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Who Was Ahmad Yassin?

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Jonathan D. Halevi - Ahmad Yassin was founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, and its military wing, Izz al-Dinn al-Qassam, which is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis in terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings, since the 1990s. An Israeli court convicted Yassin in 1989 of ordering Hamas members to kidnap and kill two Israeli soldiers. Yassin opposed the previously signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and maintained that eliminating Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in Palestine was a religious duty. In his public message to the Muslim world on the occasion of Eid al-Adha (February 19, 2002), Yassin clearly justified the jihad against the U.S. in Muslim and Arab countries on the basis of Islamic law. Jihad against America is a positive commandment in every respect and is the realization of "the right of self-defense" against "the Crusaders' war" and the terrorist war waged by the U.S. against the nation of Islam in Afghanistan and against the Islamic jihad movements in the world. Yassin encouraged Muslims to perform jihad and to prepare for an extended battle against the U.S., promising that the current century, the twenty-first, is the "Islamic century, the century of liberation, victory, and the fulfillment of potential." From "New Radical Islamic Thinking Justifying the Genocide of Infidels" -
2004-03-22 00:00:00
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