Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles (CAIR-LA), said last week that “he wants American viewers to understand that the conflict is about illegal occupation of land and freedom and not a religious war.” So as to emphasize that these were his words, Ayloush tweeted out that same quote. Will he now retract his words in light of Abbas’s statement? Don’t count on it. Remember: Muhammad said, “War is deceit”!
“Fatah: Abbas presents fighting Israel as religious ‘war for Allah,'” by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, July 24, 2014:
This week, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ended a speech about the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza with a quote from the Quran justifying war. His Fatah party interpreted Abbas’ statement to mean that fighting against Israel is justified on religious Islamic grounds:
“[PA] President [Mahmoud Abbas] concluded his brief speech with the first verse of the Quran that permits Muslims to wage war for Allah.” [Facebook, “Fatah – The Main Page”, July 22, 2014]
Presenting a conflict as a religious war can have dangerous implications. In September 2000, Yasser Arafat said that then-Israeli MP Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount defiled the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He used this claim as a guise to launch the “Al-Aqsa Intifada” (i.e., second Intifada) terror campaign, which led to the deaths of over 1200 Israelis and tourists and 4000 Palestinians.
In 2012 the PA’s highest PA religious leader, the Mufti Muhammad Hussein, presented the killing of Jews by Muslims as a religious Islamic goal….