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REPORT ON

THE LEGACY OF THE MARTYR IZZ AL-DIN AL-QASSAM

BY

PROFESSOR SAMI AL-ARIAN¹

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A. INSTRUCTIONS

I have been instructed by Riverway Law to provide a report on matters within my expertise in support of the application to the British Home Secretary to deproscribe Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (‘Hamas’).

The British government has exhibited a lack of understanding and selective reading of the history of Palestine. The purpose of this report is to provide a historical overview of the life and death of Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, after whom the military wing of Hamas is named, and his significance to the continued Palestinian resistance.

B. QUALIFICATIONS

I give this report in my personal capacity.

1. I am the Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and Professor at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University in Turkey.

2. I received my PhD in Computer Engineering in 1986, and was a tenured academic in the US for 17 years receiving best teaching awards at the University of South Florida (1993 and 1994) and several grants, as well as having over forty academic publications to my credit.

3. During my four decades in the US (1975-2015), I founded numerous institutions and publications in the fields of education, research, religion and interfaith, as well as civil and human rights. I was a prolific speaker across many US campuses, especially on Palestine, Islam and the West, and Civil Rights. In 2001, I was named by Newsweek the “premier civil rights activist” in the US for my efforts to repeal the use of Secret Evidence in immigration courts. In 2012, I was profiled by historians in the Encyclopedia of American Dissidents as one of only three Muslims in the US out of 152 dissidents and prisoners of conscience that were included in the series in the past century (along with Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali).  My US story was featured in 2007 in the award-winning documentary US vs. Al-Arian, and in 2016 in the book Being Palestinian.

4. I have written several studies and numerous articles focusing on US foreign policy, Palestine, and the Arab Spring phenomena. My book of poetry on Spirituality, Palestine, and Human Rights Conspiring Against Joseph was published in 2004. I am also the author of The Arab Awakening Unveiled: Understanding Transformations and Revolutions in the Middle East, Washington, DC, American Educational Trust, 2013 (under the pen name Esam Al-Amin), and The United States and Israel: From Enabler to Strategic Partner, IZU Publications, 2019. At CIGA I have edited several books (IZU Publications) including Civil-Military Relations in Muslim Societies; Governance and Political Authority in the Muslim World; and Challenging Apartheid in Palestine; and The Global War on Terror.

THE LEGACY OF THE MARTYR IZZ AL-DIN AL-QASSAM

C. INTRODUCTION

5. By 1987, Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine had created a tinderbox of rampant aggression, daily humiliation, and enforced deprivation in the Palestinian territories. Then came the spark on December 9 after an Israeli military vehicle ploughed into a civilian truck, killing four Palestinian workers and igniting a widespread uprising, or Intifada.² Amid the tumult, a new group emerged, known as the Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah/the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). However, as the initially non-violent nature of the Intifada was met by relentless Israeli aggression, some members of this fledgling Islamic movement turned to violent resistance and were consequently forced into hiding. With nothing left to lose, these fugitives began launching covert attacks on Israeli targets, eventually forming Hamas’ military wing, Kata’ib al-Shahid Izz al-Din al-Qassam or the Qassam Brigades.³

6. Since his martyrdom in 1935, Izz al-Din al-Qassam — the namesake of Hamas’ military wing — has remained an enduring symbol of resistance for Palestinian groups of all political and ideological persuasions. However, it was Hamas who assertively used al-Qassam’s name to claim his legacy as a man who combined a scrupulous religiosity with an unflinching willingness to sacrifice everything for the cause of liberation. Article 7 of Hamas’s 1988 Charter affirms this, identifying al-Qassam as the first iteration of “jihad in confronting the Zionist invasion”⁴, which begins a teleological line leading directly to Hamas.⁵ As this report will demonstrate, an exploration of the life of Izz al-Din al-Qassam reveals how his activism and eventual armed struggle were driven in direct response to a climate of brutality, colonialism and rampant injustice — circumstances that remain startlingly relevant to the present day.

