Some lessons from a Hamas sermon

Here is a sermon given by Halil al-Hayya, member of Hamas' Political Bureau, on September 12. In it, he declares that Israel will never be part of the region, as it has been predestined by Allah to vanish.

While the rhetoric is familiar, there are a couple of interesting points.



The verse he quotes, from the Quran 17:7, actually refers to the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, not a future destruction of Jews in Israel:

[Speaking to the Jews:] So when the second of the warnings came to pass, (We permitted your enemies) to disfigure your faces, and to enter your Temple as they had entered it before, and to visit with destruction all that fell into their power.

This is obvious both from the context of the chapter and from the fact that no one is building a new Temple. Unless the Quran predicts the building of the Third Temple, which it doesn't.

Interestingly, this online translation of the Quran adds the words "in Jerusalem" after the word "Temple." of course, the word Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Quran. but this shows that Muslims know very well that the Temple was there before the Al Aqsa Masque - but they won't admit it to Westerners.

Another point of this sermon is that, contrary to new Hamas claims that it is a national liberation movement, al-Hayya says that Palestine is the "spearhead of the nation." Not the "nation" but a "spearhead - for the entire Muslim 'umma, or, in current parlance, the Caliphate.


(h/t B)