When Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām died in a gunfight with the Palestine Police Force in November 1935, the Government of the British Mandate for Palestine was ill prepared for the public outpouring of popular support and inspiration the imām from Haifa’s death would give to Arab Palestinian political aspirations. Al-Qassām soon became a powerful symbol in the nationalist fight against the British colonial power and subsequently the State of Israel. Al-Qassām remains a potent figure in Arab nationalist, Palestinian nationalist, and modern “Islamist” circles. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: first, to provide an overview of the current state of the historiography on al-Qassām; and second, to add to that historiography with a recontextualized narrative of al-Qassām’s life and death. This latter part of the paper aims to fill some of the gaps with additional sources and place the findings alongside contemporary historical scholarship on political identity and nationalist movements in Palestine and the wider Mashriq. This article contends that the claims made on al-Qassām by contemporary Palestinian, “Islamic” nationalists have silenced the multiple contexts available if one considers the entirety of al-Qassām’s life. Viewed in this light, it is possible that al-Qassām never considered himself a “Palestinian” at all.
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10
S. Abdullah Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, IQ 5/23 (1979); Lachman, “Arab Rebellion and Terrorism in Palestine 1929-39”; Basheer M. Nafi, “Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām: A Reformist and a Rebel Leader”, Journal of Islamic Studies, 8/2 (1997).
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15
Ted Swedenburg, “Al-Qassām Remembered”, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 7 (1987), p. 10.
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16
Ted Swedenburg, “Al-Qassām Remembered”, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 7 (1987), p. 13; Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, p. 15.
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19
Al-Ḥūt, Al-Shaykh al-Mujāhid ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām fī Tārīkh Filasṭīn, p. 68.
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20
Muḥsin Sāliḥ, “Al-Qassām wa-l-Tajriba al-Qassāmiyya”, Al-Jazeera (16 December 2010). www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1819EAD9-BFF6-4CDE-9057-0A89FF0FF6003 (accessed 6 August 2011).
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21
Muḥsin Sāliḥ, “Al-Qassām wa-l-Tajriba al-Qassāmiyya”, Al-Jazeera (16 December 2010). www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1819EAD9-BFF6-4CDE-9057-0A89FF0FF6003 (accessed 6 August 2011).
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23
Swedenburg, “Al-Qassām Remembered”, p. 18; See also Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt, p. 105.
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24
Laila Parsons, “Micro-Narrative and the Historiography of the Modern Middle East”, History Compass 9/1 (2011), p. 85.
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26
David Nasaw, “Introduction to the American Historical Review Roundtable: Historians and Biography”, The American Historical Review 114/3 (2009), p. 574.
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29
See Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 62; Nafi, “Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām”, p. 186; Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, p. 21.
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30
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 62.
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33
See David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
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34
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 62.
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37
See both Qāsim, Al-Shaykh al-Mujāhid ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām, p. 15; and al-Ḥūt, Al-Shaykh al-Mujāhid ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām fī Tārīkh Filasṭīn, p. 25.
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40
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 64.
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46
See Michel Provence, “Ottoman Modernity, Colonialism, and Insurgency in the Inter-War Arab East”, IJMES 43 (2011).
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48
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ‘Izz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 65.
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50
Lachman, “Arab Rebellion and Terrorism in Palestine 1929-39”, p. 60, note 33.
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53
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 80, note 8.
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55
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 66.
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56
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 66.
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57
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 66.
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58
See James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
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59
James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 87f.
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60
James Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 30.
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63
See Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). For the concept of new, “horizontal” power relationships see Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, p. 52.
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66
Seikaly, Haifa, p. 49. Population censuses were conducted only in these two years of the Mandate.
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67
Ken Stein, “Palestine’s Rural Economy: 1917-1939”, Studies in Zionism: Politics, Society, Culture 8/1 (1987).
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71
Martin Bunton, Colonial Land Policies in Palestine, 1917-1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 80.
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77
Nafi, “Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām”, p. 195; For a discussion of labour dynamics between the Arab and Jewish communities in the Mandate see Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); and Deborah Bernstein, Constructing Boundaries: Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000).
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79
Nafi, “Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām”, p. 190; Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 69.
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80
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn, p. 153. Notably, most other biographers of al-Qassām suggest that he sought the job of maʾdhūn because it would have provided him greater opportunity to travel to villages big and small and recruit the pious for his jihād. This is certainly plausible but Ibrāhīm’s assertion, made in passing, that his job as imām did not “meet his expenses” makes even more sense. It is also possible that al-Qassām told Ibrāhīm —a social and intellectual equal—the truth, while concealing the motive for the job from his disciples, on whose testimony a number of other biographies are based. The fact that we have the exam and answer sheet submitted by al-Qassām in evaluating his qualifications for the position also undermines those who claim that his job as maʾdhūn was given to him by local notables to help build his organization. See reproduction in Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, p. 145.
