Exorcisms and charlatans flourish in impoverished Gaza
The shabby room in a one-story house in suburban Gaza was shrouded in darkness, and only the mutterings of a bearded exorcist broke the silence. A man lay stretched on a grubby mattress, writhing, as the faith healer recited Koranic verses to chase away an evil spirit. “Get out, you demon,” the exorcist, who calls himself Sheikh Ali, threatened the spirit. “Get out or I will burn you.”
There are a lot of demons to chase in this poverty-riddled Palestinian enclave, say a growing number of Koranic exorcists who have set up shop in Gaza, offering to end the torments of their sometimes highly disturbed patients. The growth of exorcist clinics is seen by some as a sign of rising religious fervour among ordinary Palestinians. Hamas, the Islamic militant group that runs Gaza, however, is increasingly concerned that many exorcists are simply charlatans.
Nobody knows how many exorcists are here, but Hamas investigators say they uncovered 30 cases of fraud last year alone. There have also been complaints that healers are using dark magic to cast spells on their clients, and the police say they have found evidence of sexual abuses committed during these sessions.
“We caught some suspects red-handed, practicing exorcism, using magic to separate married couples and other things, under the pretext of helping people,” said Lieut. Col. Abdel-Baset Al-Masri, head of Hamas’s police investigation unit. “It was all an act of deception and exploitation. Some people handed over fortunes and one woman gave all her jewellery to one of these exorcists.”
The idea of demonic possession exists in many religions, and belief in the existence of demons and spirits, known as jinns, is widespread among Muslims, but many mainstream clerics doubt they can possess the human body, and disapprove of the work of the so-called Koranic clinics. Sheikh Ali begs to differ. He says jinns can wreak havoc on human relations, driving a wedge between married couples or causing women to be infertile, and he says his work shows they can also take up residence in a human body.
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Don’t preach to us, Hamas tells secular West
The West is floundering in immorality and has no right to criticise the Islamist movement Hamas over the way it governs the Palestinian territory of Gaza, a veteran leader of the militant group said. Hamas strategist Mahmoud Al-Zahar told Reuters in an interview that Islamic traditions deserved respect and he accused Europe of promoting promiscuity and political hypocrisy.
“We have the right to control our life according to our religion, not according to your religion. You have no religion, You are secular,” said Zahar, who is one of the group’s most influential and respected voices.
“You do not live like human beings. You do not (even) live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticise us?” he said, speaking from his apartment building in the densely populated Mediterranean city.
Hamas, which is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement and means “zeal” in Arabic, won a fair, 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election and then seized control of Gaza in 2007 after routing rival forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Sitting in a cavernous reception room, with an old Mercedes saloon car parked in one corner, Zahar denounced European states, such as France, for recently barring Muslim women from wearing full face veils in public.
“We are the ones who respect women and honour women … not you,” he said. “You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don’t know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women.”
French mosque reopens after protest disruptions
A French mosque, whose imam says he has received death threats over his promotion of dialogue with Jews, reopened for Friday prayers after it was forced to close down this week due to disruptive protests. The mosque in Drancy, a suburb to the north of Paris, has been the focus of tension for weeks with a small group of protesters keeping up a noisy barrage of criticism against the imam Hassen Chalghoumi.
“We’ve been facing really enormous pressure for five or six weeks now,” Chalghoumi told reporters before Friday prayers. “We want peace, we want calm. These people aren’t welcome here.”
As Chalghoumi spoke, a group of around 30 protesters from a group named after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the Palestinian Hamas movement, gathered outside the fence of the mosque, facing off with fluorescent-vested security staff preventing them from entering.
The problems at the Drancy mosque have underlined the volatile mix of prejudice, integration problems and fears over radical Islamist extremism that have often plagued France’s large Muslim community.
Read the whole article here or the report for our French-language service by my colleague Elizabeth Pineau.
from AxisMundi Jerusalem:
Palestinian Non-Alcoholic Beer
The fifth annual Palestinian Oktoberfest was held on October 3rd and 4th, at the mainly Christian town of Taybeh, West Bank. Located several kilometers north of Ramallah, Taybeh, is home to the first and only Palestinian beer - Taybeh Beer. Established in 1995, Taybeh Beer can also be found abroad, being sold and distributed in Germany, the United Kingdom and even Japan.
The two-day beer festival celebrates the town's now famed beverage and markets other local Palestinian products such as olive oil, honey, and embroidery to international visitors, as an effort to boost the Palestinian economy.
This year's Oktoberfest boasted a diverse program featuring Brazilian and Greek bands and traditional Japanese dancers. Organizers expected more than 10,000 visitors, a new record.
But what truly marks this Oktoberfest is that this year's is the first to serve Taybeh beer's new non-alcoholic line: Taybeh Halal, launched this year.
