This is a translation of the opening chapter of Taha Abderrahmane’s Thughūr al-Murābaṭa, translated by Monir Birouk and edited and introduced by Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra.

Editor’s Introduction

The opening chapter of Taha Abderrahmane’s Thughūr al-Murābaṭa (Rabat: Maghareb Center for Civilizational Studies, 2018) offers a radical rethinking of the Palestinian struggle through the author’s trusteeship framework. Expertly translated here by Prof. Monir Birouk, Abderrahmane seeks in this chapter to go beyond conventional political, legal, and historical analyses to develop a philosophical and ethical critique of the Israeli occupation, situating it within a broader theological and moral struggle between divine trusteeship and human usurpation. He frames the occupation as not merely a geopolitical conflict but a violation of sacred trust—an affront to both God’s sovereignty and the innate human order.

The core argument presented in this chapter is that Israeli aggression in Palestine takes two interrelated forms: the desecration of the land and the corruption of innate human nature. The former challenges God’s attribute of sovereignty by seeking exclusive possession of the Holy Land, while the latter seeks to erase the spiritual and historical consciousness of the Palestinian people, replacing it with a distorted, subjugated identity. Stated differently, the Israeli occupation exists in disregard and dispute of divine sovereignty and through the attempt to corrupt human nature without which the desecration of the Holy Land cannot be legitimated. Against this dual aggression, Abderrahmane proposes a holistic response: “Jerusalemite murābaṭa”—a mode of resistance that is not only physical but also moral, spiritual, and intellectual.

Murābaṭa, as articulated here, is an act of trusteeship resistance, grounded in two key principles: trust (amāna) and testimony (shahāda). The first principle calls for rejecting Israeli claims to sovereignty and reaffirming the divine trusteeship of the land, thereby stripping legitimacy from the occupation and countering it with a culture of duty rather than ownership. The second principle entails resisting Israeli attempts to normalize occupation by exposing and countering the erasure of Palestinian identity. Abderrahmane critiques the broader trend of normalization (taṭbīʿ) as a form of spiritual enslavement, arguing that it is not merely a political betrayal but a fundamental corruption of human nature itself.

Ultimately, Abderrahmane’s vision extends beyond Palestine, seeing Jerusalemite murābaṭa as a global paradigm for resisting the erosion of divine trusteeship in the “post-trust world.” He calls upon all people, not just Palestinians, to uphold this trusteeship, making the struggle for Palestine a microcosm of a broader ethical and spiritual resistance against oppression and moral decay. His analysis challenges conventional secular frameworks, offering instead a deeply rooted Islamic philosophical critique that reaffirms Palestine’s sanctity and the necessity of moral steadfastness.

By translating this seminal work, Prof. Birouk provides Anglophone readers with another opportunity, in a recently increasing cohort of works translated to English, of engagement with Abderrahmane’s trusteeship philosophy. This present work has profound implications not only for the Palestinian struggle but also for the broader discourse on resistance, decolonization, political philosophy, ethics, and Muslim philosophy and thought in general. This translation invites scholars, activists, and students alike to rethink Palestine not as a mere geopolitical dispute, but as a site of profound ethical and civilizational struggle—one that demands a response grounded in faith, duty, and resistance to oppression in all its forms.

Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra
Ramadan 1446 / March 2025

The Jerusalemite Murābaṭa: 
On the Frontier of the Islamic-Israeli Conflict¹

In a world that has lost the moral virtue of decency (ḥayāʾ)—a world wherein might makes right—it is no surprise that the human being is afflicted with all manner of harm. However, the harm that the “Palestinian human being” experiences, from both kin and stranger alike, is unparalleled and immeasurable, to say nothing of the harm he specifically suffers from the “Israeli entity,” whose harm has become indescribable, as though it were the incarnation of absolute evil (al-sharr al-muṭlaq). The forms of this Israeli harm are too numerous to cite one by one. No sooner do we count some of the current harms than we are stunned by other unforeseen forms.

In order to understand the truth of this harm that resembles absolute evil we need to know the truth of this human being who has been seriously harmed. To be sure, the Palestinian human being has a specificity that distinguishes him from others: his land is the “confluence of worlds,” both the immanent and the transcendent; and his legacy is the “confluence of dimensions,” both the temporal and the primordial. Whosoever boasts these characteristics, the “historical approach” is of little utility in grasping his truth, because it dismisses his primordial dimension even though it may not dismiss his transcendent world. Likewise, the “legal approach” is of little utility in this knowledge, because it dismisses his transcendent world even though it may not dismiss his primordial dimension. Nor, a fortiori, is the “political approach” more worthwhile because it overlooks both his transcendent world and his primordial dimension alike. Correspondingly, it is the farthest of all these approaches from grasping the truth of the Palestinian human being, resembling one who seeks to use a gold jewelry scale to weigh a mountain. Worse still, applying the political approach—which comprises an analytical category that contradicts, as will be explained later, the essential truth of this human being—resembles attempting to insert a camel through the eye of a needle.

Despite all its deficiencies, the “political approach” remains the dominant methodological choice today in dealing with the harm that is inflicted on the Palestinians, which indicates how far we remain from recognizing this truth. To be sure, the truth of the Palestinian human being cannot be known, nor can the harm inflicted upon him be warded off, except through an approach that connects the immanent and the transcendent worlds of his land, just as it connects the temporal and the primordial dimensions of his heritage.

Our purpose in this chapter is specifically to chart a philosophical approach that does not strip Palestinian land of any of its worlds but rather preserves all of them; nor does it strip the Palestinian heritage of any of its dimensions but rather maintains all of them. The hope is that this holistic approach will thus highlight the nature of Palestinian harm and map the ways of repelling it.

This approach, which we term the “trusteeship approach,” is predicated on the basic principle that everything has two dimensions: one is the image, which is the external appearance; the second is the soul, which is the inner essence. In this dual dimension, the soul (or inner essence) is the origin of and basis for interpreting the image (or the external appearance), and the image is an expression—or, if you will, a representation—of the soul.

Applying this trusteeship principle to Israeli harm, it becomes clear that the image of this harm generally consists in harming the Palestinians in two respects. One of these is “harming the land that their Lord has blessed;” the other is “harming the heritage that their innate nature has produced.” When we consider these two kinds of offense, “harming the blessed land” and “harming the innate heritage,” we find that the essence of “harming the blessed land” consists specifically in offending the One who has blessed it;² that is, “offending God.”³ On the other hand, we find that the essence of “harming the innate heritage” consists specifically in inflicting harm on the one who produced this heritage; that is, “harming the human being.”

Two consequences follow from the above. First, since the soul is the basis for interpreting the image, “offending God” must be the basis for explaining “the infliction of harm on the land;” and “harming the human being” must be the basis for explaining “the infliction of harm on the heritage.” Second, since the “question of God” and the “question of the human being” do not concern the Palestinians alone, but rather concern all people, it follows that Israeli harm is not specific to the Palestinians alone, but rather extends to other people, such that it becomes incumbent upon the non-Palestinians to be as intent as the Palestinians in repelling the Israeli offense that befalls God insofar as He is God, and befalls the human being insofar as he is a human being.

Here, three questions that demand answers pose themselves: First, how is offending God manifested by the Israelis? Second, how do they manifest harm towards the human being? Third, how may these two forms of offense be confronted?

1. Occupying the Land and Offending God

It may be said that offending God, among the Israelis, is evidenced by their long history. Their biblical and Talmudic memory preserves how their ancestors, ever since their exodus from Egypt, had been breaking the covenants and conventions that Allah a had taken from them, disobeying His commands and prohibitions, and harming His prophets and messengers n, as though they were at war with Him.⁴ Since this memory determines their behaviors in the present, they have returned to this first offense, through which they seek to revive their bygone past. Their current return to the abuse of God takes one of the most serious and obscene forms: namely, contending with God over one of His greatest attributes, “the Sovereign (al-Mālik).”⁵ Allah Z is the absolute Sovereign who grants sovereignty to whomever He wills and strips it from whomever He wills. However, these Israelis refuse but that they be the sovereign possessors and others be the ones possessed. Moreover, they even sought to monopolize sovereign possession, in both means and effects, to the extent of equating “sovereignty” with “existence.” According to this logic, it is not possible for the one who lacks sovereignty to even exist.

Since the love of sovereign possession has gripped their hearts entirely—to the extent that without it, they lack any sense of their own existence—they have resorted to all means that would lead them to the possession of the blessed land. For that sake, they have sought all the methods and means of which they could avail themselves, not caring whether they have violated a right, transgressed a law, breached a covenant, or broken a promise. Rather, they remain undeterred in their search for justifications for these unjust and wicked means and methods of sovereign possession, feeling that that they rival God in His unrestricted dispensation of His sovereignty. Their means and methods in disputing divine sovereignty are predicated on the following principle: whatever belongs to others that may be occupied is necessarily theirs.

Thus, to distinguish this occupation of the land from other forms of occupation (iḥtilāl), we have opted to refer to it as “settlement (iḥlāl).”⁶ Its trusteeship definition is as follows: settlement (iḥlāl) is the occupation (iḥtilāl) of the land, in dispute of divine sovereignty.

