Islam : rôle de la religion dans le jihad contre Israël, Denis McEoin

"Dans un discours prononcé le 18 décembre 2001 dans son quartier général à Ramallah, le leader palestinien Yasser Arafat a proclamé qu'il était prêt à sacrifier soixante-dix martyrs contre la mort d'un seul Israélien. Le publicrépliqua "Des millions de martyrs sont déjà en marche vers Jérusalem". Le public voulait bien entendu dire "bombes humaines". Mais personne n'a utilisé ces mots, puisque ce n'est pas avec ces termes que les arabophones s'expriment."

Extraits d'un essai de Denis McEoin intitulé "Suicide Bombing as Worship Dimensions of Jihad" paru dans The Middle East Quarterly

"In a speech at his headquarters in Ramallah on December 18, 2001, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat proclaimed he was willing to sacrifice seventy martyrs to bring about the death of a single Israeli. His audience replied "Millions of martyrs are already marching to Jerusalem." They meant suicide bombers, of course. But nobody present used the term, since that is not how Arabic speakers refer to them."

"Religion in the Jihad against Israel

Suicide bombers from Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades cannot be understood as creatures of Palestinian nationalism, as the spawn of the Palestine Liberation Organization or Black September. The religious war against Israel best explains the deep impulses that propel so many young Muslims to choose death for this cause. No other conflict engages international Islamic opinion like this one. "Palestine" has become a rallying cry for Muslims everywhere.

Benny Morris, a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict, correctly argues that it was religion rather than nationalism that inspired the 1948 invasion of Israel. He considers it a mistake to ignore the religious rhetoric that accompanied the 1948 assault by Arab armies. "The 1948 War, from the Arabs' perspective," he writes, "was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory." The Muslim Brotherhood, the mufti of Egypt, Egypt's King Farouk, King 'Abdullah of Transjordan, and many others spoke of a holy war, a jihad against the Jews. It was not a purely nationalist struggle then, nor is it today. The "[violence] did not emerge only from 'modern' nationalist passions; it also drew on powerful religious wellsprings. Nothing, it seemed, could mobilize the Palestinian Arab masses for action more readily than Muslim religious rhetoric and symbols."

Little has changed since the 1940s. With the rise of radical Islam and the expansion of violent recourse, Arab irredentism has continued to have a religious focus, sometimes on "Palestine" and sometimes on the umma, the abstract nation of all Muslims. And it is as Muslims more than as Arabs (or Iranians or Afghans) that today's leading enemies of Israel view the conflict.

Palestinian violence against Israelis is one of the earliest expressions of Islamic rage against modernity. Its most recent manifestation, Hamas, is, according to its 1988 Covenant, "an Islamic resistance movement." Hamas is, in fact, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, still one of the leading forces of Islamic radicalism on the planet. Article one of the covenant starts as follows: "The Movement's program is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgment in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps."

"The idealization of sexual honor and sexual shame carries heavy symbolic weight outside the sphere of family relations. Jehoeda Sofer, author of Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies, quotes a Palestinian Arab as follows: "If the Arabs would have had war with the Israelis using [their] ***s, we would have defeated them easily. The Israelis are a bunch of feminine males who want to be and should be *** by the Arabs.""
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Une bombe humaine palestinienne prête au martyre déclare à la télévision du Hamas: "... et nous savons qu'il n'y de sang qui nous est plus doux que le sang des Juifs."
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- Préface de P.-A. Taguieff à l’ouvrage de Matthias Küntzel, "Jihad et haine des Juifs"
- Nizar Rayan: stratège des "boucliers humains" du Hamas victime de sa propre stratégie, Ely Karmon
- The Mufti of Berlin, Daniel Schwammenthal, The Wall Street Journal