February 4, 2026, Yigal Carmon, director of the venerable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) delivered a jeremiad of condemnation in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) directed at Israel’s policy decisions that ostensibly facilitated Hamas’s gruesome jihad carnage on October 7, 2023. Carmon alluded to an “Orwellian discourse” of denial which prevailed before the attacks regarding the central Islamic religious ideology—jihad terror and “martyrdom”—sanctioning Hamas’s atrocities.
“Their religion [Islam] instructs, encourages and promises reward for such deeds—either victory in this world, or paradise in the next. The October 7th attacks were carried out in accordance with the same model of atrocities against Jews in the 7th century carried out by the followers of this religion and its prophet [Muhammad].”
Directly inculpating Islam, not merely Hamas’s putative “radical interpretation” of the Muslim creed, Carmon had trodden upon verboten ground. Taboos imposed by cultural relativism notwithstanding, objective comparison of “Hamas’s Islam” vis-à-vis the Jews and Israel, with the authoritative, mainstream Islam of Al-Azhar University—a de facto “Vatican of Sunni Islam” since the 13th century, till now—reveals striking concordances substantiating Carmon’s contention. As I will demonstrate, Hamas’ 1988 Covenant—a binding documentary record of the organization’s specific beliefs and goals—expresses unabashedly the same conjoined Jew-hatred and anti-Israel jihadism Al-Azhar University has inculcated continuously since the November 1947 United Nations Palestine Partition Plan was announced.
The opening of Hamas’ foundational Covenant, before the document’s preamble, features Qur’an 3:112, which describes the Jews’ rightful permanent “humiliation” and “destitution” for transgressing the will of Allah, even murdering Allah’s prophets. Articles 22 and 32 invoke modern conspiratorial themes reminiscent of European (secular) antisemitic motifs, especially article 32, which makes explicit mention of the crude Czarist Russian fabrication, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Even these articles, however, are rooted in the Qur’an, including references in both articles 22 and 32 to Qur’an 5:64, a sort of ancient antecedent of The Protocols that claims Jews “strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters.” Jihad war against Israel and Jews forms the other pillar of the Covenant. The entire global Muslim community is admonished to wage a real world jihad, including jihad “martyrdom” killings as sanctioned by Muhammad, to destroy the state of Israel, politicide, in article 15. Citing Muhammad’s end of times canonical tradition of Jew annihilation—the infamous “trees and stones” hadith—the Covenant further invokes a jihad genocide of the Jews in article 7.
Already, in response to the U.N.’s 11/29/1947 Partition Plan resolution for Palestine—before Israel existed as an independent state—Al-Azhar issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling upon the world’s Muslims to wage jihad against Palestine’s Jews and abort Jewish sovereignty over any portion of the Jews’ ancestral homeland. Similar Al-Azhar fatwas declaring global jihad were promulgated at the outset of each of the 1948 through 1973 Muslim conflicts with Israel.
A year after Israel’s decisive victory during the 1967 war, Al-Azhar convened the 4th Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research in Cairo, which assembled prominent Muslim theologians not only from the Middle East, but also Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. This seminal Conference marked the formal endorsement of Qur’anic Jew-hating jihadism as the guiding ideological rationale for the simmering conflict with Israel. Published in English as a 935-page tome in 1970, the Conference Proceedings were the subject of historian David Littman’s pioneering analysis, in 1971. Littman concluded plaintively, over 50 years ago, Al-Azhar was then promoting ideas which,
“…lead to the urge to liquidate Israel, politicide, and the Jews, genocide. If the (Qur’anic) evil of the Jews is immutable and permanent, transcending time and circumstances, and impervious to all hopes of reform, there is only one way to cleanse the world of them—by their complete annihilation.”
Late Al-Azhar Grand Imam, and major contemporary Qur’anic commentator Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi (b. 1928; d. 2010) emerged out of this 1947-1968 Al-Azhar milieu, producing his 1968 Ph.D. thesis, “The Jews in the Qur’an and Traditions,” which launched a career culminating in leadership of Sunni Islam’s pre-eminent religious teaching institution. Within a year of becoming Grand Imam in 1996, Tantawi introduced the 1997 re-publication of his 1968 thesis with these frank observations:
“My main goal for choosing the topic of my dissertation ‘The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and the Sunna (Traditions)’ is to reveal–to Muslim youth in particular and to the rational, reasonable and fair-minded people in general—the state of the Children of Israel (i.e., Jews), their history, ethics, lies, depravity and immorality, relying on what has been mentioned about them in the Holy Qur’an, the Sunna and the correct and unequivocal historical facts.”