Their means of settlement, as everybody knows, can be summarized in three strategies: first, the coercive seizure of areas of land, whether public or private; second, the seizure of what lies on the lands, be they houses, resource wellsprings, or monuments; and third, the seizure of what lies under these lands, be they foundations, supports, or excavations. The Israelis equally resort to different settlement methods: first, “fixed settlement,” by building settlements, walls, and bypass roads; second, “expansive settlement,” through annexation and expropriation; third, “gradual settlement,” through the application of Israeli laws and the practice of Jewish rituals; fourth, “absolute settlement,” temporally and spatially, as they count every period of time they spend in any place on the land of Palestine and its environs to be their right. Indeed, the longer the duration of their stay, the more entitled to this place they claim to be. Furthermore, wherever they set foot comes to be considered subject to the same rulings which govern their own land, for “the borders of our state,” as their leaders say, “extend as far as the reach of our armies’ feet.” Because the Israelis have no regard except for power alone, they can set foot on whatever pieces of land of others their sights extend to. Moreover, they claim sovereign possession over every place in which they fancied their ancestors to have briefly stayed or even just passed through. As one of their leaders once said, “Indeed, I smell the scent of my ancestors in Khaybar.”⁷ The fifth method of settlement is “holy settlement,” which consists in domination over the holy places. Such domination is governed by the following principle: the more sacred the occupied place is, the stronger the sense of sovereign possession.

Governed by this principle of settlement, the Israelis do not feel that they have triumphed in their aspiration to contend with God until they possess what He possesses, such that His houses become their very own houses. Hence, it is not surprising that they brazenly attempt to occupy the “Holy Mosque (Bayt al-Maqdis)” in Jerusalem, devising to this end unimaginable ruses and secret plans. They will never be fully content until they subject al-Aqsa Mosque in its entirety to destruction; for only then would it be possible for them to erect in its place what they consider to be their symbol of sovereign possession: namely, the Temple, with which they dispute Allah’s attribute of Sovereignty.⁸

It follows from the above that the state that the Israelis have created, and on which they have bestowed the attributes of justice, equality, and freedom, is not predicated on the principle of joint management, but rather on the principle of joint possession. Indeed, their groups partake of affairs just as they share spoils, not only because the focal point of these affairs is the properties that have been forcibly seized from their legitimate owners, but also because their minds and hearts have become so imbued with the attribute of possession to the extent of not dealing with any matter, whatever it may be, except as something that is to be possessed; it is of little import who the owner is, so long as he is Israeli.

Correspondingly, the truth of the Israeli state is closer to being a business institution than an institution of regulations and rulings. Once we agree that these actions altogether constitute the ultimate endpoint in disputing Allah’s attribute of Sovereignty, it becomes clear that this state represents the ideal paradigm of the sweeping spirit of possession. This truth is by no means refuted by the existence, in the past or in the present, under the protection or authority of that state, of groupings which do not adhere to the principles of private property or blocs that have adopted socialist methods. The foremost intention behind establishing these grouping and blocs, it should be recalled, was precisely to lay the ground for more possession by way of settlement.⁹

2. Occupying the Innate Nature and Harming the Human Being

If the Israelis are not ashamed of God, then it should be of no surprise that, a fortiori, they are not ashamed of the human being. And if they offended God in His most unique of attributes, then it should be of no surprise that, a fortiori, they harm the human being in his most specific of attributes. Since this harm took the form of occupation, this necessitates that their harm to the human being be an occupation of that which distinguishes him most; and that is specifically his innate nature, by dint of which he creates his authentic tradition. The innate nature is the memory that preserves the original values and meanings that have been imprinted in the human being’s soul since his creation, standing as a substance to the soul. Let us call this occupation of the innate nature, in its capacity to create tradition, “incarnation” (ḥulūl) (in contrast to “settlement,” which stands for the occupation of the land; a land which is the property of God). Thus, the “Israeli incarnation” can be understood as the corruption of the Palestinian human being’s innate nature, with the aim of coaxing him to approve of the evils of the occupation of his land, be they usurpation, forced migration, displacement, destruction, bulldozing, or dismemberment. Hence the trusteeship definition of “incarnation” is as follows: incarnation is the occupation of the authentic innate nature to bring about the approval of the desecration of the Holy Land.

Now, let us clarify how this corruption of the innate nature differs according to the two degrees of incarnation: the “overturning of values”—which is a partial incarnation—and the “stripping of the innate nature”—which is a complete incarnation.

2.1 The Overturning of Values

One of the degrees of the corruption of the innate nature is the separation of the human being from certain innate values in ways that serve the purposes of those who seek out such corruption. Since the Israelis’ harm squarely contradicts these original values, their need for this separation becomes intense, so that it becomes feasible for them to tamper with the occupied human being’s ability to evaluate and judge matters correctly. This tampering consists of driving him to abandon the innate values to their opposites, so that he eventually sees the truth that he has as falsehood, and the falsehood that they have as truth. Whenever they are capable of consolidating these “opposite values” in the soul of the Palestinian human being, they cause within it the following three types of corruption.

2.1.1   The Corruption of Memory

This kind of corruption consists of making the Palestinian renounce his prior beliefs and values, abandon them, deny them, forget them altogether, or, even if he does not forget them, at least enfeeble his interest in them so that their existence and non-existence become equal in his eyes. An example of such corruption is believing that the Muslims’ attachment to al-Aqsa Mosque ended with the turning of the qibla to the Sacred Mosque in Mecca or believing that the glorification of the Rock goes back to the Umayyads who were intent on enhancing their political position by distracting people from flooding to the Sacred Mosque. Hence, the aim behind corrupting the memory is to disrupt the Palestinian’s relationship with his past.

2.1.2   The Corruption of Self-Confidence

This second corruption manifests in making the Palestinian lose confidence in his ability to engender change; despair of the possibility of redressing the injustices that have been perpetrated on him, driving him to acknowledge the status quo and submit to his fate; or doubt the merit of resistance as a means of regaining one’s rights, viewing it as an act of terrorism and disruption, and not as a gesture of defense and revival. This state of mind is generated by the belief that reality is solid and immutable, and that commitments with the Israelis are unbreachable; let alone the general belief that relations with others, whether peoples or states, are ones of mutual interests that are governed by two principles: political realism and procedural rationality. Hence, the aim behind this second form of corruption is to disrupt the Palestinian’s relationship with his present.

2.1.3   The Corruption of Orientation

This third kind of corruption lies in making the Palestinian confused in his choices and priorities, so that his heart does not settle on anything, nor does it decide on anything specific. Likewise, it causes him to be totally disoriented, wavering in defining his demands and goals, uncertain of anything, and unable to move towards anything, having utterly lost his compass. Such disorientation might take the form of being torn between the desire to “integrate into Israeli society” and “working to preserve one’s specificity;” between “the option of negotiation” and “the option of resistance;” or still between “the principle of peaceful coexistence under two states” and “the principle of adjudication to a secular system under the authority of one state.” For this reason, the Israelis have relentlessly pushed him toward ever-increasing involvement in private interests, public relations, and foreign entanglements; all of which are preoccupations that inevitably obscure from him the perception of horizons and the identification of agendas. This means that the goal behind this third kind of corruption is to disrupt the Palestinian’s relationship with his future.

Correspondingly, so long that the Palestinian’s relationship with time—in its three dimensions, the past, the present, and the future—is disrupted, his relationship with space shall likewise be disrupted. Considering how it has always been conceived and dealt with by his ancestors, time is deemed one of the measures of space, or rather one of its conditions. For them, the time it takes to reach the Holy Land is what determines its location. This land is at the distance of such and such months, such and such days, or such and such hours. Indeed, walking to any part of this blessed land is no less valuable than residing in it or neighboring it. Even the Israelis, who convinced the world of their right to a land inhabited for a limited number of years by some of their alleged ancestors three thousand years ago, recognize the utility of time in seizing space. This is why they are as keen to destabilize the Palestinian’s relationship with time as they are on destabilizing his relationship with space. The measures of exile, the frequent bans on entering the city of Jerusalem, the prohibitions on praying in al-Aqsa Mosque either for different periods—as a form of punishment, or according to age—as a precautionary measure, the division of times of worship between them and the Palestinians, and outlawing the call to prayer in Palestinian cities are but a few of the malicious actions intended to weaken the Palestinian’s attachment to space through weakening his attachment to time.

2.2 Stripping Out the Innate Nature

If the “overturning of values” corrupts the innate nature, then stripping it out constitutes the ultimate stage of such corruption. To be sure, the occupation of the innate nature—which we have termed “incarnation”—is broader and more manifest in “stripping out the innate nature” than in the mere “overturning of values.” For the “overturning of values” is the separation of certain values from the innate nature and the instatement of their opposites in their place, while “stripping out the innate nature” is tantamount to its uprooting or deracination. In this sense, the individual whose innate nature is “incarnated” becomes a human being without an innate nature; a human being who severs his connection with the Unseen World from which he emanated. This type of occupation is known, in common political and the legal discourses, as “normalization.” The “normalization” that the Israelis aspire to falls, in terms of its geographical extent, into three categories: “Palestinian normalization,” “Arab normalization,” and “Islamic normalization.” In the beginning, they keenly pursued Islamic normalization, presuming that it would lead to normalization with the Arabs, even if clandestinely. After the Camp David and Wadi Araba treaties, they hoped that the partial Arab normalization would pave the way to total normalization with them. Then, after the Oslo Accords, they instrumentalized Palestinian normalization to achieve further open normalization.

