Important religion-news angles are everywhere, as Hamas triggers war with Israel

Undoubtedly the year’s biggest religion-news story will be the events of this past weekend: The Oct. 7 massacre of hundreds Israeli civilians by the terrorist group Hamas and the soon-to-be war in the Middle East that could unfold on multiple fronts.

Scanning the coverage, I am seeing that many people are asking. “What is Hamas’ end game?” They know that Gaza will almost certainly be ripped apart in retribution. A group doesn’t do this kind of carnage unless there’s some massive overarching reason behind it all — something linked to a core belief.

One core belief has to do with the superiority of Islam and the need for Israel’s eventual destruction, which you can find in the opening paragraphs of the founding charter of the Hamas movement. Israel has been trying to appease the mentality behind this document for 75 years in the hopes that Hamas would become less jihadist.

The world now sees where that hope led.

A second core belief centers on Al Aqsa, the Dome of the Rock complex in Jerusalem, the point from which Muslims believe Mohammed magically transported one night from Mecca. It is the third holiest site in Islam, after Mohammed’s grave site in Medina and of course Mecca. The goal is for Al Aqsa to, symbolically, cover all of Israel.

Even though this whole narrative is laced with religion, it took awhile for professionals in the major news media to get there. I didn’t see Al Aqsa mentions until Sunday, when someone thought to dig up quotes from the Hamas military chief, Muhammad Deif. The importance of the below quote can’t be over-emphasized.

As the Times of Israel noted:

Here lies a part of Palestinian thinking and discourse that many of Palestine’s Western defenders ignore, both because it’s a hard sell to Western audiences and because they don’t really understand it themselves. Palestinian “resistance,” as conceived by Hamas, is about much more than settlements, occupation or the Green Line. A larger theory of Islamic renewal is at work.
As he announced the start of Saturday’s attack, Hamas military commander Deif said it was meant to disrupt a planned Israeli demolition of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

A California imam has made some waves in recent days by suggesting all Jews be killed in an apocalyptic battle in some future time.

Needless to say, this did not go over well with some of those who viewed a video of the speech -- but its combustible content got no national coverage.

Even coverage within California was limited, causing some to wonder that had the roles been reversed -- with the speaker a rabbi or a Christian preacher, attacking Muslims -- news media professionals would have been all over the story.

The Sacramento Bee had the clearest account of the sermon with a bit of theological punch:

A Davis imam is under fire after giving a sermon last week that combined end-of-days prophecy with the current religious conflict over a Jerusalem holy site, causing critics to condemn him as anti-Semitic.

Imam Ammar Shahin on Friday gave a nearly hour-long sermon to worshippers at the Islamic Center of Davis calling for congregants to oppose restrictions placed by Israel on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and citing Islamic texts about an end-times battle predicted by the prophet Muhammad.

The sermon included a prayer to Allah to “destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” according to the translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which first posted an edited clip of the sermon.

Shahin’s prayer continued, “count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one.”

After the Islamic Center claimed that MEMRI had misconstrued the remarks, the Bee got its own translator who sided mostly with the Center, but said the imam was unwise at best to give such a sermon.