Professor Salman al-Dayah, former dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Law at the Islamic University of Gaza. (Credit: His Facebook page)
As the death toll in the Gaza war exceeds 43,000 – including 14,000 children – according to Gaza's Health Ministry, the most prominent Muslim scholar in the besieged Palestinian enclave has issued a rare fatwa condemning the Oct. 7, 2023, attack carried out by the Islamist group against Israel, which triggered the war.
The main points of the religious opinion, published Thursday on the Facebook page of Professor Salman Ben Nasr al-Dayah, were cited by the BBC and Open Source Intel’s X account. When interviewed by the BBC, one of his disciples, sheikh Ashraf Ahmed, described the fatwa as "the most powerful legal judgment of a historical moment." "It is a thoroughly documented piece that reflects the religious professor’s commitment to Islamic jurisprudence," he said.
Professor Ben Nasr al-Dayah considers that the Palestinian Islamist movement, which has governed Gaza since 2007, should have refrained from launching its attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 civilians, as it was "likely" that it would fail to achieve "the aims and objectives of jihad," a term in Islam that denotes what is considered a "just war."
"If retreat is allowed [in the face of an enemy] when objectives cannot be achieved, it is also permitted not to fight from the outset and not to endanger believers, especially if it risks leading to the failure of [jihad’s] objectives and harming believers’ interests," writes the Sunni scholar.
Predictable Israeli violence
To briefly summarize his carefully reasoned argument, supported by references to Quranic verses, he does not reject the legitimacy of jihad, whose execution is subject to "strict conditions" regarding foundations, motives and requirements. However, he believes that Hamas has undermined it by launching an offensive that provoked a response from the Israeli military as devastating as it was predictable, one they could not counter while preserving Gaza.
The Sunni scholar argues that in 2022, when there was "not yet an Operation Al-Aqsa Flood" – the name given by Hamas and its allies to the offensive launched against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – "500 martyrs were killed at checkpoints of the Israeli occupation army in the West Bank alone."
He further explains that "any sane person" could have anticipated that the Israeli reaction to Oct. 7 would be very violent, given the "great damage" caused by less severe "events." He adds that Hamas failed in its obligations "to keep fighters away from [Palestinian] civilians' defenseless homes and shelters, and to ensure safety and security as much as possible in various aspects of life: Security, economy, health and education, and to provide enough supplies for them."
The professor thus weighs the many civilian casualties in Gaza, the massive destruction of infrastructure, and the humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel's response to the Oct. 7 offensive, concluding that this attack was in direct contradiction with Islamic teachings, as reported by the BBC.
Sheikh Ashraf Ahmed was forced to leave his home in Gaza City last year and flee to the south of the enclave with his wife and nine children, the BBC also reports. According to him, Ben Nasr al-Dayah "refused to leave his home in northern Gaza, despite fears of Israeli airstrikes."
