A university in Tunisia, regarded as one of the historic centres of Islamic thought, has called on its students to support the jihad or holy war perpetrated by the terrorist group Hamas against the state of Israel.
The Ez-Zitouna University, which was founded sometime between the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th century, released a statement on Facebook on October 12th regarding “Operation: Al-Aqsa Flood,” the massacre of over a thousand civilians by Hamas fighters on October 7th.
The release of the Arabic-language document went largely unnoticed in Western media until the Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported on it this week, translating sections of the statement that call on Muslims to engage in jihad.
The university states that it is a duty for all Muslims to engage in a fight against Israel, and it is a “clear message to the Islamic community and its armies … so that they may move quickly to the blessed land and infiltrate the dwellings to eradicate the Jewish entity.”
“Support and support for the jihad struggle in Palestine is an individual obligation for all Muslims … The immediate duty for the Islamic community is to return to the right path,” the statement reads.
“We urge the imams to carry out their religious duty from the pulpits to spur unity among the ranks of Muslims in the face of the crusader-Zionist alliance,” it adds.
The directorate of the Zaytuna Grand Mosque, along with the university, issued the statement, and when an Arabic-language platform attempted to seek clarification for the remarks from the Al-Maamour mosque of the University of Ez-Zitouna, they were told, “The decision on Jihad is considered a legitimate decision in solidarity with what is happening in Palestine.”
Tunisia’s Minister of Religious Affairs, Ibrahim bin Muhammad Al-Shaibi, also released a statement a day later, on October 13th, condemning Israel as a “Zionist gang” calling on all mosques in Tunisia to support the Palestinians.
He stated:
I call upon the Imams of Al-Khutbah to invite all Tunisians to engage in blood donation campaigns for the benefit of the Palestinian people, at the core of the role of religious discourse in mosques, which is in favour of the major issues of justice and justice, denouncing injustice and tyranny, and serving the causes of the Egyptian nation, led by the case of Al-Quds Sharif.
I also call on them to have mercy on the innocent souls of the righteous martyrs, who cried with their pure blood and pure souls [in] the land of Palestine, to pray for the speedy recovery of the wounded heroes, and to pray to God to be a helper and supporter for the people of Palestine and to strengthen the feet of the valiant resistance.
The newspaper Il Giornale notes that Italians may be concerned about the comments from the university, as Tunisia is one of the main points of departure for the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have arrived in Italy this year.
According to statistics from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), over 12,000 Tunisian nationals have arrived in Italy so far this year out of the estimated total of 140,856 migrants who have arrived in the country illegally as of October 22nd.
Some Tunisians who arrived in Italy illegally in recent years have gone on to carry out terrorist attacks, including the most recent one in Brussels this month, in which a Tunisian illegal immigrant shot and killed two Swedish nationals.
In Germany, police arrested a former Islamic State fighter who they believed may have been plotting a terrorist attack related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. Security forces believe the extremist planned to drive a truck through a crowd at a pro-Israel event.
The alleged plot echoes the actions of Tunisian illegal immigrant Anis Amri, who also drove a truck through a crowded Christmas market in Berlin in 2016, killing a dozen people and injuring dozens of others.
