The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement

Summary

The 18 August 1988 covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS): its programme is Islam, it is a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, Palestine is an Islamic Waqf that no one may give up in whole or part, peaceful solutions and international conferences contradict its principles and “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad”, liberation is an individual duty of every Moslem bound to the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic circles, the Palestine Liberation Organization is closest to its heart but its secular idea cannot be exchanged for Islamic Palestine, and under Islam the followers of Islam, Christianity and Judaism can coexist — a programme held together by extensive Koran and Hadith quotation and by a history in which the Crusaders and Tatars were defeated only under the Islamic banner (The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, lines 1-480).

What the file is

The Avalon Project reproduction headed “Hamas Covenant 1988”. An introduction and 36 numbered articles — with no Article Twenty-Nine heading in either the text copy or the HTML original, the unnumbered section E following Article Twenty-Eight and numbering resuming at Article Thirty (see Open questions) — about 9,235 words; 480 lines in the text copy (the last line empty) including the Avalon navigation menus at the head and the Lillian Goldman Law Library footer (copyright 2008, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511) at the tail. The text is clean and legible throughout. Wording recorded as printed includes “Islamic aqf” in the Article Eleven heading (the W of Waqf dropped), “individual duty for very Moslem” in Article Fourteen, “al Kissam” for al-Qassam in Article Seven, “General Guru” in Article Fifteen, “educaters” in Article Thirty, “eminating” in Article Thirty-Two, and the al-Banna epigraph whose opening quotation mark is missing. Koran and Hadith quotations are given throughout in an archaic English translation, each credited in the text to its sura name or relator. No translator, adoption record or signatories are given in the file.

