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Is
Hamas a legitimate representative of Islam?
Yes, it is.
By Hendrik van der Breggen
HAMAS (Hamas) is an acronym for the Arabic words Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, which in English means Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas, in other words, purports to be a representative of Islam. But is it? That is to ask: Is Hamas a legitimate representative of Islam?
Before I answer and set out my reasons, let’s review some recent goings-on in Gaza.
Last Thursday (February 20, 2025), Hamas staged a macabre carnival-like ceremony in Gaza for its release of four dead Israeli hostages.
Dead hostages included three members of the Bibas family, i.e., two very young boys Ariel and Kfir and their mother Shiri (the father Yarden was released alive two weeks earlier). Also, the dead hostages included an 84-year-old gentleman, Oded Lifschitz.
Well, at least that was the morbid plan of Hamas, according to its ceasefire agreement with Israel.
It turns out that Israeli forensic investigators determined that the dead woman was not the children’s mother. There was a “mix-up of bodies,” per Hamas. Instead of Shiri Bibas (i.e., the children’s mother), the Hamas terrorists gave Israel an unidentified dead Palestinian woman. Israel rightly complained, so Shiri’s dead body was handed over the next day.
Subsequently, and what is worse (though it was hard to believe things could get worse), forensic investigation also revealed that the young Bibas boys—Ariel and Kfir—were strangled to death and later mutilated to look like they were killed by bombs. (They were later mutilated by Hamas because Hamas falsely claimed the children were killed not by Hamas but by Israeli bombs.)
Let this sink in. Ariel and Kfir, who were, respectively, 4 years old and 9 months old when abducted on October 7, 2023—these precious little red-headed boys were strangled to death by Hamas.
Strangled to death.
Back to my question: Is Hamas a legitimate representative of Islam?
Interestingly, two Islamic Grand Muftis, one from Saudi Arabia and one from the United Arab Emirates, spoke up on the matter. (In Islam, a Grand Mufti is a very high-ranking religious figure like, say, a Bishop is for the Catholic Church.)
The Grand Muftis attempted to distance Islam from Hamas and its macabre spectacle involving the return of dead hostages, including the Bibas children. According to one of the Grand Muftis, “What we saw today in Gaza is a disgrace to Islam, an act of blasphemy against Allah.” The other said, “Hamas has brought shame on Islam, on a level never seen before.”
What are non-Muslims to think about this? On the one hand, Hamas—the Islamic Resistance Movement—sees itself as doing the work of Islam. On the other hand, high-ranking Islamic religious officials condemn this work as a “disgrace to Islam” and a “shame on Islam.”
So, again: Is Hamas a legitimate representative of Islam?
I believe the answer is yes.
To arrive at this answer, I have found helpful a distinction made by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University), a Somali-born former Dutch politician, and a former Muslim.
Ali distinguishes between what she calls Medina Muslims and Mecca Muslims.
Background historical notes: The Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632) began the religion of Islam in Mecca (in what is now Saudi Arabia) and a few years later he moved to Medina (about 340 kilometres away from Mecca). Muhammad’s alleged revelations from God/Allah are recorded in Islam’s holy book the Qur’an. Muhammad’s sayings and actions are recorded in the Hadith. For Muslims, the Hadith is a significant supplement to the Qur’an.
Muslims themselves may not apply the Medina-Mecca distinction to themselves. Nevertheless, the Medina-Mecca distinction provides important insight into the motivations of followers of Islam (whether Sunni, Shiite, or whatever).
According to Ali, Medina Muslims are those Muslims who follow the violent teachings of the Prophet Muhammad when in the city of Medina the prophet effectively became a warlord after his peaceful approach to spreading Islam in Mecca was rejected. Subsequently, Muhammad killed Jews and ordered the killing of Jews.
It would be reasonable, then, to describe Hamas—whose goal is to kill Jews in the name of Islam—as what Ali calls “Medina Muslims.” Medina Muslims take the violent Prophet Muhammad to be their role model.
On the other hand, those Muslims such as the above-mentioned Grand Muftis could be described as “Mecca Muslims.” That is to say, they follow the Prophet Muhammad’s peaceful teachings when he first began his religion in Mecca. But they downplay or ignore Muhammad’s later violent teachings that abrogate—cancel—the earlier peaceful ones.
