Why Do Muslims Support the Palestinians?

Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters attend a rally marking the 21st anniversary of the Islamist movement�s creation on December 14, 2008 in Gaza City. In an address to the crowds, Ismail Haniya, the head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, boasted that US President George W. Bush’s administration had failed to defeat his movement, which had only grown stronger. Busloads of demonstrators flooded into Gaza City from across the densely populated coastal strip to hear Haniya’s speech, waving the green flags of the Islamic Resistance Movement. The rally, which Hamas television said drew hundreds of thousands of people, was intended as a show of strength in the Islamists’ standoff with Abbas’s West Bank-based administration.[Images by AFP/Getty Images]

Name of Questioner : John – United Kingdom
Date : 30/Dec/2008
Topic: Human Rights
Name of Counselor : Shahul Hameed

Question :
“Why do Muslims who are not Palestinians and not Arabs get so angry and worked up about what is happening in Gaza (Israel’s air strikes) now? Last time I checked, supporting Palestinians is not the sixth pillar of Islam. ”

Answer

Salam, John.

Thank you for your question.

The answer to the question can be simply put thus: It is because Islam more profoundly than any other religion has taught its followers to be the upholders of justice, that they cannot tolerate the kind of brutal injustice inflicted by the Israelis.

And here is Allah’s command about justice:

*{O you who believe! stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you swerve, and if you distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well- acquainted with all that ye do.}* (An-Nisaa’ 4:135)

This verse, among others, emphatically teaches Muslims to establish justice as witnesses for Allah (God). And Allah Almighty warns us against the tendency to follow our own lusts which may prompt us to avoid doing justice.

Ismail Haniyeh’s Message to West [English-Indonesian Translation]

“How many more international treaties and conventions must Zionist Israel breach before it is held accountable?” Haniyeh asked.

CAIRO — Ismail Haniyeh, the sacked premier of the Palestinian national unity government and the de facto premier of Gaza, insists that Israel’s onslaught against the heavily-populated territory is politically-motivated.

“Despite its frantic efforts to conceal it, the root cause of Israel’s criminal war on Gaza is the elections of January 2006, which saw Hamas win by a substantial majority,” Haniyeh wrote in an open letter addressed to the people of the West and published in The Independent on Thursday, January 15.

“What occurred next was that Israel alongside the US and the European Union joined forces in an attempt to quash the democratic will of the Palestinian people,” he stressed.