Now that the Arab world has been afflicted with the scourges of conflict, infighting, ignorance, and treachery, the Israelis are focusing on open Arab normalization. They consider the current Arab deterioration to be an unmissable opportunity to dictate their vision of open normalization to those Arabs who are still hesitant about rushing to them and a preliminary step before the final liquidation of the Palestinian issue. It is not so much our concern here to lay out the terms of this normalization—the gravity and dangers of which are known far and wide—as to consider some of the incarnational attributes of the normalizers. Considering these attributes, normalization becomes a grave and inconceivable loss of the indisputable traits of the human self. Let us, then, state four forms of this loss:

2.2.1   Loss of Nature

The “normalization with the Israeli entity” is an association with that entity that is meant, by dint of the signification of conformity, to impart legitimacy on its presence in Palestine. It is equally meant, by dint of the signification of commitment, to grant it, by virtue of its superiority in various arenas of contemporary civilization, more than what is permitted to other neighboring countries. However, any association that is circumscribed as such cannot be called “normalization.” This can be explained in the following terms:

1. The word “normalization” is a derivative of “norm” or “nature.”¹⁰ Nature also refers to innateness: the moral character of which the human being was originally created. However, the association with the Israeli entity is essentially meant to confer legitimacy on an illegitimate entity; hence the most convenient term for such association is “legitimation” (or “legitimization) and not normalization.¹¹ The two are different; for legitimacy can be granted to that which is not natural, just as “naturalness” may exist in something that is not legitimate. This is so because legislation is a “formulation” originating in the mandatory command, while nature is a “creation” originating in the formative command.
   
   
2. The concept of “normalization” is based on the prior assumption that the association with the Israeli entity had previously been normal but ceased to be so; hence, it necessarily must be restored to its previous state of normality. The truth is that this presupposition is invalid. If this assumption is invalidated, it follows that normalization assumes the quality of that which is meaningless, such that it can be judged neither as true nor as false; for how can one normalize with what has never been normal before?
   
   
3. Relations with the Israeli entity cannot be dubbed “normalization” except in a sense that is opposite to its intended meaning. Indeed, the morphological form tafʿīl in the Arabic language allows for that since it is one of the forms of antonymy.¹² Take for example the word tamrīḍ: the verb marraḍa might mean “to make one sick” or its opposite, i.e., to nurse or to “cure one’s illness.” If this is the case, then it is permissible for us to use the concept of “normalization (taṭbīʿ)” in the sense of negating normality of the relationship with the Israeli entity, regardless of whether these relations are secret or public. Consequently, our saying “the normalizing Arab countries” is synonymous with our saying: “The Arab countries that are associated with the Israeli entity through abnormal relations.”
   
   

From the above, it follows that the intentions of the normalizer are overturned. Whenever he wishes to establish normal relations with the Israeli entity, he ends up stripping away their normal character. For the innate nature that would enable him to rightly bestow the character of normality on that which rightly deserves it has been lost on the normalizer, by virtue of his condition of incarnation, that is, by virtue of the Israeli entity’s occupation of his innate nature.

2.2.2   Loss of One’s Soul

Since the basis of normalization is total incarnation—that is, the occupation of the innate nature—one might assume that such incarnation brings life to the soul that harbors this innate nature. Such an assumption is presumably driven by the notion that the truth of “incarnation” lies in the idea that the occupying principle is nobler than the occupied space, and that such integration infuses the occupied with a power that it had not previously enjoyed. As shall be explained below, this assumption could not be farther from the truth:

1. Israeli incarnation is established on uprooting the innate nature of the occupied people. We have already mentioned that the innate nature is the essence of the soul, such that the existence of the latter entails the existence of the former. If the essence is taken away, the soul would as well. It follows that by uprooting the innate nature of the occupied, Israeli incarnation actually uproots his soul, which is worse than uprooting the body. Accordingly, the normalizer prefers the death of his soul over the death of his body.
   
   
2. The Israeli will, which aspires to incarnate the innate nature of the occupied, is by no means nobler than it.¹³ Because the human being was created in the best of molds, this innate nature underlies the meanings and values which were instilled in him. On the contrary, the default position of the Israeli will is to adopt values that are opposite to these innate values. It follows that the Israeli will never elevates the self which it incarnates but rather drags it down the abyss. Accordingly, the normalizer thus supplants his higher innate nature with a baser will.
   
   
3. The Israeli will was originally built on a host of myths and falsehoods that are incomprehensible to the mind, while the innate nature emanates from the world of heavenly truths at whose majesty the mind cannot help but wonder, acknowledging its inability to totally grasp them. Since the Israeli will violates the innate nature and invades its precincts, it must therefore occlude—through its false myths—these great truths from the self. Accordingly, the normalizer, in this case, replaces plain facts with sheer illusions.
   
   
4. The human being possesses the ability to generate from the original values of the innate nature further values, the sum of which constitute what might be called “wisdom.” Correspondingly, the human supply of values is divided into two categories: the “values of the innate nature” and the “values of wisdom.” If this is true, it is also true that the three categories that are subject to normalization—namely, the “Palestinians,” “Arabs,” and “Muslims”—despite the commonality of their innate nature, can each derive from their common innate nature different values that are specific to them, so that each category has its own particular wisdom. Consequently, the incarnation of the Israeli will into the members of these three groups would lead not only to stripping their innate nature, but also to the erasure of their respective forms of wisdom, for the Israeli will occupies the entirety of their spiritual space. Hence, the normalizer dooms himself to two hideous deaths: “the death of the innate nature” and “the death of wisdom.”
   
   
5. It might be argued that the Israeli will is, likewise, based on “Israeli knowledge,” which assumes the status of the “wisdom” that is particular to the Israelis; that is, the set of the scientific and technical values they accumulated. And since the Palestinian, the Arab, or the Muslim recognizes the meagerness of his own knowledge and the shallowness of his thought in face of these achievements, he is—driven by the hope of obtaining these values that he lacks—justified to acquiesce to the incarnation of the Israeli will into his innate nature. The reply to this argument is that the Israeli, by virtue of the logic of occupation, is keen to prevent the occupied from accessing this useful knowledge, fearing that one day the occupied will overtake him and liberate himself. Rather, he cunningly presents this selfsame prevention in the form of another knowledge that deceives the occupied and incites him to abandon the pursuit of knowledge from which he was prevented. A sufficient example for our purposes is reflected in the knowledge with which the Oslo Accords was formulated and by which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was deceived. Is there a political deception graver than agreeing on the husks of the conflict while relegating its core—such as the questions of Jerusalem and the borders—to negotiations that are determined neither by time nor by place?! Given what has preceded, the normalizer has chosen a knowledge that occludes him from knowledge.
   
   

The bottom line is that the normalizer substitutes that which is good with that which is evil, squandering, thus, his innate nature. In fact, he prefers the death of his innate nature to the death of his body; rather, he pathetically combines the death of his innate nature with the death of his wisdom. Moreover, he willingly chooses to imbibe mythical illusion rather than observing the spiritual truth. He rather clings to Israeli knowledge, which harms him, bringing him no benefit.

2.2.3   Loss of Holiness

In a holy realm, The Holy One c took from the human being, in his holy state, the Covenant of Trust over holy matters. Indeed, the “holy” is the initial innate elementary component with which the human being was entrusted. To be sure, the normalizer practices normalization under the pretext that neither the Holy Land, nor al-Aqsa Mosque, nor its sanctuary is as holy as is often presumed. Stripping these places of all sanctity, he consequently equates the Israeli occupation of these places to the Israeli occupation of other places, just as he equates his voluntary surrendering of these holy places to the occupier with his surrendering of others. And since that which is “holy” entails purification from all forms of defilement, and given that the foremost defilement that should be purified is idolatry, the normalizer has fallen into the desecration of the place that had been purified of idolatry, substituting, thus, innate sanctification with the proclivity for desecration.

It is equally known that “that which is descended” (i.e., revelation) is another form of the holy, just as “the land” is one of its forms. However, the normalizer finds it easy to tamper with the revealed Book to the extent that the Israeli occupier demands. To this end, the normalizer is given to the misinterpretation of Qurʾanic verses by twisting its texts and the omission of the chapters that relate the stories of the Jews, whether those about their breach of covenants, their violations of pacts, their worship of idols, or their killing of prophets. He does all that while knowing that the belief in these omitted narrations is a condition for having true faith. The normalizer even goes, without precedent, as far as dismissing certain pillars of religion such as jihād—even in its defensive form—under the pretext that it is sheer terrorism. Moreover, he insists that the Israeli entity inclines toward peace, and that any act of resistance against the occupier is an assault on him. Since Revelation is the basis of the connection between realms—both the exoteric and the esoteric—the normalizer’s tampering with it utterly distorts his sense of this connection. And if this sense becomes disturbed, likewise so would his perception, leading him to think of himself as doing good when in reality he does wrong, and to think of himself as rightly guided when in reality he is misguided. Accordingly, the normalizer’s assault on the sanctity of revelation takes away the last remnant of his usurped innate nature; that is, his reason.

Recognizing the inadequacy of both his desecration of the holy and his distortion of Revelation, the normalizer devotes himself to further desecration and distortion, breaking the last psychological barriers and bypassing all opposing considerations to ensure the necessary psychological conditions that render normalization for him the default inexorable normal position. Now that the normalizer has fully internalized all the regulations and conditions of normalization, and just as he dared lift sanctity off the “Sacred House of Jerusalem” (Bayt al-Maqdis), he would, out of the desire to please the occupier, have no scruples lifting it from the “House of the Kaaba” whenever the ambitions of the Israeli entity extended to its blessed environs. Likewise, just as the normalizer unscrupulously dropped certain parts of the revealed Book, it would equally be easy for him to drop the entire book whenever this occupier expresses the slightest dissatisfaction with his regime or doubts about his support for it, aiming behind these favors to regain the occupier’s satisfaction. Indeed, the normalizer did not dare to desecrate nor to distort except for the sake of perpetuating his authority, if even formally or symbolically. The reason is that his adoration for sovereign possession is no less intense than that of the Israeli, for both dispute with Allah over His sovereignty. Hence, their resemblance! Otherwise, the will of one of them would not have occupied that of the other. Thus, it becomes evident that the normalizer does not repent of his normalization; on the contrary, he consolidates it, until it becomes his default character.