D. FROM SYRIA TO BRITISH MANDATE PALESTINE

7. Born in 1883 in the small coastal town of Jabla in modern-day Syria, al-Qassam grew up during a tumultuous period in the late Ottoman Empire, punctuated by mounting European encroachment, interference, and invasion. After receiving his training as a religious scholar at the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, al-Qassam returned to Syria with a fervent anti-colonial impulse. Fusing both word and action, he organised a battalion to join the resistance to Italy’s invasion of Libya while preaching from the pulpit the imperative of jihad against colonial incursions into Muslim lands.⁶ Later, with the onset of the First World War, al-Qassam volunteered for the Ottoman Army and received full military training after refusing an administrative post, typically filled by members of the ulama (class of religious scholars). Following the Allied victory in Damascus in 1918, his military experience was put to use as he led an insurgency against French rule in Syria. For his troubles, al-Qassam was sentenced to death in absentia by the French occupation in 1920 but subsequently escaped to Haifa in what was by then British Palestine.

8. Al-Qassam arrived in Palestine at a time when the British colonial project to establish a Jewish national home was gaining momentum. The influx of European Jewish settlers and the colonies established by the Zionist movement across the coast and other fertile and strategic regions of Palestine “served to ensure control of a territorial springboard for the domination (and ultimately the conquest) of the country”.⁷ The Palestinian people were fully attuned to Britain’s machinations, and during al-Qassam’s fifteen years in Palestine, they watched on despairingly as the Jewish population swelled more than five fold, from approximately 57,000 in 1919 to about 320,000 by 1935.⁸

E. BUILDING ROOTS IN HAIFA

9. As a port city and al-Qassam’s new home, Haifa was the primary landing centre for Jewish immigrants from Europe, bringing its native residents into close contact with the bourgeoning Jewish community (Yishuv). However, their growing presence also contributed to a downturn in the social and economic fortunes of the Arab Palestinians. While Britain’s industrialisation program transformed Haifa into an industrial hub, Palestinian workers observed a systemic bias from British authorities in favour of Jewish workers and against Arab labour organisations.⁹ This situation, alongside the formation of the Jewish Labour Federation — the Histadrut, prompted Palestinian workers to form “brotherly committees” and organise their own labour movements.

10. Meanwhile, the official representatives of the Palestinian people emerged out of a carefully constructed system of patronage. A select group of families comprised Palestine’s traditional leadership, but their authority was tethered to the British Mandate. A case in point was the creation of the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) in 1921, led by al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni as the grand mufti of Jerusalem.¹⁰ These tenuous hierarchies of leadership generally cooperated with the mandate authorities, and as the situation continued to deteriorate for a landless Palestinian underclass, they attempted in vain to “beseech, petition and beg”¹¹ the intransigent British in the hope of being delivered their aspiration for self-determination and an end to the mandate rule. The polite protestations of the notables in Jerusalem created a disconnect to the struggles of the Palestinian lower and middle classes in places such as Haifa and Nablus, prompting them to seek their own nationalist culture and leadership.

11. In al-Qassam, the disenfranchised of Haifa found a powerful and articulate voice for their accumulating grievances. After working as a teacher at a local school, al-Qassam was appointed the Imam of al-Istiqlal mosque, situated in the heartlands of the dockworkers, railroad mechanics and other manual labourers. His sermons drew in larger and bigger crowds of worshippers, enamoured by his charismatic aura and the moral force of his words, an experience likened to the impact of an earthquake.¹² Al-Qassam’s message resonated not just with dockworkers but also with government clerks, villagers and urbanites who were yearning for a truly representative voice. In no uncertain terms, al-Qassam clarified to the people the root of their anger and disgruntlement — the British and the Zionists. He advocated for organising Palestinian workers into unions to counter economic exploitation; he preached steadfastness in the struggle against colonial oppression, and within a few short years, his sermons would become the fuel of revolution:

“An individual deeply imbued with what we might wish to call the Islamic social gospel and who was struck by the plight of Palestinian peasants and migrants. Al-Qassam’s pastoral concern was linked to his moral outrage as a Muslim at the ways in which the old implicit social compact was being violated in the circumstances of British mandatory Palestine. This anger fuelled a political radicalism that drove him eventually to take up arms and marks him off from the Palestinian notable politicians.”¹³

12. Of key importance, was the central role that Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam played in galvanising the Palestinian people in his locality to understand how they could challenge their dispossession. His charisma and dedication in throwing his lot in with the Palestinians made him a figure they could turn to and rally around.

