Relationship With Hamas
The Islamic University has close links with Hamas. It was co-founded by one of the future founders of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 1978, and many Hamas members have taught within the university. A 2007 article about USAID funding of organisations having links to terrorism cites American, Palestinian and Israeli evidence of connections between the university and Hamas. There are also clear contemporary links. For example, the new and reshuffled ministers in the Gaza cabinet announced by Hamas in March 2011 hold faculty positions at the university. Nevertheless, some Palestinian academics have denied that the university is in any respect a Hamas institution. Writing for the Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestinian Academics Marcy Newman and Akram Habeeb claim that "Equally important for our American colleagues is to remove the false label that IUG is a "Hamas-controlled" institution. Just as Palestinians in Gaza belong to a variety of political parties, IUG's students, board, faculty and staff represent that reality. IUG is a university like any other in Palestine that reflects the diversity of its population."
Aspersions have been cast by journalist Steven Erlanger, former Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, who described the IUG as "one of the prime means for Hamas to convert Palestinians to its Islamist cause,' in a 2007 article about further Israeli airstrikes on the university. However, this report was criticised by political economist Sara Roy of the University of Harvard, who explicitly stated that 'there can be no question that Hamas works within the framework of Islamic institutions in the Gaza Strip, and that there are certain direct links between Hamas and many of the social and economic institutions (in the strip)... However, it is far more questionable whether an automatic and inevitable link exists between Hamas and Islamic social and economic institutions, whether those links are inherently subversive, or whether such institutions promote radicalism and violence as is commonly assumed." Roy also writes: "... logic maintains, institutional clients become automatically linked to Hamas and constitute a base of support for political Islam. As a result, Islamic social institutions become recruiting centers for the Hamas's military wing. There is however, little hard evidence to support any of these allegations.
Read more about this topic: Islamic University Of Gaza
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