2.2.4 Loss of Decency

Decency, as everybody knows, is a noble moral that drives one to abstain from evil, especially from harming others. For this reason, it may rightly be deemed the foremost moral from which the remaining morals branch off. As such, decency is foundational; for there is no moral that is devoid of a degree of decency, be it considerable or insignificant. Now, at the base of normalization is the loss of decency. Had it not been for the insolence of the normalizer, he would not have engaged in normalization with a sworn enemy of innate nature. Such insolence manifests in the following phenomena:

1. Total heedlessness to the divine gaze: it is known that a person feels shame when he undertakes an action only because he imagines the gaze of one other than his own, directed at him; a gaze that is capable of judging him. He then refrains from this action whenever he estimates that this gaze judges his action negatively. This second gaze may be that of a person like him; but this gaze has no effect except to the extent that it alerts to the existence of the divine gaze, such that the latter is the basis for the existence of decency. Correspondingly, shame from the human gaze is but a derivative of shame from the divine gaze, whether one acknowledges or denies it.As for the state of the normalizer with regards to shame from the divine gaze, its wickedness is composed not of one layer, but of several layers, some of which are worse than others. The first of these is that the normalizer denies the fact that the human gaze alerts to the existence of the divine gaze, which incites him to face the human gaze with sheer impudence and as much wickedness as he can muster. The second is that he goes blind, or rather feigns blindness, vis-a-vis the existence of the divine gaze, so that he does not hesitate to do that which displeases his Lord. The third is that he seeks to prevent others from being ashamed of the divine gaze, as he does not feel content with them unless they become equal to him in insolence. The fourth is that he resorts to the vilest means to distract two specific groups of people from being ashamed of the divine gaze. One of them is the group whose hearts are known to be attached to this divine gaze because of their residence in the Holy Land; for this is a group that Allah graces with his benevolent gaze. The second group partakes in the strength of this attachment despite not being residents of this blessed land. Hence, it becomes evident that the normalizer is not satisfied with merely stripping himself of modesty; he also seeks to strip others of it. Indeed, his impudence is not intransitive; it is explicitly transitive.
   
   
2. Loss of moral discernment: it goes without saying that the moral sense, also called “conscience,” “preacher” (wāʿiẓ), or “scruple” (wāziʿ), enables a person to distinguish good from evil and truth from falsehood. However, it is apparent that the normalizer has lost this moral authority as a result of being incarnated by the Israeli will. As a consequence of the dissolution of his innate nature, he started to replace his original values with opposing values which he could not judge, let alone build on or arrange in terms of their effects, such as replacing enmity with loyalty, sanctity with profanation, and right with might. Thus, his faculty of judgment becomes utterly corrupted, rendering him unable to differentiate, of his own accord, between that which is good in itself and must be done, and that which is evil in itself and must be discarded. Nor is he able to distinguish between what is in essence beneficial and praiseworthy, and what is in essence harmful and blameworthy. It suffices for him to do that which the Israeli will commands him to do, believing that this deed is all good and that it is praiseworthy even if it is, in itself, evil. It suffices as well that the Israeli will forbids something for him to abandon it, believing that this deed is all bad and that it is blameworthy even if it is, in itself, good.For this reason, the normalizing ruler does not exhibit any willingness to repent of his sin, nor to regret his mischief. Blinded either by the love for possession or the love for domination, he grows even more vainglorious, turning the urgent call for repentance into insistence on sin, and the necessity of remorse into indulgence in misdeeds. How could he truly be proud?! His values are opposites of the innate values, and his dignity, weighed on the scale of the innate nature, is humiliation, as the normalizer cannot be but humiliated and disgraced. The mark of this disgrace is that he incessantly flatters his humiliator to the extent of declaring his allegiance to him. Hence, when the normalizer becomes deprived of the discerning light of conscience that would elevate him, he has but to humble himself to he who would humiliate him.
   
   
3. Practicing hypocrisy: Hypocrisy, as everyone knows, is showing the opposite of what one believes or feels internally for some specific purpose. In this sense, an individual might practice hypocrisy out of courtesy or deceit, or at a certain time or situation, and not at other times or situations. However, the normalizer is given to hypocrisy on the largest scale, as his alienated self fluctuates between two states, both of which invite hypocrisy.The first of these states contradicts those selves in his nation that have maintained their innate nature, forcing him to conceal his alienation and reveal its opposite, that is, authenticity. This concealment, however, is not due to the fact that he is afraid to shock these selves that have maintained their innate nature. If he knew that the instant shock would bring them to normalize, he would not hesitate to reveal his alienation. Rather, his concealment is due to his intention to gradually and stealthily rob his fellow countrymen or coreligionists of their innate nature, making them believe that he behaves in conformity with their innate dispositions. Hence, the hypocrisy of the normalizer is a gradual deception of his people and a discrete ruse.The second state is that the normalizer’s self, even if it belongs to the genre of the Israeli self, could never assume its rank. His absolute conviction of this inferiority forces him to conceal it, just as he tries to conceal his alienation from the people who have maintained their innate nature. This discreteness is, however, not due to his belief that the Israelis would be deceived by this concealment and would consider his self—so saturated by the occupier’s will—as equal to theirs. It is, rather, because he hopes that they will pity him for painstakingly feigning something that is beyond his rank, even finding perverse pleasure in their consolidation of his inferiority. Hence, the normalizer’s hypocrisy is a shameful adulation of the Israelis and a discrete solicitation of their sympathy.
   
   

Nonetheless, it remains that the underlying motive for the normalizer’s hypocrisy is not the ability to mislead, in the hope of normalizing the minds of his people or softening the hearts of the Israelis. It is, rather, the fear of people and impotence in the face of confrontation. It is a fear generated in him by the lack of fear of the Lord of humankind; for he fears that people, and not his Lord, would harm if he revealed what he concealed. It is cowardice that invites him to be two-faced among people, treating each group according to its wishes. In both cases he is a liar, feigning innate nature and concealing its opposite when meeting people of innate nature, just as he feigns submission to the Israeli will and conceals falling short in this regard.¹⁴ In short, nothing provokes the normalizer’s sheer hypocrisy more than his heinous cowardice.

The bottom line about normalization is that it is a loss and a waste. The normalizer loses the innate nature in the sense of “truly having good moral character;” loses the soul in the sense of “truly keeping the innate nature;” loses holiness in the sense of “truly maintaining purity;” and loses decency in the sense of “truly having the foremost moral.” Yet, he is not satisfied with losing all these values at the individual level, as he rather aspires to make both the Arab and the Muslim nations lose them as well. Consequently, the loss of these values transcends himself to others. Correspondingly, the normalizer is a lost and losing self; his attraction to loss is dual: “loss of values” and “loss of nations.”

Figure 1

Thus far, we have finished addressing our two trusteeship questions concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine: the occupation’s offense toward God and the occupation’s offense toward the human being. It transpired that “offending God” represented by occupation—that is, “occupation of the land”—is based on disputing God’s attribute of “the True Sovereign.” It equally transpired that “harming the human being” represented by “incarnation”—or “occupation of the innate nature”—has two levels: “overturning values” and “stripping out the innate nature.”¹⁵ Now we turn to the third trusteeship question: how do we repel these two Israeli abuses, “offending God” and “harming the human being”? To be sure, this question refers us to the following question: how do we repel the two Israeli occupations: “the settlement in the land” and “the incarnation of the innate nature”?

3. The Essence of the Jerusalemite Murābaṭa¹⁶

Since the object of occupation is a holy land, its major concern is to strip it of its “holiness,” that is, to desecrate it. Hence, repelling such occupation entails cleansing the occupied land of that “desecration;” in other words, “renewing the holiness of the land.” Likewise, since the object of incarnation is an authentic innate nature, it seeks to rob it of its “authenticity;” that is, to falsify it. Hence, repelling such incarnation requires purifying the incarnated innate nature of “falsehood;” in other words, “renewing the authenticity of the innate nature.”¹⁷

Based on the above, it becomes evident that carrying out this double purification—“purifying the earth from desecration” and “purifying the innate nature from falsehood”—or carrying out this double renewal—“renewing the holiness of the land” and “renewing the authenticity of the innate nature”—can only be achieved by a resistance that adheres to the previously stated trusteeship principle that distinguishes between the form and the soul. Adhering to the principle entails distinguishing between “the occupation of the land,” which is the form of occupation, and “the desecration of the land,” which is its soul. Similarly, it differentiates between “the occupation of the innate nature,” which is the form of incarnation, and “the falsification of the innate nature,” which is its soul. Underlying this distinction is the conviction that there shall be no end to the Israeli occupation except through two ends: “the end of the desecration of the land” and “the end of the falsification of the innate nature;” that is, the return of both “the holiness of the land” and “the authenticity of the innate nature.”

We call the resistance that is predicated on this trusteeship principle the “Jerusalemite murābaṭa (al-murābaṭa al-maqdisiyya).” In general terms, it is known that “murābaṭa” designates “concomitant attendance on a frontier from which it is feared that the enemy might attack, in order to prevent a surprise attack against people living in peace; and, in the case of an attack, to resist it with all force.” Given that the Israeli enemy has desecrated the land and falsified the innate nature, we define the “Jerusalemite murābaṭa” thus:

The Jerusalemite murābaṭa is a resistance that concomitantly attends at the frontiers of the holy land to confront its desecration and restore its holiness; and concomitantly attends at the frontiers of the innate nature to confront its falsification and restore its authenticity.¹⁸

From this definition, the following trusteeship conclusion is deduced:

The Jerusalemite murābaṭa is not so much a material space as it is a moral space.

