What this article says is being preached in mosques throughout the US, and no doubt here in Australia, after Oct 7th, reads very similar to a lot of the anti Israel/Jew stuff being posted on here, especially the bit about the Jews/Zionists controlling America.
https://www.memri.org/reports/chall...-mosques-across-us-regarding-israel-hamas-war
Mansour Al-Hadj is Director of the MEMRI Project for Reform in the Arab and Muslim World.
"In the aftermath of Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and hundreds were abducted, I have reviewed and analyzed hundreds of Friday sermons delivered by imams and preachers in mosques and Islamic institutions across the United States. By doing so, I was hoping to understand how these religious leaders framed the attack, Israel's response, and the subsequent U.S. reaction. I also sought to understand the narratives they have adopted, promoted and amplified, along with their proposals for resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Interestingly, almost all the sermons seemed to share similar themes in their framing of the attack, amplifying a single narrative which justifies
[1] Hamas's attack
[2] as a legitimate
[3] act
[4] that is based on the command of Allah and the teachings of the prophet Muhammad. Therefore, they did not condemn or hold Hamas responsible for killing and abducting civilians, including children and the elderly, and sexually assaulting several women.
[5]
They did not condemn
[6] Hamas for starting a war, miscalculating
[7] Israel's response, using the Gazans as human shields, or causing the death of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of large areas of Gaza. Instead, in their sermons, these preachers and imams focused on highlighting the similarities between Hamas' attack and the wars
[8] fought by the prophet and his companions, demonizing Israel, narrating historical antisemitic stories attributed to the prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, such as the hadith about the stones and the Gharqad Tree, and citing verses from the Quran that characterized Jews as corrupt,
[9] treacherous, untrustworthy, and the killers of prophets.
[10]
Moreover, they presented the conflict as part of an eternal
[11] religious enmity
[12] between Muslims and Jews that will ultimately end with the humiliating defeat of the Jews by Muslims and the liberation of Jerusalem and Palestine "from the river to the sea." Regarding U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself and the sending of two aircraft carriers to the Middle East, some imams attributed the move to the antisemitic
[13] conspiracy theory
[14] that sees U.S. politicians and decision-makers as under the control of the Jews and the Zionist lobby.
I strongly disagree with their framing of the conflict and the promoted narrative for three reasons. Firstly, it is the declared narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood and of Hamas and their supporters that downplays and justifies Hamas's violations of Islamic concepts and principles in order to concentrate all efforts on attaining the ultimate goal of defeating Israel.
Secondly, these imams and preachers have disregarded, either due to their ideological bias or lack of knowledge, multiple interpretations of Quranic verses that offer different and opposing perspectives to their promoted framing and narrative.
Thirdly, the promoted narrative is the same old radical narrative, recycled for decades, that presents the Palestinians as victims, portrays the Jews as evil, insists on an all-or-nothing approach, lacks self-reflection, endorses the vicious circle of violence,
[15] and rejects
[16] peace and coexistence with Israel.
[...]
I would also like to emphasize that rather than amplifying Muslim Brotherhood propaganda by demonizing Arab regimes that have chosen peace and normalized relations with Israel, or continually calling for divine intervention
[20] to annihilate the Jews, or reiterating baseless prophecies of an inevitable holy war between Muslims and Jews, it would be more beneficial to spend time preaching about the beauty of diversity, multiculturalism, and coexistence. People from all over the world, with different beliefs, histories, and cultures, are living in harmony in the United States – an example from which the Palestinians can learn a great deal.
[...]
Certainly, people who dare to challenge this radical narrative, whether they be imams, preachers, or other open-minded Muslims, will inevitably face marginalization. They may be labeled as traitors, unbelievers, or even Zionists by the Muslim Brotherhood and their ideological allies for daring to expose their attempted monopoly of Islam – a characteristic shared by all intolerant, violence-loving radical Islamist groups."