To beer enthusiasts and/or beer purists, serving the non-alcoholic kind at an Oktoberfest may sound sacrilegious. At an Oktoberfest in the West Bank where Muslims form the majority, however, having Taybeh Halal could address a wider clientele for those banned by religion from drinking alcohol.
Nadim Canaan Khoury, the Christian owner of the Taybeh Brewery, began preparing for the alcohol-free beer immediately after Hamas Islamists' landslide win in the January 2006 parliamentary election. He changed the trademark gold bottle labels to green, the colour of Islam, for the non-alcoholic version. Khoury has not officially been approached by Hamas, but according to a Hamas official Taybeh Halal is just not enough.
In a heated debate on the BBC Arabic TV channel, aired on the opening night of the Taybeh Oktoberfest, a Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri called Palestinian Authority Economy Minister Bassem Khoury's government "alcoholic". Masri argued that brewing was illegal in the Palestinian territories, though that is not an interpretation widely understood outside of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Minister Khoury retaliated and spoke of economic benefits that Taybeh Beer, as an important export, offers Palestinians.
from AxisMundi Jerusalem:
Clash of Islamists the talk of Gaza
Coming home on Sunday after a long day at work, there was still no rest. Several of my neighbours in Gaza were escaping the late evening heat of their apartments to sit outside our building chatting about the previous two days that had seen the bloodiest inter-Palestinian fighting in two years, between forces of the Islamist Hamas rulers of Gaza and gunmen of an al Qaeda-style group. It left 28 people dead.
Knowing I'ma journalist, and discovering that I had been at the scene of the clashes, down in the south of the Gaza Strip at Rafah, the neighbours started bombarding me with their questions. Most of them were confused about what exactly happened between these two groups, which both endorse Islam as a political ideology.
Some of them asked whether the clashes would have a backlash and whether they should keep a distance from Hamas police stations and even restaurants to avoid being blown up by followers of the Jund Ansar Allah (the Warriors of God), whose leader had been killed in the fighting with Hamas security forces.
Most of the neighbors did not condone the radical splinter group's support of the use of force to impose Islamic law on Gaza's community of 1.5 million people, nearly all of whom are Muslim. But some were confused over the religious implications of such clashes with Hamas, which also sees itself as a guardian of Islamic orthodoxy.
"Killing in the name of Islam?" said Mustafa, one of my neighbours, reflecting on the clash of two groups both sure of their beliefs. "But who among the dead will go to heaven and who to hell? Who was the good guy and who was the evil one?"
"Those wanted to establish an emirate," said Abu Hassan, referring to Jund Ansar Allah. "Do you know what that means? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan. That means American warships will sail to Gaza."
Others complained that Hamas itself sometimes seemed no less extreme in its religious views than these small, al Qaeda-like groups. They cited a recent campaign by Hamas's religious affairs ministry in Gaza to encourage women to wear headscarves and adhere to Islamic values. "Hamas police are stopping couples walking in streets and checking their IDs," one of the neighbours complained. "Am I supposed to carry around my marriage certificate whenever I go out with my wife?"
from AxisMundi Jerusalem:
Negotiating with Hamas? Try an Islamic Framework
Since Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal's interview with the New York Times last month, some analysts have sugggested that Hamas is becoming more pragmatic.
This new report from the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), which describes itself as a "nonpartisan, US Congress established and funded organization", seems well timed then.
The report - titled "Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility" - explores the idea that Hamas might be influenced in negotiations by using an "Islamic point of view".
The report suggests that "it is not inevitable that Hamas will accept coexistence" but that "acceptance [of Israel] is more likely if it is framed within its Islamic ideology."
The report's authors - Paul Scham and Osama Abu-Isrhad, Jewish and Muslim respectively - say they have different ideological backgrounds, but agree that negotiations are possible with Hamas if participants are willing to work around Hamas' religious rhetoric, which will not change: "Although Hamas, as an Islamic organization, will not transgress shari‘a, which it understands as forbidding recognition [of Israel], it has formulated mechanisms that allow it to deal with the reality of Israel as a fait accompli. These mechanisms include the religious concepts of tahadiya [short-term calming period] and hudna [longer-term truce] and Hamas's own concept of "Palestinian legitimacy."
Scham and Abu-Irshaid are not the first to make arguments based on taking advantage of Hamas' political pragmatism. In a recent article by Marc Lynch, whose blog appears on Foreign Policy online, Lynch encourages what he sees as steps by Obama to separate Hamas' Islamist ideology and its use of violence. He states the need for understanding "important distinctions among Islamists and that the use of violence, not Islamist ideology per se, should be what matters."
A report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy disagrees with that approach. It argues that all extremist Islamist ideology should be considered a threat, even if it is nonviolent, because they can be "conveyor belts" which "lay the groundwork for the toxic message" of violent groups.
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