Section by section

• Epigraphs and Introduction (lines 29-69). Koran Al-Imran verses 109-111; a saying of Imam Hassan al-Banna, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”; and Sheikh Amjad al-Zahawi on the Islamic world on fire. The Introduction traces the nucleus formed amid troubles and suffering to the Movement’s emergence, arms intertwined with all fighters for the liberation of Palestine; the Covenant clarifies its picture, identity, stand, aims and hopes. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” The Movement is one squadron to be supported by more squadrons from the Arab and Islamic world. Hamas means strength and bravery (Al-Mua’jam al-Wasit).
• Articles 1-8, definition (lines 71-138). Article One: “The Movement’s programme is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man.” Article Two: it is “one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine”; the Brotherhood is a universal organization and the largest Islamic movement in modern times. Articles Three-Four: its structure is Moslems who fear Allah and raise the banner of Jihad against the oppressors; it welcomes every Moslem who follows its programme and keeps its secrets. Article Five: in time it goes back to the birth of the Islamic message, “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its example and the Koran is its constitution”; in place it is anywhere there are Moslems. Article Six: “a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned.” Article Seven: universal, and “one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood”, continuing through the 1948 war and Brotherhood Jihad operations in 1968 and after; it quotes the Hadith of the Jew hiding behind stones and trees, the Gharkad tree excepted (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem). Article Eight, the slogan: “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”
• Articles 9-10, objectives (lines 144-154). The Movement arose when Islam disappeared from life, homelands were usurped and justice vanished; its objectives are fighting and vanquishing the false so justice prevails, homelands are retrieved and the state of Islam is established. It will back the oppressed and support the wronged in word and deed everywhere it can reach.
• Articles 11-13, strategies (lines 158-194). Article Eleven: “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.” No Arab country, king, president or organization, Palestinian or Arab, has the right to give it up; the same law governs any land Moslems conquered by force, on the precedent of Caliph Umar bin-el-Khatab leaving conquered Syria and Iraq with their owners for its fruit while ownership was consecrated. Article Twelve: nationalism is part of the religious creed; when an enemy treads Moslem land, resisting is the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female — a woman may fight without her husband’s permission, a slave without his master’s. Article Thirteen: “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Before that: “Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight.” Conferences set the infidels as arbitrators over Moslems; “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” After the Jihad sentence: “The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”
• Articles 14-19, the three circles, Jihad, education, women and art (lines 196-258). Article Fourteen: liberation is bound to the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic circles; Palestine has the first of the two kiblahs, the third of the holy sanctuaries and the point of departure for Mohamed’s midnight journey, so liberation is an individual duty for every Moslem. Article Fifteen: on the day enemies usurp Moslem land Jihad is every Moslem’s individual duty; Islamic consciousness and the spirit of Jihad must be diffused, and school curricula cleansed of the ideological invasion traced to orientalists and missionaries after the Crusaders’ defeat by Salah el-Din — Allenby on entering Jerusalem, “Only now have the Crusades ended”, and General Guru at Salah el-Din’s grave, “We have returned, O Salah el-Din”, are given as its fruit. “Imperialism has helped towards the strengthening of ideological invasion, deepening, and still does, its roots. All this has paved the way towards the loss of Palestine.” And: “It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” Article Sixteen: Islamic education of the generations side by side with comprehensive study of the enemy, his capabilities, weakness, strength and supporting forces. Articles Seventeen-Eighteen: the Moslem woman is “the maker of men”, guiding and educating the new generations; enemies target her through campaigns, films and curricula using lackeys infiltrated through Zionist organizations such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and espionage groups, “cells of subversion and saboteurs”; in the fighting family’s home she rears children in Islamic values and religious duties, attends to girls’ schooling, and practises housekeeping economy. Article Nineteen: Islamic art, judged by its regulations against pre-Islamic (Jahili) art, is a requirement of ideological mobilization in book, article, bulletin, sermon, thesis, poem, ode, song and play; “All this is utterly serious and no jest, for those who are fighters do not jest.”
• Articles 20-22, mutual responsibility and the forces behind the enemy (lines 260-292). Article Twenty: Moslem society is mutually responsible; the enemy, acting “in a way similar to Nazism, making no differentiation between man and woman, between children and old people”, uses collective punishment, breaking bones, shooting at women, children and old people, detention camps, house demolition and deportation, “a kind of murder”; the people must face it as a single body. Article Twenty-One: members extend financial or moral assistance to all in need, consider the masses’ interests their own and share their joy and grief. Article Twenty-Two: the enemies amassed wealth and with their money “took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others”, stirred revolutions including the French and Communist revolutions, formed secret societies such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions to sabotage societies, controlled imperialistic countries and instigated colonization; they were behind World War I (destroying the Islamic Caliphate, obtaining the Balfour Declaration, forming the League of Nations), World War II (armaments gains, paving the way for their state, replacing the League with the United Nations and Security Council); “There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” The imperialistic forces of the Capitalist West and Communist East support the enemy in turns.
• Articles 23-28, attitudes to movements, the PLO and Arab countries (lines 294-362). Articles Twenty-Three-Twenty-Four: other Islamic movements are viewed with respect, considered a fund for the Movement; slandering individuals or groups is not allowed, though erroneous stands may be expounded objectively. Articles Twenty-Five-Twenty-Six: Palestinian nationalist movements are respected and encouraged so long as they give allegiance neither to the Communist East nor the Crusading West; the Movement seeks no material gain or fame, assures them of support, unity and no side disagreements, and discusses new situations objectively. Article Twenty-Seven: “The Palestinian Liberation Organization is the closest to the heart of the Islamic Resistance Movement. It contains the father and the brother, the next of kin and the friend.” But the PLO adopted the secular state under ideological invasion; “Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology”; “we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea”; “The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers, and fuel for its fire that will burn the enemies”; until then its stand is that of son to father. Article Twenty-Eight: the Zionist invasion relies on secret organizations it gave rise to — Freemasons, Rotary and Lions clubs and other sabotage groups undermining societies and annihilating Islam, behind the drug trade and alcoholism; Arab countries surrounding Israel are asked to open their borders to fighters, others to facilitate fighters’ movement; when the Jews conquered the Holy City in 1967 they proclaimed at the Aqsa Mosque, the Covenant says, “Mohammed is dead, and his descendants are all women.”
• Unnumbered section E and Articles 30-33, groupings, intellectuals, other religions and isolation (lines 356-410). Section E (no article heading; see Open questions) hopes nationalist and religious groupings, institutions, intellectuals and the Arab and Islamic world will side with the Movement, supply strategic depth, convene solidarity conferences and mobilize the Islamic nations as when they vanquished the Crusaders and Tatars. Article Thirty: writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, teachers and all sectors are called to their duty; “Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and solidarity - together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah’s banner higher and higher - all these are elements of the Jihad for Allah’s sake.” Article Thirty-One: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement. It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions.” Under Islam the followers of the three religions can coexist in peace and quiet, possible only under Islam; followers of other religions must stop disputing Islam’s sovereignty in the region, for their rule would bring “nothing but carnage, displacement and terror”; Islam confers legitimate rights and prevents incursion on others’ rights. Article Thirty-Two: world Zionism and imperialistic powers remove Arab states one by one from the circle of struggle — Egypt “through the treacherous Camp David Agreement” — aspiring after Palestine to expand “from the Nile to the Euphrates”; their plan, it says, is embodied in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what it is saying; leaving the circle is high treason; the Movement is the spearhead of the struggle with world Zionism. Article Thirty-Three urges Arab and Islamic peoples, governments and groupings to back the Movement with funds until the masses proclaim “Hail to Jihad” and liberation is achieved.
• Articles 34-36, testimony of history and soldiers (lines 412-440). Article Thirty-Four: Palestine is “the navel of the globe and the crossroad of the continents”, target of expansionists since the dawn of history; the Crusaders were defeated and Palestine liberated only after almost twenty years of fighting under Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi and the religious banner; “This is the only way to liberate Palestine.” “Nothing can overcome iron except iron. Their false futile creed can only be defeated by the righteous Islamic creed.” Article Thirty-Five: lessons are drawn from the Crusaders’ defeat by Salah ed-Din and the Tatars’ defeat at Ein Galot by Qataz and Al-Dhaher Bivers; the present Zionist onslaught was preceded by Crusading raids from the West and Tatar raids from the East and can likewise be confronted and defeated. Article Thirty-Six: the Movement seeks no personal fame, material gain or social prominence, competes with no one among its people, acts against no Moslem or peaceful non-Moslem, and considers itself the soldiers of whoever takes Islam as a way of life; it closes in prayer.

