The war in Gaza and the barbaric terrorist attacks on the border communities have managed to clearly and forcefully shift the discourse in the world to Israel and Hamas, almost positioning the entire Muslim world alongside the Palestinians in demanding an end to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.
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Worse still, antisemitic sentiment has been clearly on the side of Hamas more than ever and it has managed to deeply infiltrate social media channels in the Western world and from there to the streets.
Video: UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan slams members for their silence / Credit: UN
However, within this turmoil, it is important to remember that even within the Muslim world, there are those who have been horrified by the barbarism of Hamas terrorists and the murderous ideology behind their actions. In fact, there are many around the world who have been fighting against this worldview for decades and have faced hatred and criticism as a result.
One of these individuals is Dr. Qanta Ahmed, a physician, a Muslim, and a social activist who is among the leading and prominent figures in the global fight against radical Islam, which has hit the world from Orlando to Karachi and from Moscow to Mozambique.
"I'm American and British. I was raised in England. I am Muslim by birth, and I observe Islam. I have spent close to the last 20 years, let's say since 9/11, combating radical Islam, and trying to distinguish radical Islam from true Islam," she told Israel Hayom in a recent visit to Israel aimed at understanding the scope of the atrocities committed by Hamas.
"I work as a physician, I'm an academic physician, at New York University. And in the course of the last couple of decades, I've been to places that were deeply affected by terrorism. In my everyday medical practice, I look after people who are survivors of 9/11, they were first responders that day," she says, explaining how the al-Qaida attack in 2001 on the US was a turning point for her. "I saw September 11 from Saudi Arabia, where I was a physician, and saw that event happening live in Riyadh, at a time when Saudi Arabia was under the grip of reactionary puritanism."
Dr. Ahmed traveled the world in the wake of the immense damage caused by Islamist terrorist organizations. She met survivors of the Taliban's terror; in Iraq, she met Yazidis who had escaped the massacre by ISIS in Sinjar; and in Mosul, she encountered children who had been recruited as fighters for the terrorist organization ISIS. These face-to-face meetings with the victims strengthened and sharpened her perception of the distinction between Islam as a religion and its use for murderous terrorism.
"I have been able to see the impact of terrorism from the moment that I witnessed it in Saudi Arabia, to the effects on the lives minds, and bodies of my patients that I've been treating for getting towards two decades, to the impacts on Muslim societies, the impacts on Muslim children, the impacts on the Yazidi people and their enslavement, almost every aspect that I can, I've been able to see with that, with that background," she says.
Q: As a Muslim, you define the difference between Islam as a religion as a core of belief, to Islamism, to what one might call political Islam. What are the key differences in theory and in practice?
"It's a very good question. And this is partly why the Islamists are so facile at that. So facile at disguising totalitarianism as a creed. So Islam is a very simple belief system. It requires belief in one God. It requires devotion to prayer and remembrance of God, charity, also fasting, and also visiting Mecca. In fact, the visit to Mecca is only for those who can afford it…. So the differences between Islam and Islamism is a belief system centered around service to others, service to others is how we worship God or 90% of Islam is really what you're doing for others, how you treat other people. Just like in Judaism, the loss of one life – if you cause the loss of one life, it's the loss of all mankind. If you take one life, you've taken all of mankind. Those commandments are very explicit in Islam. Islamism is completely different. Islamism mandates that Islam can only be experienced in a legal caliphate. The one other deceits of Islamism is the concept that there is some requirement of violent jihad. So, Islam is very clear on jihad. The greater jihad is the struggle for self-improvement, always trying to eliminate the baser instincts that are present in all human beings. There's no such thing as a holy war in Islam, there was only a just or an unjust war. The Islamist takes that and state that violent jihad is an essential creed, to subscribe to their beliefs. So what Hamas has just prosecuted, they are being celebrated and fated as loaded figures who have prosecuted a holy war. And that is absolutely abhorrent."
Over the years Ahmed has visited Israel numerous times – this is her 12th visit – and got a first-hand look at the Israeli reality. "As I deepened my understanding about radical Islam or Islamism, whether it's nonviolent or violent, I began to realize that Israel was one of the prime recipients of Islamist terrorism, and began to learn about Islam. Islam in relationship to Israel…When I saw these atrocities, of course on October 7, I checked on my friends in Israel and was deeply worried about them, but it was the rapid denial of the event that was broadcast in Western media and also in the protests that very much affected me. "
Upon arriving she saw the atrocities up close on a tour with security officials to the Gaza border communities and to the National Forensics Institute, where she saw the autopsies being made. "I bought a ticket and came here immediately to see things for myself and talk to survivors and eyewitnesses, and see the places of genocide and even look at the bodies of those that were executed by this genocidal Islamist jihadist event," she says.
Q: You categorize this as genocide. Do you mean it to the full extent of the word?
"I should qualify that I'm not an expert in international law. There may be specific definitions, but as I understand it, the terrorists, the Hamas group on October 7, came with lethal and very specific threats of systemic extermination, torture, abduction forced displacement of the Israeli people. These terrorists had maps and floor plans, they knew the levels of the homes, and they even knew the names of the families living there. And they were familiar with which families may be retired senior officials within the Israeli military. There was no question in my mind, they had lethal intent, and there's no question in my mind they had that intent. Even more so than the Israeli identity, it was the Jewish identity that they were seeking to eliminate. The reason I call it genocidal is these people were eliminated. I don't like to use these words, because the words themselves can be dehumanizing, but these people were massacred. They were exterminated because of their Jewish identity. Some of the bodies also had all of those atrocities and then additionally been incinerated. So, this is not like a mass shooting. This is not some kind of mass casualty event, even though casualties were generated. This was lethal extermination driven by a fanatical ideology. Many of the injuries – when I've described them to my colleagues who are experts in genocide, documenting genocide, understanding genocide, and defining genocide, recognize the injuries could be genocidal. "
