Is Hamas Waging a Religious War?

Recently the Hamas politician Fathi Hammad went on TV to proclaim that the organization’s next step would be to declare a caliphate—a concept that the Islamic State had all but trademarked for its use in jihadist circles. The caliphate would be based in Jerusalem. Hammad also took aim at Muslim rivals (another ISIS obsession) and called for the ouster of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a secular figure. By invoking caliphates and gunning for Abbas, Hammad turned toward a different kind of warfare, religious not only in rhetoric but also in its specific goals. The shift was so noteworthy that it was featured by MEMRI, the monitoring service that specializes in publicizing the most cringey and embarrassing rhetoric from Arab media.

Not much, broached this touchy subject in a recent article. “None of the international coverage and commentary on Hamas’s massacre in Gaza border communities, and the war it triggered, has addressed its religious aspects,” he wrote. Hamas’s fighters incessantly invoke God and use religious language, and at some point one must “take them at face value” and “listen to what they actually say.” Like Zionism, he wrote, Hamas is “rooted in religion,” and that makes the present conflict “fundamentally religious.”