This statement may be clarified as follows. To begin with, both “the holiness of the land” and “the authenticity of the innate nature,” to whose renewal this murābaṭa is committed, refer to plain spiritual meanings. Their presence in affect is stronger than their presence to sensory perceptions. The “settlement” that offends the holiness of the land and the “incarnation” that offends the authenticity of the innate nature are both sensory perceptions. However, had it not been for the two spiritual meanings of “holiness” and “authenticity,” no murābiṭ would have devoted himself to the murābaṭa to resist these two occupational phenomena. It could even be claimed that the perception of the latter is dependent on the perception of these two spiritual meanings.

Secondly, the moral character of the Jerusalemite murābaṭa wells up from multiple spiritual sources:

1. The greatness of the spiritual legacy that is bequeathed by the messengers, the prophets, and righteous people over centuries, which continues to envelop the environs of Jerusalem until the Day of Judgment.
   
   
2. The strength of the ribāṭ in general, and “the strength of the ribāṭ of al-Burāq”—which signifies “the bond”—in particular. The strength of this bond is derived from the one who concluded and tightened it: the supremely powerful angel, Jibrīl l, who securely fastened al-Burāq to the wall. Moreover, the speed of al-Burāq was the speed of the angel’s eyes’ light, in that he places its step at the utmost point of his sight.¹⁹ Thus, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa is a bond that combines the strength of Jibrīl, in terms of its secure tightening, and the speed of al-Burāq, in terms of its influence.
   
   
3. The majesty of prostration. On his journey from the Sacred Mosque to al-Aqsa Mosque, the Messenger e stopped several times to pray. He led the prophets and the messengers n in prayers in this mosque; from there he ascended to heaven to receive, in direct revelation, the five obligatory prayers, each of which is equivalent to ten prayers. Furthermore, the Messenger econsidered awaiting one prayer after another to be a form of ribāṭ.²⁰ Since it is in prostration (sujūd) that one gets closer to Allah than in other acts of prayer—and since its derivative masjid (the mosque) is the closest of all houses to Allah a—it is in the Jerusalemite murābaṭa that one most constantly seeks divine proximity. Hence, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa becomes a state of prostration that accompanies the murābiṭ in all his actions and situations. In short, it is the murābiṭ’s constant feeling of proximity to Allah in all his actions.
   
   
4. The beauty of witnessing. The Messenger e witnessed in his miraculous Night Journey of al-Isrāʾ and al-Miʿrāj certain cosmic and heavenly scenes that no other human being has witnessed. In this sense, al-Isrāʾ (the Night Journey) and al-Miʿrāj (the Ascension) are two qualities of genuine witnessing. And since the power of the perceptions to fully grasp what had happened in that “witnessing” or “vision” is unparalleled, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa becomes the surest means to ascertain the events and embody their ensuing values. Therefore, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa becomes a state of witnessing that accompanies the murābiṭ in all his deeds, beginning with his guardianship over the frontiers and ending in standing before his Lord. In brief, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa is the murābiṭ’s perpetual observation of duty in all his actions.
   
   

The third aspect is that the Jerusalemite murābaṭa is, essentially, resistance by means of the soul, and the murābiṭ’s bodily resistance is but its offshoot. When the soul of the murābiṭ was filled with the meanings of spiritual heritage, a strong ribāṭ (bond), prostration, witnessing, and other such meanings, it acquired an energy of unequal measure to move his body and direct his movement. Indeed, the effect of his soul might even extend beyond his body to those of others that might be attracted to him, as though they were of his very soul. The resistance of this soul might even be so strong to the extent of thinking that it is not supported by his frail body. This soul might even resist where his body does not, but due to the intensity of the soul’s effect, the body seems to be the one which is resisting. Rather, the soul of the murābiṭ resists constantly and from a distance, while his body only resists intermittently and closely. More than this, the souls of the murābiṭs communicate with one another in ways that their bodies cannot and support one another in ways that their bodies do not.²¹

Correspondingly, it becomes clear that “murābaṭa in Jerusalem,” whether in the past—in resistance to the Crusader occupation—or in the present—in resistance to the Israeli occupation—and regardless of whether the murābiṭs were from Jerusalem or elsewhere, is but the perfect paradigm or ideal archetype of what we call “the Jerusalemite murābaṭa.”

Let us now proceed to explain how the Jerusalemite murābaṭa invokes the two witnessing attributes of “the Night Journey” and “the Ascension” in confronting the desecration of the settlement in the land and the falsification of the incarnation of the innate nature. Such capacity for confrontation owes to two basic attributes: “the trusteeship attribute” and “the attestatory attribute.”

3.1 The Trusteeship Attribute of the Jerusalemite Murābaṭa and Repelling the Offense to God

Since the Jerusalemite murābiṭ is confronting the desecration of the land, he needs to invoke the Jerusalemite spiritual cause that would restore the land’s holiness. This spiritual cause is al-Isrāʾ (the Night Journey), whose distinctive character, as is known, is that it took place between two great mosques, the Sacred Mosque and al-Aqsa Mosque. The truth of the mosque is that it is a house that no one owns except Allah, such that it is the most indicative of the truth of the “trust” or “entrusting” that occupies the human being’s personhood.²² As for the Isrāʾ of the Jerusalemite murābiṭ, it is specifically predicated on the preservation of the “original trusteeship state,” by both recalling and embodying it. This is the initial trusteeship state whereby Allah Z offered His trust to His creatures, but they shrank back from it, out of their belief that it was too grave a burden for them to assume, except the human being who willingly bore it. It is this first pledge through which the human being made a covenant with his Lord that is at the origin of the existence of trust. Therefore, by preserving the original trusteeship state, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ recognizes that his relationship with all his actions and behaviors related to his murābaṭa is not one of possession, but a relationship of trust, whereby he attributes all sovereignty to Allah alone. Several conclusions of paramount importance ensue from this trusteeship characteristic of the Jerusalemite murābaṭa:

Firstly, the relation of ownership is not the original mode of dealing with things; it is rather a secondary relationship which he was allowed to have or which he originated of his own accord, extending his will onto things around him. Ownership, it should be noted, is of two types: ownership that involves holy things and ownership that involves non-holy things.

Secondly, the murābiṭ’s relationship with Bayt al-Maqdis in its entirety—the land, the sanctuary, and the mosque—can only be a trusteeship relationship because this land, this sanctuary, and this mosque are all houses of Allah. In this sense, al-Maqdis is truly “the city of Allah.” Therefore, the state of the Jerusalemite murābiṭ in all his actions is that of one who enters into prayer, or, rather, the state of one who prostrates in it; and nothing parallels prostration in terms of the signification of trust because the mosque, as mentioned before, is a trust that is entrusted to the human being. The Jerusalemite murābiṭ is, indeed, physically and spiritually in constant prostration, wherever he is and however he is, standing, sitting, or on his side.

Thirdly, since Bayt al-Maqdis calls for a trusteeship-bound interaction, dealing with it possessively undermines its holiness and desecrates it. If this is the case, it necessitates that the Israelis must be dealing with the Holy Land in a way that desecrates, as they confine their relationship to it to claims of their ancient ownership of it and the necessity of restoring that lost ownership. Since they do not view this land as being anything except theirs, in both ancient and modern times, it is no longer Allah’s land, but rather that of one besides Allah.

Fourthly, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ does not counter these Israeli claims of sovereign ownership of the Holy Land with claims of Palestinian possession of it, harking back to the latter’s descendance from the Canaanites who were its native inhabitants. Rather, he confronts these allegations with the claim that he is entrusted with preserving its sanctity. Therefore, the Israeli principle that says “land in exchange for peace” is rendered meaningless because these occupiers only conceive of the land in terms of possession, coaxing the Palestinians into believing that a part of this sovereign ownership will be readily transferred to them. The truth, however, is that the holiness of the land precludes ownership, and the Palestinian is required to preserve holiness, not to preserve the land without holiness.

Fifthly, we have already established that there are no people who rival the Israelis in their attachment to property ownership, nor in their capacity for inventing ways of obtaining it, whether by forgery, deception, or usurpation, even if such property is no more than an alleged excavation under al-Aqsa Mosque. It should be evident, then, that it is utterly useless for the Palestinian to fling his right to property in his face, contending with them in a domain in which they are masters. It is a futile enterprise for two reasons. First, the Palestinian does not seem to reach the level of the Israeli in terms of his eagerness to own the land and identify with it, such that he would be able to repel it. For the Israeli fills his horizon and conscience with nothing except this spirit of possession; he corroborates nothing except his exclusive right to it; and he judges all transactions only in terms of others’ willingness to acknowledge such right. The second is the principle that the Palestinian’s adherence to the sanctity of the land prevails over his adherence to its ownership. For him, ownership is subordinate to sanctity, whereas for the Israeli, the reverse is true. This is evidenced by the fact that the secular Israeli is no less attached to the ownership of the land than the religious Israeli.

From the above conclusions, we shall now explain how the Jerusalemite murābiṭ can resist the desecration of his land by means of a trusteeship resistance; that is, a resistance that deems this land a trust for which he is responsible, and whose duty entails the preservation of its holiness.

