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I'd like to see the source, & context, please. ~~ Nevermind, I've found it, I think; 'Hamas: A Behavioral Profile Roots and Perceptions Hamas' origins have been rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood Society (MB) (jama'at al-ikhwan al-muslimin) in the Gaza Strip and more specifically, in its main embodiment since the late 1970s - al-Mujamma' al-Islami. Under the Egyptian military government in the Gaza Strip (1948-1967), the MB activity was tolerated or repressed along with the policy conducted against the MB in Egypt itself. Thus, following the ban on the MB in Egypt in early 1949, the MB branch in Gaza was reshaped into a religious-educational center under the title Unification Association (jam'iyyat al-tawhid). During the short-lived honeymoon of relations between the Free Officers regime and the MB (1952-1954) the MB in the Strip prospered, attracting many young Palestinians in the refugee camps as well as in Egyptian universities. Yet the new, and long-standing, ban on the MB in Egypt in 1954 - following a MB attempt on Nasir's life--determined the hostile nature of relationship between the Nasirist regime and the MB, leading to the adoption of systematic repression against its leading members in the Gaza Strip as well. This forced the MB in the Strip to assume secret and discrete activity which, along with the pressure of the Arab nationalist wave in the early 1960s, led to the disintegration of the association. Nasir's harsh policy against the MB in Egypt reached the zenith in the aftermath of the coup d'etat attempt in 1965, which led to the arrest of thousands of the association's activists in Egypt, among whom was Ahmad Yasin, later the founder of Hamas.1
The origins of Islamic awakening in historic Palestine were not different from other countries in the Middle East which, since the late 1960s, has demonstrated itself as the most significant ideological, social, and political trend. Contemporary Islamic movements share the ideal of the Prophet's Muslim society, a religious and political community with the shari'a (the Islamic Law) as its sole source of law as well as the norm for individual behavior. Only the boundaries of the community of the faithful (umma) determine the boundaries of political power with no territorial definition for the Islamic state which is to be universal. Yet under this umbrella, mainstream Islamists have assumed typical national character, acquiescing in the existing international order of states and restricting their activity within state boundaries.2 Furthermore, modern radical Islam is highly fragmented within states, represented by political groups, movements, and formal parties that differ in their ideological zealotry, political platform, means, and relations with the ruling elite. Olivier Roy discerned two poles of Islamic thought which had marked contemporary Islamic movements in the 20th century: a revolutionary pole, for whom Islamization of the society is attained through state power, and a reformist pole for whom the advent of the Islamic state is the result of social and political action from bottom up aimed primarily to re-Islamize the society (neofundamentalism).3
One may assume that under the unique circumstances of Jewish domination in Palestine and military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian Islamists would be decisively inclined toward revolutionary political Islam. In reality, however, the MB in the occupied territories oscillated between two main attitudes and strategies of action concerning nationalist vis-a-vis all-Islamic priorities. As of the early 1980s, the Palestinian Islamist spectrum was defined, on the activist-nationalist end, by the Islamic Jihad Movement (harakat al-jihad al-islami) whose main thrust was "armed struggle now" for the liberation of Palestine in its entirety.
The proponents of this approach envisioned the mobilization of Islam in the liberation of Palestine. Until 1987, however, the mainstream of the Palestinian MB followed the universal, normative approach to the issue of Jihad. The representative of this approach was The Islamic Association (al-mujamma' al-islami) which, since its establishment in 1979, constituted the MB's main organization the Gaza Strip. The Mujamma', defined its goals sheerly in terms of individual acommunal work in the fields of preaching and education, health care, charity and social welfare in the spirit of Islamic moral tradition.4
Notes 1. Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 9.
2. See, for example, Hassan A. Turabi, "Islam as a Pan-National Movement", RSA Journal, August-September, 1992, pp. 608-619.
3. Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 24, 77-80.
4. Request for registration of Jam'iyyat Jawrat al-Shams al-Islamiyya (later known as al-Mujamma' al-islami) by Ya'qub 'Uthman Quayq to the Civil Administration, August 4, 1977.
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=11#roots
Thanks for that, eyl, I'll bookmark that & read the rest of it later. :)
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