F. THE INEVITABILITY OF ARMED RESISTANCE

13. In September 1928, Jews praying at the Western Wall brought chairs and placed partitions to separate men from women — a move that violated the Ottoman status quo, forbidding Jews from bringing physical structures into the sacred area.¹⁴ The incident stoked fears over the creeping Zionist threat to the holy sanctuary, which were exacerbated by unabated Jewish immigration. In what came to be known as the Buraq Uprising, the simmering tensions precipitated an eruption of violence in August of 1929, as riots and street battles spread across the country, with scores killed on both sides. For their part, the British inflicted severe punitive measures on the Palestinians, including the execution of three Palestinian activists.¹⁵ This moment fed an overwhelming sense among al-Qassam and others over the futility of cooperation with the British and the growing necessity of armed resistance to stem the accelerating expansion of the Zionist colonial project, particularly threatening the status of the holy sanctuaries in Jerusalem.

14. Matters escalated further by 1931 when the Palestinian press published a report detailing British support in the training and arming of Jewish colonies, an action that Palestinians viewed as a virulent provocation, worsened by British restrictions preventing them from arming themselves.¹⁶ To exacerbate tensions, Zionist labour unions continued to receive preferential treatment from the British Mandate, gaining more jobs and higher pay for Jewish workers at the expense of their Palestinian counterparts already suffering from long-standing deprivation and marginalisation.¹⁷ In response, Palestinians began organising into secret societies that carried out small, targeted acts of resistance against the Zionist project. These covert networks coalesced around the newly formed Young Men’s Muslim Association (YMMA) at al-Istiqlal Mosque, and by 1933, al-Qassam had become president of the national YMMA. This propelled him into the vanguard of the Palestinian resistance but also placed him on the radar of the British authorities, particularly as his sermons increasingly conveyed a call for Jihad in opposition to colonial oppression.

15. In December 1932, three Palestinians from Black Hand — a secret society connected to al-Qassam — launched a bomb attack on the Jewish colony of Nahalal, killing two Jewish settlers and resulting in the arrest of five of its members. One of the accused signed a document under duress confessing to his involvement in the murder but also implicating a list of men, including Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam. This confession added to a larger dossier, linking al-Qassam’s network of secret societies to what the British authorities claimed was “a campaign of terror” against the Yishuv in the aftermath of the Buraq Uprising¹⁸.

G. “VICTORY OR MARTYRDOM”

16. The symptoms of Palestinian resistance — unchecked Jewish immigration, British inertia on the question of self-governance, and escalating tension over Jerusalem’s holy sites — generated a state of continual unease in the streets of Haifa and beyond. Moreover, the daily indignities of colonial rule, Zionist provocation, economic migration, insufficient housing and persistent underdevelopment once again pushed Palestine to the brink. By 1933, Palestinian demonstrations were met by the lethal force of British police while the Yishuv continued to develop the institutions of a nation-state, both overtly in the form of the Jewish Agency and covertly with the paramilitary Haganah and its militant off-shoot Irgun.¹⁹ The British and their Zionist allies had created an intolerable situation for the Palestinians, reaching a tipping point for al-Qassam and his followers by 1935.

17. In October 1935, a Zionist attempt to smuggle a large cache of weapons into Palestine was discovered at the port of Jaffa. This incident triggered mass protests, emblematically held on 2 November — the anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917. For al-Qassam and his devoted band of disciples, the situation had reached its logical conclusion, and the decision was made to retreat to the mountains. In his final sermon before departing, al-Qassam brought the adoring congregation he had curated over the years to tears. He beseeched his audience, proclaiming:

“I have taught you the matters of your religion until each of you has become knowledgeable of them, and I have taught you the matters of your homeland until it has become your duty to perform jihad. Have I conveyed the message? O God, bear witness: To jihad, O Muslims, to jihad."²⁰

