Ahmed Yassin - The Man Who Revived a Nation

“The West demands from us that we stop the resistance. Instead of asking the occupiers to leave our land, they ask us to surrender to the occupier… The peace that reinforces occupation, settlements, and the exiling of the Palestinian people, is not really peace.”
- Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

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Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
1938- 2004

* Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin was born in the village of Al-Jora, Majdal district, in 1938 .

* Born in what was then Palestine under the British mandate, Sheikh Yassin’s political views were forged at a time of humiliation and defeat for the Palestinians.

* Becoming responsible for eleven children, the elderly sheikh belonged to one of many families expelled from their homes by invading Israeli forces during the first Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948 and sought refuge in the nearby Gaza Strip.

* The Sheikh was paralyzed in his youth as a result of an accident while exercising on the beaches of Gaza.

* He, other than his complete paralysis, suffered a number of other disabilities and diseases including loss of eyesight in his right eye due to Zionist blows during interrogation in addition to weakness in his left eye. He also suffered from chronic inflammation in his ear, lung infection and other diseases in his abdomen.

 

* He devoted his early life to Islamic scholarship and studied at al-Azhar University in Cairo, the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was there that he developed the belief that Palestine is Islamic land “consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day.

* Back in Gaza, Yassin continued with his life and became a teacher of Arabic Language and Islamic Culture. He also worked as a chairman of the Islamic Complex in Gaza before his arrest in 1983 for possession of weapons, establishing a military organization and championing the annihilation of the Hebrew state.

* His release was secured in 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange deal.

* Sheikh Ahmad Yassin founded the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, along with a number of Islamic activists in the Gaza Strip in 1987, from that time forward, he would be seen as the spiritual leader of the Islamic resistance movement in Palestine.

* In 1989, Sheikh Yassin was arrested by the Israelis.

* On the 16th of October in 1991, a Zionist army court passed a life sentence in addition to 15 years imprisonment sentence against Sheikh Ahmed Yassin after an indictment list leveled nine charges against him including inciting the kidnap and killing of Zionist soldiers and the establishment of the Hamas Movement’s security and military wings.

* He was eventually released in 1997, in exchange for two Israeli agents arrested in Jordan during an attempt to assassinate another Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal.

* Though the Palestinian Authority recognized the importance of the resistance effort, it placed Sheikh Ahmad Yassin under house arrest on a number of occasions.

* Sheikh Ahmed Yassin survived a Zionist assassination attempt on the 6th of September in 2003 when Zionist army choppers fired missiles at a house in Gaza. He was only lightly injured in his right arm.

* Then, on the 22nd of March in 2004, the daybreak was indeed a strange one. Smoke filled the sky. The silence was broken by the sound of bombs going off. Three bombs were dropped from the air from Apache helicopters upon the aged, crippled man in his wheelchair as he was being pushed along down the road to the mosque for his morning prayers.
Many righteous people from the Muslim community have witnessed that Sheikh Ahmad Yassin lived his life struggling and died a martyr by Allah’s grace, declaring that we must consider him as such and that with Allah is the final determination.