We have already mentioned that this settlement amounts to offending God because it contends with Him over the attribute of “the Sovereign.” Thus, it is incumbent upon the Jerusalemite murābiṭ to resist such settlement by resisting this contention with Allah. In this regard, three levels of such resistance should be distinguished: “striping the Israeli of the attribute of sovereign,” “consolidating the culture of trusteeship,” and “restoring trust.”

3.1.1   The First Level of Confronting the Contention with God: Stripping the Israeli of the Attribute of Sovereign Possession

When the Israelis have gone in their demonstration of the tyranny of possession to the extent of attributing to themselves that which is unique to Allah a, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ takes charge of confronting this possessive tyranny not in support of his land qua his land, but rather in devotion to his Lord insofar as He entrusted it to him. This confrontation is predicated on the principle of stripping the Israelis completely of this attribute of sovereign possession. Thus, the murābiṭ categorically believes that they own nothing, no matter how much land they occupy. By virtue of this firm faith, the murābiṭ is spiritually prepared to deny the Israelis anything they have occupied or acquired, regardless of what pressures are exerted on him, and regardless of what the ensuing sacrifices might be.

Since the institution of the “state” is the utmost marker of sovereignty, it is the first thing that the Jerusalemite murābiṭ should express his unwillingness to concede to the Israeli entity. Showing his defiance through his words and actions, he should constantly devise ways that strip that entity of its institutional guise.²³ Necessarily, his constant innovation and endless patience in face of trials would eventually shake this entity’s confidence in its legitimacy, or at least raise doubts about the future of its existence, paving the way to its demise.

It might be argued that keeping vigil upon this denial constitutes a challenge to international laws and institutions that have imparted the status of a “state” on this usurping entity. This objection may be refuted as follows:

First, these institutions and laws have never been fair regarding the Palestinian issue, otherwise they would not have established an entity that they were not entitled to establish. Furthermore, these international institutions were initially founded on unjust rules, the elaboration of which is beyond the scope of our discussion here. Whosoever accepts these institutions and laws betrays the trust that is entrusted to him; the murābiṭ cannot betray it!

Second, these institutions and laws have double standards. Those in charge have always eagerly implemented whatever decisions serve the Israeli entity, while instantly ignoring or postponing and casting into oblivion whatever decisions concern its victims. Is there any greater injustice than having, over the years, issued hundreds of United Nations resolutions in favor of Palestine and not acting to implement any of them to this day?

Third, this world has become shameless, as its people are not ashamed of avowing that international relations are based on interests, not on principles. If only they were legitimate interests! Rather, they are interests that serve the powerful states’ will to domination over the weakest states; interests that fluctuate according to the whims and ambitions of their rulers. In contrast, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ seeks to establish a world that is based on moral principles and human interests.

It is evident, therefore, that the murābiṭ, who is capable of denying Israeli claims to sovereignty in the form of the state, should be more capable of denying it in its lesser forms, starting with “security coordination” that helps to consolidate it and ending with “total normalization” that helps to perpetuate it. And it should be noted that, were this sovereignty to be perpetuated—Allah forbid—it would constitute the end of sovereignty for some of those who had sought this perpetuation.

Conceding the role of the Jerusalemite murābaṭa and what it entails of repelling the Israelis’ offense against the Lord of the Worlds—which manifests in their claim to absolute sovereignty over the Holy Land—it follows that choices that do not take into account the entailments of this murābaṭa must be wrong. In this regard, the “choices of the Palestinian Authority” are worthy of specific mention; their errors can be clarified in the following respects:

First, this authority has fallen into the same error which the Israeli entity has made in its quest for sovereignty. Moreover, it even seeks it in the same manner that this usurping entity seeks it, as though seeking equivalence, countering recognition for recognition, system for system, and state for state. It should be clear, though, that the quest for sovereignty contradicts the duty of embodying trusteeship called for by the present circumstances, that is, the duty of erasing the effects of settlement, and not of subjugating people. Hence, the Palestinian Authority is, in its own terms, involved in divine contestation, instead of rising to bear the divine trust.

Second, it seeks to establish the Palestinian state on a limited part of the Holy Land. Restricted to such an enterprise, it violates the trust of preserving the holiness that has been entrusted to it, as it transferred a holy part of this land to one who is not entitled to it in the first place. On their side, neither the Israeli entity nor the countries that support it consider this transfer to be a concession on the part of the Palestinians. Rather, they consider it to be the recovery of a right to one entitled to it. Consequently, once this transfer takes the form of a due recovery, the Palestinian Authority would necessarily acknowledge the right of the Israeli entity to this holy part; as though the ancestors of the Israelis had entrusted it to the Palestinians, who inherited this trust, generation after generation, until the time had come to return it to the Israelis’ successors. This way, the Palestinian Authority becomes complicit with that usurping entity in the desecration of this part of the land that was transferred to it.

Third, the Israeli entity has succeeded in diverting the Palestinian Authority from seeking “sovereignty over the land” to being immersed in and satisfied with “sovereignty over speech,” knowing that speech is possessed just as land is. Indeed, the Israeli entity has managed to thrust this Authority into a series of endless negotiations, to the extent that the Palestinian official negotiates for the sake of negotiation, enjoying sovereignty over his words in the negotiations instead of sovereignty over his land. It is as though negotiations could completely supplant resistance or, rather, murābaṭa; or as though holiness could be restored to the part of the land which the occupation has defiled by the Palestinian’s mere act of uttering words.

Fourth, because of the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to the Israeli entity, the Palestinians now suffer much more harm than they had suffered before the creation of this Authority. The latter’s fulfillment of its obligations has not been matched by similar fulfillment on the part of the Israeli entity. Moreover, these obligations have evidently led to the intertwining of interests and goals with this entity, resulting in the subservience of the Palestinian side. Preoccupied with seeking administrative gains and material fortunes, their determination grows weak, content with the bounties of living. It is not surprising, then, to see the elderly amongst them lingering at the highest ranks of political and administrative positions, unable to rise up and respond to the call of murābaṭa; a response of which only the youth and those—males and females alike—who have not been corrupted by these positions, are capable.

3.1.2   The Second Level of Confronting the Contention with God: The Consolidation of a Trusteeship Culture

The Jerusalemite murābiṭ is not satisfied with merely stripping the attribute of sovereignty—be it real or imagined—from those who seek it, employing for this end renewed and constant actions that reveal to one party their injustice towards their Lord, and to the other party their injustice towards themselves. Rather, he is preoccupied with limiting the spread of the “culture of sovereignty” that confines the Palestinian issue to the remit of possessing land, seeking to establish in its place an alternative culture, that is, “trusteeship culture.” The Holy Land is essentially a trust, and its possession is derivative of that trust. In this sense, the existence of settlement requires the prioritization of the notion of trust over that of sovereignty. Since settlement is an outright desecration of the land, nothing can repel it except the sanctity of the means; and the sanctity of the means lies in trusteeship, and not in possession. Furthermore, resistance with a sense of sanctity is proven to be more grounded and powerful than a resistance which lacks this sense. Only a resistance that is imbued with the spirit of holiness is capable of standing in the face of so brutal and malicious a settlement. Since the scope of the topic at hand does not allow for an extensive discussion of the trusteeship culture, it suffices here to state four of its principles, explaining how they engender the trusteeship spirit:

a. Referring phenomena to cosmic signs (āyāt)²⁴

The trusteeship value of the apparent beings is determined by their moral significations, such that they assume the status of cosmic signs. For example, al-Aqsa Mosque is a major cosmic sign, by dint of conveying the meaning of “the collective prayer of the prophets.” Likewise, the trusteeship value of apparent actions is determined by their moral significations, such that they assume the status of “[religiously] legal signs.” For example, prostration, by dint of its reference to “closeness to Allah,” is a major legal sign.

The murābiṭ, then, perpetually relays sign-wise insights in his Jerusalemite space, because these insights expand the horizon of judging things in a way that transcends the horizon of the intelligible world by connecting it with the unseen world which is the very cause of its existence. This unseen world, which is correlative to the intelligible world, is called the world of malakūt;²⁵ that is, the dominion of spiritual and moral meanings. To the extent that the resistance member’s relationship to this world of malakūt becomes stronger, he ceases to ascribe the apparent aspects of things to himself, ascribing them instead to his Lord; for it becomes clear that the cause of the existence of the observable phenomena he experiences is their respective underlying meanings and values. And just as he does not possess these hidden values and meanings, he likewise does not possess the apparent phenomena that relate to him, even if he disposes of these phenomena as he wishes and whenever he wishes. This conviction is grounded in his certainty that such dispensation is due only to their True Sovereign’s will to put them at his service, since He is the Possessor of their meanings and values.

b. The inheritance of the spiritual effects of deeds

Given that the material effects remain after the disappearance of both the deeds and the agents that generated them, it is, a fortiori, more conceivable that the spiritual effects would linger after the disappearance of the agents and their deeds. To be sure, the material effects of deeds shall disappear, no matter how long they last, while their spiritual effects shall linger for eternity. So long as this is true, it is also true that the spiritual effects and traces left by the prophets and messengers n in “Bayt al-Maqdis” still infuse its environs; they are inherited just like material traces. These spiritual traces are inherited by those who followed on their path and welled up from their knowledge. This spiritual heritage, which is inherent to Bayt al-Maqdis, connecting it to the realm of malakūt, is described in the Holy Qurʾan as “surrendering one’s face to Allah.”²⁶ We may term such heritage the “Jerusalemite character (al-ṣibgha al-maqdisiyya),” a term which encompasses all the prophets p who resided in the Holy Land and its environs or prayed in Jerusalem.

