When Religion Becomes a Tool for Fraud and Ignorance

There are many forms of lying, deception, and manipulation, even against the Lord of the Worlds; when matters unrelated to the divine sacred are attributed to Him, and worldly sanctities become more important than divine ones.

This is practiced by religious men, sheikhs, and all political Islamist groups. In recent years, enlightened thinkers, intellectuals, and religious figures have elaborated on this ugly exploitation of religion to serve personal or partisan interests and foreign political agendas.

However, what provoked me is the use of religious fraud in the Palestinian issue, as if it is not enough for the Palestinian people - especially in the Gaza Strip - to suffer from the Zionist danger, for merchants and brokers of religion to further increase their suffering or exploit it for their personal gains.

The matter did not stop at utilizing religious rhetoric to distort national culture and keep people ignorant of their history, living in an imagined past, and legitimizing the killing of political opponents by claiming that anyone who dies defending the party or the "Islamic group" or the doctrine they invented is a martyr and will enter paradise where he will have a palace and seventy women! The issue does not cease at collecting billions of dollars under the pretense of building mosques that turn into partisan centers for spreading discord and inciting enemies and recruiting children and adolescents. In fact, some mosque construction projects include complex fraud mechanisms; the donor believes they are deceiving God by building a mosque in exchange for erasing their sins, while the recipient of the support deceives the donor. The most dangerous of all this is turning the Palestinian people - especially in the miserable and impoverished Gaza - into mercenary groups working for agendas, whether "Brotherhood" agendas, Iranian, Turkish, or Israeli ones under a Qatari facade.

The last thing we witnessed was the distribution of hijab clothing and initiation of prayer from a "Islamist" donor to girls who are alleged to be Quran memorizers in Gaza! As if all the necessities of life were available, and all the requirements of worship in accordance with Sharia were at their best, and all that the people of the Strip lack is memorizing the Quran!.

Here, I pose the following questions:

* First: It is known that clothing in every nation is part of its culture and national identity; why should Afghan or Pakistani clothing replace the traditional Palestinian dress, which is also "modest"? And who said that this is the Islamic dress? Especially since the Zionist enemy - in its attempt to obliterate our identity and national culture - has stolen the Palestinian dress and attributed it to itself.

* Second: What is the benefit of memorizing the Quran without understanding and reasoning, and transforming it into human behavior that aligns with the Quran in text and spirit?

* Third: Even if we assume that all Palestinians, indeed all Muslims, became memorizers of the Book of God, would their condition improve?

* Fourth: Did the thousands of Quran memorizers that Hamas boasted of manage to protect Gaza, or even protect themselves from death and hunger during the extermination war?

* Fifth: Wouldn't it be better if the prizes and financial rewards distributed to Quran memorizers, and what is spent on mosques and their embellishment, and also on religious channels... were redirected - or part of it - to build schools and hospitals?

* Sixth: Even if we assume all women wore hijabs and burqas, and men grew their beards and wore Afghan galabiyas adorned with prayer beads and miswaks, spending all their time in mosques and praying to the Prophet... does all this mean that the message of Islam has been fulfilled and that the Lord of the Worlds is pleased with what is happening?