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83
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn, p. 153; Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, pp. 134f.
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84
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn, p. 153; Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, p. 136; Al-Yarmuk, 14 May 1925. The debate over taḥlīl and takbīr is particularly interesting when placed within the context of the cyclical, episodic bouts of nationalist violence.
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85
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn, p. 153; Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, p. 138; Al-Karmil, 6 June 1925. Al-Qassām is also critical of the al-Yarmuk editorial for having been written by a non-ʿālim who should “limit your writing to that for which God has singled you out”.
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87
Nafi, “Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām”, p. 193. See also Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 67. The resort to the label “Wahhabi” (al-Wahhābiyya) was a common practice in these debates between salafist and traditional ʿulamāʾ. The distinction between the salafism of the al-Azhar/ʿAbduh/Riḍā and the salafism of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was, and continues to be, contentious. For another contemporaneous example of the term “Wahhabi” used as an epithet see Itzchak Weismann, “The Invention of a Populist Islamic Leader: Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥasanī, the Religious Educational Movement and the Great Syrian Revolt”, Arabica, 52/1 (2005), p. 121.
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97
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn, p. 150; Al-Qassām’s imprimatur is clearly on this list. After the founding of the YMMA he created a night school in YMMA facilities to encourage illiterate dock workers to learn to read.
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104
Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, p. 131. Additionally, the “Rebel Youth” (al-Shabāb al-Thāʾir) operated in the Tulkarm-Qalqilya area in 1935 and was comprised mostly of members of the local Scout organization.
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109
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn,p. 153. Aḥmad claimed to have been involved only to “steal a cow” and had been unaware that an accomplice was going to bomb one of the homes in the settlement. Aḥmad was the only one of the three accused to be executed for the crime. Statement of Muṣṭafā ʿAlī Aḥmad, 29 March, 1935. Tegart Box 2 File 3. (MEC); “The Sheikh Izzedin Al-Qassām Gang”, Tegart Papers, Box 1 File 3C, (MEC).
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112
Ibrāhīm, Al-Difāʿ ʿan Ḥayfā wa-Qaḍiyyat Filasṭīn, p. 153. The provision that the trainee acquire himself a weapon may harken back to tales about al-Qassām’s dedication to self-sufficiency, or may simply indicate that the acquisition of weapons was difficult. Schleifer recounts one story from al-Qassām’s time at al-Azhar when an embarrassed friend (al-Tanūkhī, al-Qassām’s contact with Amīr Fayṣal), was found by his father selling sweets, the father responded with pleasure that al-Qassām had taught his son self-sufficiency. See Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 62.
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121
E. Porter Horne, A Job Well Done: (Being a History of the Palestine Police Force 1920-1948) (Lewes, East Sussex: Book Guild, 2003), p. 183, note 11.
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124
Quoted in Ḥammūda, Al-Waʿy wa-l-Thawra, p. 52. (“my hair has turned white” is a close approximation for an Arabic idiom expressing experience).
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127
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 61.
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128
Schleifer, “The Life and Thought of ʿIzz-Id-Din Al-Qassam”, p. 61.
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141
Provence, “Ottoman Modernity, Colonialism and Insurgency”, p. 206.
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When Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām died in a gunfight with the Palestine Police Force in November 1935, the Government of the British Mandate for Palestine was ill prepared for the public outpouring of popular support and inspiration the imām from Haifa’s death would give to Arab Palestinian political aspirations. Al-Qassām soon became a powerful symbol in the nationalist fight against the British colonial power and subsequently the State of Israel. Al-Qassām remains a potent figure in Arab nationalist, Palestinian nationalist, and modern “Islamist” circles. The purpose of this paper is thus twofold: first, to provide an overview of the current state of the historiography on al-Qassām; and second, to add to that historiography with a recontextualized narrative of al-Qassām’s life and death. This latter part of the paper aims to fill some of the gaps with additional sources and place the findings alongside contemporary historical scholarship on political identity and nationalist movements in Palestine and the wider Mashriq. This article contends that the claims made on al-Qassām by contemporary Palestinian, “Islamic” nationalists have silenced the multiple contexts available if one considers the entirety of al-Qassām’s life. Viewed in this light, it is possible that al-Qassām never considered himself a “Palestinian” at all.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 642 | 149 | 22 |
| Full Text Views | 82 | 10 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 223 | 20 | 0 |