Palestinians inspect the damage of destroyed houses after Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)
The humane treatment of hostages by Hamas as narrated by its captives has increased my appreciation of Islam in shaping Muslim behaviour even in the hardest of times. Muslims are not perfect; we are far from it. But Islam has given us an enviable code in warfare 1400 years before the advent of the Geneva convention.
From Umar bn Al-Khattab to Salahuddin al-Ayyubi and down to Hamas, the land of Palestine continues to testify—as did past historians like Sir Edward Gibbon—that Muslims have observed the Islamic code of war better than how any modern nation has observed the articles of the Geneva convention.
Gibbon is not alive today to chronicle Hamas. But the Isreali press itself testifies to the following: Hamas calmed their captives, treated them kindly, fed them with the same food they ate, made sure their environment was clean, treated their wounded and assured them of their safety. They told them the purpose of their captivity: You are here only because we want to exchange you with the Palestinians in Israeli jails. No wonder the honest old woman released 2 days ago gave a farewell handshake to her captor and appreciated Hamas publicly before the Israeli public. Another one released at the beginning of the war also denied that she was molested.
This is in sharp contrast to the behaviour of other civilisations before and now. Compare Hamas treatment with the atrocities that the Israelis commit daily against Palestinians and how the latter are tortured daily in Israeli jails. Compare it with America in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its recent engagements in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, etc. Compare it with Nazi concentration camps and the atrocities of Spanish, British, French and German conquistadors and soldiers in the subjugation of American Indians, Africans and Australian aborigines where in many places entire populations were massacred or burnt alive. None of these ‘civilised nations’ is close to ‘Terrorist’ Hamas in humanity. Western nations signed the Geneva Convention and violate it at will. Hamas signed Islam.
Israeli authorities are regretting and embarrassed by the honest narrations of their captured citizens regarding Hamas. They are taking measures to ensure that in future released captives are doctored on what to say before they are presented to the public. The Israeli public and the world are also discovering the lies peddled by Israeli authorities and parroted by Biden and other Western leaders just to justify the now ongoing atrocities that Israel planned to commit in Gaza—the lies of decapitated babies, massacred civilians, raped women, tortured captives, etc., none of which is substantiated by Israel to date.
We thank God who blessed us with Islam. Let us try and follow its commands as much as we can. It alone can rid us of the ‘raging animal’ in man and make us treat even our enemies with the highest degree of humanity in the worst of situations. Let the West continue to deceive itself and the World with empty conventions though it still believes that “war is horrible” and anything in it is justified, like the bombing of Gaza hospitals and mosques, killing thousands of Palestinian children in a week, decimating whole neighbourhoods and attacking displaced civilian convoys.
In the test of humanity during war, Hamas has passed and the West has failed.