The objective had crystallised: to end the mandate and force the withdrawal of British colonial authority from Palestine. The means were unequivocal: military struggle until “victory or martyrdom.”²¹

18. Mirroring his earlier years of fighting the French colonialists from the mountains of Syria, al-Qassam and his band of followers had sought cover on the mount of Faqu’a near Nuras village in northern Palestine. The plan was to maintain a low profile while gradually recruiting mujahidin from the northern villages and accumulating resources until they were adequately prepared to initiate a large-scale revolt. However, in November 1935, this plan was shattered when a small group of al-Qassam’s men gunned down Jewish police sergeant, igniting a storm of repercussions.²² After a protracted contest of evasion and pursuit, a largely assembled police force was fast closing in on al-Qassam and a group of his followers at the town of Ya’bad. In what has reached the status of legend among Palestinians, al-Qassam then called on his mujahidin to “fight to the last drop of blood” and to “die a martyr’s death”.²³ The ensuing gunfight raged for over three hours, and at one point, al-Qassam emerged from his cover, only to be shot in the forehead, achieving the martyrdom he had long sought.

19. Writing of the demise of al-Qassam, the scholar Abdallah Schleifer described the way his martyrdom was followed by a deep sense of loss among the Palestinians, who turned up to pay their respects at his funeral in vast numbers:

“Called upon to surrender, al-Qassam told his men to die as martyrs, and he opened fire. Al-Qassam’s defiance and manner of his death (which seemed to stun the traditional leadership) electrified the Palestinian people. Thousands forced their way past police lines at the funeral in Haifa, and the secular Arab nationalist parties invoked his memory as the symbol of resistance. It was the largest political gathering to assemble in mandatory Palestine.”²⁴

20. The thousands that gathered for the funeral carried his martyred body through the streets, including those killed alongside him – the chanting of Allahu Akbar (God is Greater) echoing throughout Haifa. The anger at his murder led to clashes with the British police as Palestinians stoned their cars and stations as the procession walked for three and half hours before laying all the martyrs to rest in the bloodied clothes they were found in – as is the custom in Islamic law.²⁵ The tomb of Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam is inscribed with an epitaph that captures his status with the Palestinian people:

“Here lies the martyr, the most noble ‘alim [scholar], who was a trustworthy guide. He is our shaykh, al-Qassam, he who was the first among us to rise with the banner of jihad for the victory of Islam. He died a martyr in a pure act of grace during the battle of Yaʿbad in the month of shʿaban, and so God awarded him with his finest honour — honouring him with the angels of paradise. And if you wish to describe his epitaph in history, say: “In the highest place in heaven, ʿIzz al-Din al-Qassam lies.”

H. LEGACY

21. On 15 April 1936, a group of former followers of al-Qassam attacked a car near Tulkarem, killing two passengers and injuring a third. The incident sparked retaliation from the Yishuv’s emergent militias, resulting in two Palestinians being murdered near Tel Aviv the following night. After a further escalation of violence, the government declared a state of emergency — the Arab Revolt had begun. A general strike swept through the cities of Palestine as a rural insurgency took root. The network of associates left by al-Qassam played a crucial role in driving and spreading the revolt, underscoring that al-Qassam's legacy would endure well beyond his death. This was the most sweeping national strike at that time spanning more than six months.

22. What was unique about Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam was his ability to express in practical form an idea. He embodied an idea that opened new paths for political struggle for generations to come. Unlike the detached leadership of other Palestinian notables, his legitimacy was rooted in an authentic connection to the downtrodden on the streets of Palestine, combined with an inimitable ability to articulate the root cause of their despair — the Zionists and their British benefactors. In the decades since his martyrdom, groups from across Palestine’s political spectrum have adopted al-Qassam’s image as a symbol of resistance, steadfastness and sacrifice. As the conditions of colonialism, brutality, injustice and statelessness have only intensified through the years, al-Qassam’s example will continue to be held up as a beacon of light in Palestine’s ongoing struggle for self-determination.

