficult stages and critical questions that did not deter her from her educational plans and preparatory programs.

Critical questions

This flowing giving, the leaping youth who loves weapons, and the fighter who chases martyrdom and fears death for himself, and worries the enemy on all fronts, was not reformed by God in one night, nor did it come into existence due to an accident. Rather, it is the result of long years of education and preparation preceded by years of discussion and binding consultation. It ruled that confronting the enemy with weapons requires psychological, spiritual, and physical preparation, prolonged bending over the Qur’an, and a prolonged stay in mosques, starting from there to “create a fighting human being” that Hamas has prepared over its decades of preparation.

The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has dominated the Palestinian resistance scene since the first intifada in 1987, preceded by years of embarrassment, berating, and reprimanding on the part of other Palestinian factions. This embarrassment had its greatest impact on the members of the Islamic bloc affiliated with the “Muslim Brotherhood” in Palestine, as the students are always the most energetic, ideological, and proud. By the gains of their parties, the achievements of their groups, and the virtues of their factions.

The student unions in Palestine in the mid-1980s had one question sufficient to embarrass the members of the Islamic Bloc, which was: Where are you, “Muslim Brothers,” regarding the armed resistance? The Brotherhood students at that time used preparation and education as an excuse, and then the embarrassment of the questions forced them to prepare a booklet called: “The Absent Truth,” in which they talked about the Brotherhood’s jihad in 1948, and the jihad of Islamists in general in Palestine from the beginning of its cause until the 1960s.

They added to the booklet an overview of the Jihad family led by Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, and the arrest of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and a group of his brothers in 1984, as Dr. Muhammad Nihad Sheikh Khalil documents in his history of the “Muslim Brotherhood movement in the Gaza Strip.”

Because the absent facts of the past do not fill the voids of the visible present, members of the Islamic Bloc avoided student discussions in general, and with students affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement in particular. Fear of establishing an image of Islamic division in the student community.

The decision to prepare was taken after long discussions inside and outside Palestine. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin traveled to the Jordanian capital, Amman, in 1968 to meet with Dr. Abdullah Bouazza, the representative of the Palestinian Brotherhood in Jordan, and they agreed to begin preparation and postpone armed action until education reached its full extent.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was inclined to begin military action in that distant period, but he adhered to the Commission’s decision and the result of its consultation, and returned to Gaza with his sleeves rolled up in its mosques, calling for an educator to gather the youth and prepare the equipment.

One of the manifestations of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s leadership greatness is that he rushed to implement the Shura decision that contradicted his opinion as if it were his own opinion, and devoted many years of his life to education and preparation until the time came, and the enthusiastic band set off in back and forth, one martyr after another martyr, and one leader succeeded by another until the world woke up on the 7th. October.

Islamists and the flood

The “Al-Aqsa Flood” did not only reveal the weakness of the regimes in the face of enemies, nor the fragility of the Arab and Islamic societies that had been dominated by colonialism and tyranny for many decades, but rather it revealed the wandering of the Islamists and their need for a renewed departure that adjusts the compass, ridicules the inflation of formalism, protects against the dangers of intellectual and psychological penetration, and goes beyond The gray lines of the unjust world, and elevates the values ​​of achievement based on facts that Muslims find when needed.

The dualities - which Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and the Hamas movement succeeded in reconciling their compulsions with other dualities that may concern each country rather than another - Islamists should deal with them forcefully, and look forward, investing in their strengths, which neither enemy nor friend can attack. At the forefront of it is the sincerity of insightful religiosity, the depth of detachment and certainty in what God has, and the awe of asking Him about the loss of generations that gave their lives to Islamic movements. In search of glory and salvation. God is victorious over his affairs.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.