Since the resistance member in “Bayt al-Maqdis” inherits this character just as he inherits his land and mosque, he must then be certain, more than anyone else, that this inheritance is not due to his fortunes or his skills, but a rather pure favor from his Lord. Allah Z attributed it to Himself, saying: “It is Allah’s character, and what is better than Allah’s character” (al-Baqara, 2:138). Aspiring to be a Jerusalemite murābiṭ, the resistance member must discipline himself to effect two detachments. The first is renouncing any attribution of his share of such spiritual heritage to himself, believing, rather, that it is a trust that rests on his shoulders. The second is refraining from attributing his deeds [which he does in accordance with such heritage] to himself, being certain that Allah Z is the Creator of this character and the Guide to its path.

c. Seeing the divine will in the world

Since the Israeli is prone to contend with Allah—due to the overwhelming power of the principle of sovereignty over his heart—this dispute takes the form of the affirmation of his will in opposition to the will of Allah Z. To avoid falling unintentionally into this heinous contention with divinity while struggling for his rights in his land, the resistance member should inexorably train himself to depart from his will to the will of his Lord. This departure requires him to see the will of Allah in everything: whatever Allah wills, happens, and what He does not will, will not happen. One should not, however, think that the murābiṭ’s witnessing of Allah’s will in everything deprives him of his own will. On the contrary, such witnessing elevates his will to a state wherein it is connected to Allah’s will, rendering him content with what his Lord wills for him just as he is content with what he wills for himself.

Allah Z has destined that the Israeli occupation strips the Palestinian of the ownership of his land, but not his trusteeship over this land. The resistance member deems this decree a divine test or tribulation for his will: will he rise to fulfill the trust that Allah has entrusted to him, that is the preservation of the holiness of this land, even though the land has now been lost to the occupier? This only strengthens his resolve to recover that which is entrusted to him to the extent of feeling that his will is not really his. Thus, by witnessing his Lord’s plans for him in that which befell him, the resistance member is given a will from his Lord’s will, Glory be to Him; a will that enables him to fulfill his trust. Only after the latter is fulfilled shall his land return to him as though it had never been taken away from him.

d. The primacy of the trusteeship duty over the right to property

To be sure, sovereign possession and trust are distinct. The former bequeaths right; a right that allows the owner to dispose of his property by transferring it to someone else, or by using it to satisfy his needs. The latter bequeaths duty; a duty which requires the trustee to preserve it, take care of it, and only dispose of it in the manner which he was permitted to. Since the basic principle that regulates our relationship with things is trust and not possession, this relationship must necessarily be predicated on duties, such that the enjoyment of rights is determined by the fulfillment of these duties. This, of course, applies when the trust is carried out in safe and normal conditions. In circumstances wherein the trust runs the risk of being abused, nothing should be more important than the fulfillment of duties; rights may be disregarded until duties are fulfilled.

Nevertheless, it seems that the situation of the Palestinian is worse. Not only is the trust that he has accepted to bear wronged, but he is also prevented from bearing it altogether. In addition to stripping him of his rights, the occupation also seeks to make him breach the heavenly covenant that was taken from him, preventing him from performing his most essential duties, such as prayer, on which the meaning of his existence rests. Indeed, the Palestinian has almost been relegated to a level lower than that of observing his duties, as he becomes merely concerned with the immediate duties that his tragic situation entails. Therefore, the Palestinian resistance member must renew his faith through the covenant of trusteeship, so that he may come to fully recognize his duties, taking the initiative to fulfill them, without seeking any compensation or favors as a reward. To be sure, the exchange of the trusteeship duties among members of the resistance ensures that none of them would lose his rights nor be deprived of the fruits of his deeds.

In short, the culture of trusteeship provides the resistance member with both the ability to observe the divine signs and with a share of the spiritual heritage. It also enables him to connect his will with the will of his Lord and to renew his faith by dint of the covenant of trusteeship which is taken from him. All these trusteeship factors undoubtedly contribute to the reconstruction of the Palestinian human being both mentally and emotionally.

3.1.3   The Third Level of Confronting the Contention with God: Recovering the Stolen Trust

If one were to count the forms of harm that are being inflicted upon the Palestinians by both the Israelis and their own people, and even by themselves considering their mistakes, one would despair of their ability to repel them. We have already mentioned some types of the calamities that the occupier inflicts on them as well as the errors which they themselves committed and on which some of them still insist. However, we have not mentioned what their own people, whose hearts are spoiled by lust for power and money, have done to them. The injustice which they suffered at the hands of their kinsmen is unparalleled. Not only has the latter allied with the occupier in his siege against them, closing crossings, cutting off aid, demolishing tunnels, degrading the sacred, weakening the creed, accusing them of terrorism, and exploiting their cause. Indeed, they give the occupier the plainest illustration of the extent of the torture that he should inflict on them in any forthcoming confrontation, giving him glaring examples of what they themselves perpetrated on their own people, from detentions, kidnappings, and blackmail to starvation, torture, and assassination.

Given this situation, how then will the Palestinian resistance member restore his land? If he merely limits his goal to the restoration of usurped property, he will certainly fall short of achieving it, considering that the Arabs have become allies to the Israelis in killing the Palestinian resistance. Nor will the institutions, organizations, and decisions be of use in the face of such hybrid complicity between these two parties. If this is the case with the totality of the Palestinian resistance, then what of its specific instance, that is the “Jerusalemite murābaṭa”? Would it be capable of achieving what others have failed to achieve? The Jerusalemite murābiṭ will undoubtedly finds it necessary to turn the resistance plans that have been adopted up to now upside down, for the following considerations:

First, the murābiṭ views the land of Palestine not as a possession that rests in his hand, but rather as a trust that rests on his shoulders. Moreover, he does not view this trust as a trusteeship over the land, but rather as a trusteeship over its holiness. Nor does he view this holiness as something that would disappear from this land even if it is subjected to desecration; rather, in essence, this holiness remains as long as the land remains and even after it perishes.

Second, he bears witness to the fact that the world’s decency has diminished, or even gone altogether, which makes humanity enter a new phase of its history, a phase that we may term the “post-trust world.” The markers of this phase are “the slaughtering of the Umma” and “the Deal of the Century.” Such slaughtering and such a deal cannot occur except in a world almost entirely stripped of trust.

Third, he believes that his resistance, despite springing from and being instigated by al-Aqsa Mosque, is a state that is confined neither by time nor by space. Nor is such resistance specific to the Palestinians but rather concerns every human being; the post-trust world is imminent! Furthermore, he believes that the trust that he bears on his shoulders is not temporary nor circumstantial. It is rather an eternal trust that shall be carried by successive generations of murābiṭs until the end of the world.

Based on these considerations, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ takes it upon himself to change the plan of resistance, both in terms of purpose and method.

As for the purpose, he no longer limits it to the preservation of the holiness of the land—much less to the preservation of the land as the non-murābiṭ does. Rather, his aim extends to the preservation of “the principle of trust” itself, given the current fate of the world, the “post-trust world.” In other words, he ultimately made his goal “the preservation of the covenant of trust” that Allah Z had taken from the human being. Correspondingly, the trust held by the Jerusalemite murābiṭ is not merely a singular trust, but rather the trust added to itself, that is, “the trust of trusteeship.” Hence, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ is the person who is entrusted with trust qua trust.

It follows that the restoration of the trust of the Holy Land can only occur through the absolute restoration of trust, because the goal of the Israeli occupation is not merely to occupy the land, but rather to abolish the principle of trust in order to establish a post-trust world. It equally follows that “the global murābaṭa” has become a necessary action to expel the specter of the “post-trust world” that looms on the horizon, as every place in the world has now become a potential frontier for murābaṭa. In this sense, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa is a model of the global murābaṭa, as the latter is a spiritual state that every human being who is keen on sparing the world from the imminent end of trust should embrace. Implied in such a global attitude, of course, is the cleansing of the Holy Land from the desecration of the Israeli occupation, since the continuation of this occupation is a marker of the end of trust.

As for the method, placing hopes on recognitions and decisions is of little use. The latter are no more than sedatives that numb the wills and indefinitely postpone the cure. To be sure, they only intensify the suffering of the Palestinians, contributing to the erasure of trust from hearts and establishing a shameless world.

What remains, then, is to propagate the spirit of murābaṭa everywhere. We have already stated those characteristics of murābaṭa that make it more capable than other means of defeating the occupation. It is a spirit that is even capable of getting the world out of its trusteeship crisis by restoring its lost decency, and of renewing the human being, restoring to him faith in the covenant of trust. This capability is to be outlined thus:

First, this spirit of murābaṭa establishes material power that is buttressed by the knowledge of the exigencies of the present time on the moral strength that elevates the will to the heavenly (malakūt) horizon, so that the human being values the reward of the Hereafter over that of this fleeting world, rushing, thus, to sacrifice, spending his money or offering his soul.²⁷

Second, the spirit of ribāṭ combines popular methods that unleash the flow of energies and expand the scope of influence with defensive methods that carefully select goals and times with confidence and patience, showing no sense of hesitation, weakness, or humiliation, whatever the sacrifices.²⁸

Third, it invokes all the moral and material means that suit each kind of murābaṭa, wherever it may be, gradually deploying them according to exigencies and reactions, and modifying them according to achievements and aspirations. Thus, each murābaṭa has its own peculiarity in the erasure of both the effects of the occupation’s harm and the traces of the end of trust.

Fourth, it innovates vigorously, by diversifying the means, renewing the methods, developing the capabilities, and opening the horizons. It thus maintains its vigor and contributions, enabling it to confront various forms of the perpetuation of tyranny to which the occupation resorts.