23. In her Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine, Laleh Khalili cites Ted Swedenburg as evidencing how the martyrdom of al-Qassam as an anti-colonial leader became the precursor to the fighters in the Intifada.²⁶ Khalili’s work further explores how al-Qassam’s legacy was continually raised by various groups. As early as the 1960s, the Marxist-leaning DFLP chose the name al-Qassam for their armed forces due to his organising of the Palestinian working class – even referencing him as a forerunner to Che Guevara. In 1985, the Syrian backed PFLP-GC commemorated al-Qassam and by 1993, even the Abu Nidal organisation were hailing his memory.²⁷

24. After the first Intifada began, a tradition began of issuing communiques as part of a praxis of commemoration, but also of sharing information on resistance. These communiques would be issued by the Unified National Leadership (UNL), Islamic Jihad and Hamas to assist in mobilisation efforts – the very first being issued on 8 January 1988 to call for a general strike. It was not Hamas or Islamic Jihad that first referenced al-Qassam, but rather the UNL who called on Palestinians on 13 January 1988 as “people of martyrs, grandsons of al-Qassam,…brothers and comrades of Abu Sharar, Khalid Nazzal and Kanafani.”²⁸ The imagery of the communique placing a direct line between the resistance of Qassam to that of Kanafani and as Khalili explains of the centrality of al-Qassam, “The Intifada was again and again tied to the 1936-1939 revolt through invocations of Izz al-Din al-Qassam’s name and the uncanny similarities between the two events.”²⁹

25. An illustration of the popularity of al-Qassam among all Palestinian factions is Marwan Barghouthi. For over twenty years, Barghouthi has been the most prominent leader in the secular movement Fatah, the faction led by the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). He has also been in an Israeli jail since 2002 and sentenced to life. But he is also known as Abu al-Qassam or the father of al-Qassam.

26. In contemporary Palestine, the figure of al-Qassam looms large as the foremost resistance movement in Gaza Kata’ib al-Shahid Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the Martyr Izza al-Din al-Qassam Brigades) has named itself after his name, as well as the Qassam rockets they fire at the Zionist state.³⁰ Unlike the larger Islamic resistance movement that had begun as a non-violent protest movement, Azzam Tamimi informs us that “the Qassam Brigades were a product of the intifada itself, and had come into being as a reaction to Israel’s mounting repression of what had begun as a peaceful protest.”³¹

27. After the assassination and martyrdom of Shaykh Ahmad Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, there was widespread commemoration across the West Bank and Gaza. In Jenin, they erected murals depicting heroes of Muslim history, including Shaykh Yassin, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al-Banna, and Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam – linking Shaykh Yassin’s legacy to a longer history of resisting colonisation. Women in the street began to chant in eulogy for al-Qassam, linking him to Shaykh Yassin directly:

la ilaha ill-allah, ish-shahid habib allah

No God but Allah and the martyr is Allah’s beloved

ya Qassam, hat, hat, hat slah lil banaat

Oh Qassam, bring weapons to the girls

ya Yassin, irtah, irtah, ihna nuwasel el-kifah

Oh Yassin, rest, rest, we will carry on with the struggle

ya Sharon, ya haqir, dam ish-shuhada qhali ikthir

Hey Sharon, you vile, the blood of the martyrs is very dear³²

28. The continual referencing of Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and his martyrdom across Palestinian communities and even across the political and religious divide provides an important insight into the way that Palestinians memorialise their own history. The contemporary settler colonial policies of the Zionist regime are rooted in longer history that harkens back to the British Mandate presence and occupation of Palestine. The continual use of al-Qassam’s iconography is a testament to how Palestinians have never forgotten that history and see their contemporary struggles as rooted in that colonial moment, and etched in their historical memory.

I. EXPERT OBLIGATIONS

29. I confirm that I have made clear which facts and matters referred to in this report are within my own knowledge and which are not. Those that are within my own knowledge I confirm to be true. The opinions I have expressed represent my true and complete professional opinions on the matters to which they refer.

30. I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought by anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

31. I confirm that I have not received any remuneration for preparing this report.

Professor Sami A. Al-Arian

Center of Islam and Global Affairs

Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim Univesity

Istanbul, Turkey

21 December 2024