Imagine the riots that would erupt in our area if while Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister, MK Bezalel Smotrich would have announced that Supreme Court Justice Meni Mezuz's early retirement from the bench was "a big step" toward changing the High Court. Imagine for a moment the head of Shas' Council of Torah Sages declaring that the Israeli laws on Shabbat observance were merely a preview of a future state to be governed by Jewish law. Meretz MKs would have Smotrich virtually stoned, and the heads of Yisrael Beytenu would make sure the Shas sages were dead by shaming.
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Something similar did happen his week with the Ra'am party and the head of its religious council, but the country remained dumb and the spin machines were still. Sheikh Hamad Abu Dabas, chairman of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement and head of the movement's Sura Council, was so thrilled at the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan that he let it out in a post on his Facebook page: "Afghanistan is a big step on a long path."
After some polite, not to say minimal, pondering about the Taliban's past and future conduct, Abu Dabas expressed confidence that "all the tyrants will leave sooner or later" and that "occupations will vanish."
"The future belongs to this religion and this people [Islam and Muslims]. The weakness and rifts in our nation are an illness that stems from western hegemony. When that cracks – all the systems of corruption and tyranny will fall, just like the American rule in Afghanistan fell," he is convinced.
The spirit of his remarks leaves no room for doubt: Ra'am and its representatives are something much bigger than "the civil agenda" in the name of which they joined the Bennett-Lapid government. Abu Dabas and his friends are part of the story of the global Muslim Brotherhood, which aspires to apply the laws of Sunni Islam throughout the world and is also influenced by the Salafist approach, which sees early Islam as a model.
The head of the party's Sura Council might be a little more sophisticated than the Jerusalem sheikh Issam Amira, who last week called for the Taliban to establish the Second Caliphate and liberate Al Aqsa Mosque. But they both share a single worldview. They both see the Jewish identity of the sovereign state of Israel as something temporary, an occupation that will disappear when Islam takes over the world.
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