Sami Al-Arian, an academic deported from the US a couple of decades ago after pleading guilty to providing services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), shared a stage in a panel discussion with a high-ranking member of Hamas, Jamal Issa, during a conference held in Istanbul last week.
The conference was titled “The Flood of the Free” as a homage to Hamas’s October 7 massacre, named by the radical terror group “Flood of Al-Aqsa,” with the conference logo featuring two paragliders, referring to the terrorists who paraglided into Israeli communities on their bloodthirsty quest to murder, rape and kidnap over 1,200 Israelis and foreigners on October 7.
Other senior Hamas members also took part in other sessions during the two-day event, including Osama Hamdan, Sami Abu Zuhri, as well as Khaled Mashaal, who sent a pre-recorded blessing to the conference.
The main host of the event was the Global Campaign to Support Al-Quds and Palestine (GCQP), an Istanbul-based organization pertaining to the Muslim Brotherhood axis, with close organizational and ideological ties to the Al-Quds Foundation, designated as a Hamas proxy by both the US and Israel.Other hosts included Turkish NGO “Human and Civilization Movement,” as well as the Al-Baraka Society, a charity organization led by Algerian Muslim Brotherhood cleric Ahmed Brahimi. According to the organizers, the conference saw participation of hundreds of people from dozens of countries, from Pakistan to Yemen to Morocco.
Several speakers in the conference expressed openly antisemitic views, including Mohammad Ibrahim, preacher at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, who denounced “the Jews among the Arabs” and pointed at the Talmud as a motivation for the “burning of Gaza;” as well as Iraqi Sheikh Waleed Al-Husseini who praised Iraq’s struggle “against the Jews” ever since the time of Nebuchadnezzar, also praising the missiles shot by Saddam Hussein at Israel during the first Gulf War.Likewise, former justice minister of Mauritius, Rama Valayden, claimed that Israel “only understands the language of money,” calling to boycott international firms such as McDonald’s, KFC, Coca-Cola, and even Head & Shoulders, alleging that they “support the Israeli army and Netanyahu.”
Hamas affiliated cleric group: ‘Emulate Hamas model in other countries’
A similar event was held one day later, as another Istanbul-based Islamist organization named the Palestine Scholars Association (PSA) held a conference titled “The Nation’s Religious Scholars and the Flood of the Free,” which saw the participation of Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk. PSA itself is led by Nawaf Takrouri, a member of Hamas’s founding generation, who was deported by Israel in 1993 for his ties to Hamas.The event saw the participation of Muslim Brotherhood-oriented Islamist clerics from different countries. During the event, Abu Marzouk praised “mosques, the Quran, and Jihad” as the three reasons behind “Gaza’s triumph,” adding that “Jihad is not limited to weapons, but rather jihad is an obligation in our day, each in his specialty, work, and place.”According to Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated channels, the conference concluded with 10 suggestions for action among scholars as part of the efforts to “support the flood [of Al-Aqsa],” including strengthening jihadi education, applying pressure on governments, enhancing Da’wah (‘call to Islam’ or religious preaching) through online platforms for the youth, and spreading “Quranic messages related to victory and love for Al-Aqsa.”Other suggestions included learning from Hamas, whose model was initiated by an Islamist religious scholar, supporting Palestinians in arenas involved in combating Israel, reviving jurisprudence of jihad and jihadi education while “drawing inspiration from the positions of our people’s jihad in Gaza and Palestine,” and promoting economic boycott of “the enemy.”Turkey has long been a staunch supporter of Hamas, hosting the terror group’s leaders on many occasions and providing material and moral support to the radical Islamist group. Both Erdogan’s AKP party and the Palestinian terror organization have their ideological roots in what is named “political Islam” or Islamism, led worldwide by the Muslim Brotherhood axis.This ideology, amplified and promoted by religious institutions, political parties, and NGOs across the globe and usually backed by Qatar and Turkey, aspires to establish its own version of Islam as the main focal point of personal and political identities.The Muslim Brotherhood is also the ideological predecessor of Salafi Jihadist movements such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Many scholars say classical European antisemitic tropes, which have trickled into the Arab and Islamic spheres through translations and adaptations of antisemitic texts, are a source of its ideology.