Key passages

• “The Movement’s programme is Islam” (Article One).
• “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes” (Article Eight).
• “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day” (Article Eleven).
• “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad” (Article Thirteen).
• “The Palestinian Liberation Organization is the closest to the heart of the Islamic Resistance Movement” (Article Twenty-Seven).
• “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement” (Article Thirty-One).

Evidence the work relies on

A constitutive and programmatic text, not an evidentiary work. It relies throughout on Koran quotations credited by sura name and verse — among them Al-Imran, The Dispute, Joseph, Prophets, Abraham, The Table, The Cow, The Inevitable, The Night-Journey, The Emigration, Lokman, The Confederates, The Family of Imran, Women, The Inner Apartments, The Tried, The Spoils, The Pilgrimage, Those Who Rank Themselves and Al Araf — and on Hadith credited to relators including al-Bukhari, Moslem, al-Tarmdhi, Ibn Maja and Abu-Dawood, including the stones-and-trees Hadith in Article Seven. It invokes sayings of Hassan al-Banna, Amjad al-Zahawi and the poet Mohamed Ikbal, the precedent of Caliph Umar bin-el-Khatab on conquered land in Article Eleven, Allenby’s and General Guru’s sayings in Article Fifteen, the claimed 1967 proclamation at the Aqsa Mosque in Article Twenty-Eight, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Article Thirty-Two, none of them with a source, edition or page given in the file.

Analysis

The Covenant builds every political position from the same premise: because the programme is Islam (Article One), Palestine’s status is a Sharia ruling (Article Eleven), nationalism is creed (Article Twelve), conferences are infidel arbitration (Article Thirteen), relations with the secular PLO are kinship without ideological exchange (Article Twenty-Seven), and coexistence of the three religions is possible only under Islamic sovereignty (Articles Six and Thirty-One). At its centre stands Article Fifteen’s ruling: “It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” Its history is exemplary rather than documented: the 1939 al-Qassam link, the 1948 and 1968 Brotherhood operations, the Crusader and Tatar defeats, and the Article Twenty-Two account of revolutions, world wars, the Balfour Declaration and the United Nations are asserted in the Covenant’s own voice without citation. Its claims about secret societies, media and financial control and the Protocols are likewise presented as the Covenant’s own assertions, recorded here in its own terms. The file gives no translator or adoption record, and its numbering gap at Article Twenty-Nine (see Open questions) limits what can be said about the completeness of the Avalon reproduction itself.

People, organizations, places and events

Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine Liberation Organization, Hasan al-Banna, Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Camp David Accords, Balfour Declaration, Crusades, Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions

Concepts

Jihad, Waqf, Secularism, Zionism, Liberation of Palestine, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Ideological invasion

How it relates to other sources

This is the primary programme against which later ingested accounts of Hamas are read: Hroub’s account in From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine quotes its charter that there is no solution except by Jihad and gives its goal as liberation between the river and the sea rejecting a state that cedes an Islamic endowment; Palestine: A Socialist Introduction Chapter 3 likewise traces Hamas to the Brotherhood’s 1988 political wing and faults it on other grounds. Its Waqf article is the full statement of the framing Palestinian Chicago — Identity in Exile attributes to Islamist movements in Palestine in contrast to AMP. Against the PLO texts it stands as kin and rival at once: the The Palestinian National Charter (1968) makes armed struggle the only way and rejects substitute solutions in a national frame, while this Covenant makes the same rejection in an Islamic frame and addresses the PLO itself in Article Twenty-Seven; Falk’s record in Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope that since 2009 Khaled Mashaal announced the Charter’s whole-Palestine goal was a matter of history, and Hroub’s and Baconi’s accounts of a 2017 amended charter, stand alongside this 1988 text, not over it. Its Article Seven claim that al-Qassam was a Moslem Brotherhood member is noted in Palestine: A Socialist Introduction’s notes as unsubstantiated and historically unlikely, as recorded on Muslim Brotherhood.

Open questions

• No Article Twenty-Nine heading appears in the text copy or the HTML original: the section headed “E. Nationalist and Religious Groupings, Institutions, Intellectuals, The Arab and Islamic World” follows Article Twenty-Eight with no article number, and numbering resumes at Article Thirty. Whether the Avalon reproduction omits a heading or the Covenant as issued numbers it so is not stated in the file.
• The file gives no translator, no adoption or signing record, and no statement of how the English text relates to any Arabic original.
• The file gives no edition of the Koran translation it quotes, against which its sura names and verse numbers could be checked.
• Article Seven dates the chain to “1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam”, while Kanafani and other ingested sources date al-Qassam’s death to November 1935; the discrepancy is the Covenant’s as printed and is not resolved here.
• Article Fifteen names “General Guru” at Salah el-Din’s grave; no further identification is given in the file.
• The al-Banna epigraph’s missing opening quotation mark and the Article Eleven heading “Islamic aqf” are as printed in the Avalon text.

Coverage

lines 1-480 of 480, read in full.