Gaza Islamic University Prof. Maher Al-Susi: Secular Western Concepts Have Been Exploited to Make Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Appear Political Rather than Ideological

Professor Maher Al-Susi, who teaches at the Islamic University of Gaza's shari'a school, said during a January 4, 2019 broadcast on Al-Quds TV (Lebanon) that it is a problem that Muslim intellectuals are accepting secular Western ideas such as separation of religion and state. He said that this is why people have started talking about "political Islam" and that these "mistaken ideas" have been exploited in order to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appear to be a political conflict rather than an ideological one. He said: "The purpose of this was to remove faith and religion from the conflict. Our enemies were more clever than us. Unfortunately, they understood Islam better than we did."

Following are excerpts:

Prof. Maher Al-Susi: Muslim intellectuals have come to consider Islam to be a source of backwardness, so they have embraced Western secular thought in every detail, without realizing the true nature of Islam and without realizing the difference between Islam and the ecclesiastical religion that had ruled in the Middle Ages. This led to the idea of separating religion and state, or religion and politics, until we began to hear people talk about "political Islam" and about not mixing politics and religion. These are secular and Western ideas that have, unfortunately, begun to settle in the minds of Arab intellectuals. This is where the problem lies.

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These mistaken ideas have been exploited in order to spread the idea that the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews is a political conflict that revolves around land rather than an ideological conflict. The purpose of this was to remove faith and religion from the conflict. Our enemies were more clever than us. Unfortunately, they understood Islam better than we did.