Why the popular confusion over whether one should follow the earlier peaceful teachings or the later violent teachings that cancel the earlier teachings? It may be, it seems to me, because the Qur’an is not ordered chronologically. Instead, the Qur’an begins with the longest chapter and ends with the shortest chapter. Such an ordering may be aesthetically pleasing, but historical chronology gets lost. The result is that it is not clear that the violent verses come after—and thus abrogate/cancel—the earlier peaceful verses.
The upshot: Muslims who follow closely Muhammad’s violent later teachings are scripturally correct in doing so.
Thus, Hamas does legitimately represent Islam. At least it does in so far as Hamas takes seriously all of the Qur’an’s and the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings, including the later ones, which cancel the earlier peaceful ones, and which include the brutal killing of Jews.
Jews such as Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri Bibas and the elderly Oded Lifschitz.
For additional
thought
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Islam Is a Religion of Violence, Foreign Policy Magazine, November 9, 2015. (Article)
- Raymond Ibrahim, How Nazism Explains the Difference Between ‘Moderate’ and ‘Radical’ Islam, The Stream, February 20, 2025. (Article)
- Robert Spencer et al., Islam: What the West Needs to Know, produced & directed by Gregory M. Davis & Bryan Daly (Lorain, Ohio: Quixotic Media Productions, 2006). (98 minute video)
- R. C. Sproul & Abdul Saleeb, The Dark Side of Islam (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003). (Book, see chapter 8)
- Hendrik van der Breggen, Appendix 1: Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic? Part 1 of 2, APOLOGIA, March 26, 2024. (Article/chapter)
- Hendrik van der Breggen, Appendix 2: Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic? Part 2 of 2, APOLOGIA, March 26, 2024. (Article/chapter)
- Hendrik van der Breggen, Islam and Christianity, APOLOGIA, March 16, 2017.
Objections and
replies
Objection 1. Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic.
Reply: No, it’s not. My pointing to Islam’s negative view of Jews and my call for careful thinking about Islam—especially about its founder Muhammad who encourages the killing of Jews (and others) and whom Islamists such as Hamas take very seriously as a model for their violent behaviour—are not instances of Islamophobia. Rather, these are reasonable, evidence-based concerns. Think about it. A phobia is an irrational or ungrounded fear, aversion, or hatred. Consider arachnophobia, an irrational ungrounded fear or hatred of spiders. But, clearly, it’s possible to have reasonable, non-phobic concerns about some spiders if the spiders display evidence of being harmful or lethal to humans. Again, thinking carefully about Islam is not Islamophobia. One can have non-phobic, reasonable concerns about a religion that displays evidence of being harmful or lethal to people who do not agree with that religion. It turns out that Muhammad was an extremely violent man bent on world domination by force, and he teaches his followers to be and do likewise. It is not phobic to say this.
Objection 2. The Bible also has calls to war, so the Bible is as bad as the Qur’an.
Reply: Yes, the Bible has calls to war in the Old Testament. But the Bible’s calls to war are specific and limited to particular times and places, whereas the Qur’an’s call for war against unbelievers is Muhammad’s latest revelation and is open-ended—and continues. Moreover, according to the New Testament, Jesus promotes his message by allowing his blood to be shed on a cross, and Jesus teaches his followers to love their enemies. But Muhammad, according to the Qur’an and tradition, promotes his message by shedding the blood of others. To promote Islam throughout the world, Muhammad calls his followers to kill infidels, i.e., those who don’t agree with his views about God. Yes, most Muslims don’t follow the violent Muhammad, which is, I believe, good. These Muslims elevate Muhammad’s peaceful traits above his violent ones. But the peaceful Muslims are mistaken, according to the Qur’an and Hadith, because Muhammad’s call to violent jihad is his latest revelation and his latest revelation abrogates—cancels—the earlier peaceful revelation.
The Qur’an, then, has an ongoing call to subdue or kill non-believers—Jews, Christians, and other so-called infidels—whereas the Bible does not. Yes, some followers of Jesus have done evil things, but they did so contrary to Jesus’ teachings, unlike followers of Muhammad who do and have done bad things in accordance with Muhammad’s teachings.
Significantly, the Bible, unlike the Qur’an, has good news: According to the Bible, the God of the universe loves us; the God of the universe became a man—Jesus—and lived among us; Jesus showed us the way of love, suffered for us, and was killed for our sins; and Jesus resurrected physically to defeat the powers of death and darkness. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We should repent and accept Jesus as Lord.
Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. Hendrik is author of the 2024 book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War.
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