The quintessential jihadism and theological Islamic Jew hatred espoused in Tantawi’s Ph.D. thesis is simply a far lengthier and more erudite elaboration of the identical Islamic religious animus directed at Jews, compendiously, and 20-years later, in the Hamas Covenant. Tantawi’s “The Jews in the Qur’an and Traditions” invokes the same two central Qur’anic motifs of Jew-hatred subsequently featured in the Hamas Covenant, Qur’an 3:112 and Qur’an 5:64—the latter, as in the Hamas Covenant, being the sacralized “Islamic basis” for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Similarly, in his thesis Tantawi also references Muhammad’s trees and rocks hadith of genocidal Jew-annihilation, and advocates vociferously for a real-world military jihad by the entire global Muslim community to destroy the modern State of Israel—a politicide. Moreover, as Grand Imam Tantawi endorsed homicide bombing of Israeli non-combatants, and in public, referred to Jews with the Qur’anic epithet (from Qur’an 5:60), “apes and pigs.”
Current Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb, Tantawi’s immediate successor, continues Tantawi’s—and Al-Azhar’s—ignoble legacy of openly virulent Jew-hatred. Al-Tayeb has sanctioned homicide “martyrdom” bombing murder of Israeli Jews, including non-combatants, and twice (here; here) on national Egyptian television condemned Jews, eternally, while invoking Qur’an 5:82—a central Antisemitic verse—for causing “Muslim distress…since the inception of Islam 1400 years ago.” He has also accused “Global Zionism” (Jews) of midwifing ISIS, and related jihad terror groups, to “destroy the Middle East,” and claimed the “Zionist entity,” i.e., Israel, was plotting to “march on the Kaaba (in Mecca) and on the Prophet’s Mosque (in Medina).”
Not surprisingly, under al-Tayeb’s aegis, Al-Azhar on 10/7/23, while Hamas’ carnage was still ongoing, extolled with “utmost pride the resistance efforts of the proud Palestinian people.” Abbas Shuman, current inspector general of Al-Azhar’s Fatwa committees, at his Facebook account, October 7, 2023, expressed support for Hamas’ terror attack earlier that day, and on October 18, 2023 “rejoiced” over “the demise of the descendants of apes and pigs. (Jews; Qur’an 5:60).” Muhammad Omar Al-Qady, dean of the Faculty for Islamic and Arabic Studies at Al- Azhar, addressed Hamas’ October 7th attacks in a post on his personal Facebook account October 17, 2023, which praised the Hamas attackers and longed for the liquidation of the Jews, whom he also called “the descendants of apes and pigs.” Finally, October 18-19, 2023, Al-Azhar’s “Global Center for Online Fatwas” issued a formal religious ruling declaring that all Israelis, including non-combatants, were legitimate targets of jihad terror. The fatwa claimed, “the term ‘civilians’ does not apply to the Zionist settlers of the occupied land,” and referred to Israel as a “a cancer in the heart of the Islamic Arab nation.”
Tragically, Al-Azhar shows no sign of educating the next generation of young Muslims any differently towards Jews. An analysis of Al-Azhar’s religious education seminary K-12 textbooks published November, 2023, revealed they continue using traditional Islamic themes to indoctrinate young Muslim religious students in the demonization of Jews as “naturally treacherous,” “evil,” “scheming,” “infidels” who refuse to convert to Islam, while encouraging these students to remind Jews “to learn a lesson from history,” alleging Jews, “have only known genuine prosperity and security under Muslim rule.” The curriculum further denies any Jewish connection to Jerusalem or the land of Israel and fully embraces the “Palestinian (Muslim) Cause,” encouraging Palestinian Muslims to engage in “popular resistance,” i.e., jihad terror against “Zionist forces.”
Andrew Bostom
Andrew G. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism " (Prometheus, November, 2008) You can contact Dr. Bostom at @andrewbostom.net