Having explained how the trusteeship characteristic of the Jerusalemite murābaṭa—a characteristic that holds the spirit of the murābiṭ back from running after possessions while inciting him to bear the duty of trust—is effective in resisting the Israeli occupation’s desecration of the land, we now turn to the elaboration of the second characteristic of the Jerusalemite murābaṭa, the “testimonial characteristic.” Hereunder, we explain how it is useful in resisting the Israeli occupation which falsifies the innate nature, engendering, thus, a state of normalization.

3.2 The Testimonial Characteristic of the Jerusalemite Murābaṭa: Repelling the Harm Leveled on the Human Being

Since the Jerusalemite murābiṭ confronts the falsification of the innate nature, he needs to follow the spiritual means that would restore to the innate nature its authenticity. This spiritual means is “ascension.” The peculiarity of the Prophet’s e Ascension, as is well known, is that Allah Z made His Messenger witness His great signs and beautiful divine attributes which no one had ever witnessed. As for the ascension of the murābiṭ, it specifically resides in the preservation of the “original testimonial state,” by both recalling it and being imbued with it. This first state of testification is one in which the Truth c had the offspring of the children of Adam bear witness to His Lordship and Oneness, revealing to them His attributes and taking the covenant from them. It is precisely this first testification that is the basis of the existence of the innate nature, since the spiritual meanings and moral values that are entailed by the innate nature are but the effects of the divine manifestations on the “Day of Testification;” manifestations which are indicated by His beautiful names. The Jerusalemite murābiṭ, then, realizes that it is these meanings and values—innate to him—that make him the human being who is intended for the sake of his Lord. Correspondingly, he recognizes with sheer certainty that the will of his Lord supports him in whatever action he undertakes to repel the harm of the Israeli occupation.²⁹ According to the murābiṭ, the sign of the innate nature’s authenticity is that his innate nature is an expression of Allah’s will in him.

It follows from the previous definition of the authenticity of the innate nature that the sign of its falsity, in the case of the normalizer, is that his innate nature is the will of someone else other than Allah in him, and this other is none but the Israeli occupier. Consequently, the normalizer’s innate nature is the will of the Israeli in him, as the Israeli assumes the status of a god who is incarnated in him.³⁰ Since the innate nature of the normalizer is united with the will of the Israeli, confronting the falsity of the normalizer’s innate nature entails confronting the incarnated Israeli will in him.³¹ It follows that confronting the falsification of the normalizer’s innate nature is tantamount to confronting the harm that the Israeli will inflicts on the human being, not merely as a Palestinian, but as a human being as such. The peculiarity of the Jerusalemite murābiṭ, in contradistinction to other resistance members, is that he undertakes to repel the harm inflicted on the human being, wherever he is; for the entirety of God’s land, in his eyes, becomes his ribāṭ and sanctuary.

It should not be argued, however, that the murābiṭ’s orientation of his resistance towards the preservation of the human being, and not to the defense of the people of Palestine, will expose the Palestinian right either to loss or oblivion. This objection may be addressed as follows:

First, the Palestinian human being is of greater standing than to be considered a human being of a specific people. Rather, he is the human being of the entire world because he is destined to exist at an ethical moment in which humanity is on the verge of entering the “post-trust world”—or even the “post-covenant world”—wherein he is entrusted with defending the values of the innate nature in this deteriorating moral era, in order to preserve the human being.

Second, the harm to which the Palestinian human being is exposed has reached an extent wherein it can no longer remain his personal issue, but rather one that concerns everyone. This concern should, nonetheless, be neither from the perspective of the global human community’s preoccupation with human rights, nor in terms of the international forums’ interest in his cause. The concern should rather be motivated by the harm which is being simultaneously inflicted on the whole human community by way of the harm that is inflicted on the Palestinian human being, both in terms of the overturning of values and stripping out the innate nature.

Third, the second-order values and traits that may be specifically attributed to the Palestinian human being, either as an Arab or Muslim or any other characteristic, have become—due to the severity of the harm he has suffered and the steadfastness he has demonstrated—the values of every human being in this world. God knows how many individual members of humanity have come to embrace these values, as though telling themselves: “the human being, as a human being, is Palestinian!”

To stake out how the Jerusalemite murābiṭ undertakes repelling the falsification of the innate nature, the incarnating normalizers may be divided, given the extent of their influence in their surroundings, into two categories: that of individuals and that of regimes. Thus, it is incumbent upon the Jerusalemite murābiṭ to resist the manifestations of the Israeli will both in the behavior of individuals and in the institutions of regimes. Let us, then, clarify these two types of resistance: “resisting the manifestations of the Israeli will in the normalizing behavior” and “resisting the manifestations of Israeli will in the normalizing management.”

3.2.1   Resisting the Manifestations of the Israeli Will in the Normalizing Behavior

Since the Israeli will is a falsification of the innate nature, at least one of the innate values must be manifested in the normalizing individual’s behavior in the form of a contradiction. Given that the damage which ensues of this will has reached its peak, this contradiction must relate to a value which causes this individual to fall into a state of self-betrayal; and by the latter is meant the act of enslaving one’s self to another. To be sure, the trust that he bears concerns the “preservation of his freedom;” a preservation that spares him from the overturning of his values and from the stripping of his innate nature. It is the duty of the Jerusalemite murābiṭ to work to liberate the normalizing individual from such slavery by means of all practical means at his disposal, thus revealing the indicative signs of enslavement in his behavior and its detrimental effects on his humanity. Stated below are some of the slavish indications and detrimental effects latent in the normalizing behavior which the Jerusalemite murābiṭ is responsible for exposing and repelling.

One of the indications of the normalizing individual’s enslavement is that complying with the Israeli will causes him to lose the trusteeship sense of freedom just as it causes him to lose the sense of freedom that preceded the state of trusteeship. Regarding his loss of the trusteeship sense of freedom, he no longer views freedom as a trust, since the trust of freedom obligates him to fulfill its specific heavenly requirements which he pledged to his Lord. Rather, he is much more inclined to view it as a mere political gain. And the basic principle in political gains is that some of them might substitute others because their underlying basis is the same: “material interests.” Accordingly, the normalizing individual is prepared to give up his freedom in proportion to what he believes he could gain in terms of the illusory interests to which the Israeli will gestures.

Regarding his loss of the sense of freedom that preceded trusteeship, it is known that the human being was given a choice in the heavenly realm to assume the trust. This choice that preceded the trust is akin to a choice that precedes every interest, as no trust had yet been designated. However, the Israeli will causes the normalizer to be incapable of imagining a situation that is devoid of material interest. It could even deceive him to the extent of discerning interest where it does not lie, so that, in his eyes, the lack of interest becomes an interest. Correspondingly, the normalizer loses not only his freedom, but also the freedom to choose his freedom; that is, he loses the “freedom of freedom.” This is the farthest one can go in being enslaved to the Israeli will, to the extent that if he were given the choice between normalization and the lack thereof, he would choose normalization.

Enslavement also has detrimental effects on the humanity of the normalizer. His self-betrayal, resulting from his preference of slavery over freedom, is but a betrayal of the essence of the human being, since such essence is divinely determined by trust. It is known that all beings refused to bear the trust when it was offered to them, except the human being who accepted to bear it. Hence, bearing the trust is the heavenly characteristic that defines the essence of the human being. Moreover, the normalizer has chosen to betray himself; and no betrayal is more treacherous than willfully chosen betrayal, since choosing it contradicts the original choice of bearing the trust. Indeed, it is as though this treacherous individual returns to the origin of the trust in the World of the Unseen in order to cancel it. Thus, he robs the human being of the quality of the being who uniquely bore the trust and assigning him the quality of “the being who uniquely betrayed the trust.” Hence, normalization is not just the practice of betrayal, but also the placement of betrayal in the position of the original innate nature of the human being. And is there anything more noxious to the human being than being defined by the opposite of his truth?!

To restore to the normalizer his lost freedom which harms his self, and to free him from his willful betrayal which harms his humanity, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ needs to release him from attachment to immediate interests, by revealing how such attachment overturns his values and strips him of his innate nature, including all that this stripping entails in terms of all manner of loss. Otherwise, he should at least prevent him, by all possible means, from achieving these interests, either by subverting his plans to spread the spirit of normalization in his surroundings, or by employing indirect means to prevent these interests from reaching him; for example, by confronting the parties that enable him to achieve these interests until he despairs of them. Perhaps then, he will be forced to reevaluate his conduct after recognizing the extent of the harm that he has inflicted both on himself and on the human being as such. If the normalizer insists, despite all that, on seeking these base interests, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ should work to divert his attention to other interests of their kind. Even if these alternative material interests do not preserve his freedom and prevent his betrayal, they might at least—until he comes back to his senses—prevent his harm to the human being in general, and the Palestinian human being in particular.

3.2.2   Resisting the Manifestations of the Israeli Will in the Normalizing Government

Since the harm of the Israeli will extends to the human being as such, this harm necessarily manifests in the normalizing ruler’s management of the affairs of society through attributes that contradict the values of the innate nature. And since this harm has been extreme, these attributes concern values which implicate this ruler in the betrayal of the ruled under his auspices over and above his own foregone self-betrayal. While the ruler’s betrayal of himself here results in his enslavement to the Israelis, which is an act of self-injustice, his betrayal of the ruled results in their enslavement to the Israelis, thus incurring injustice on them. Consequently, society suffers from two forms of injustice: “the injustice of the ruler’s enslavement of himself to the Israelis” and “the injustice of enslaving his people to them.” Given that the trust that he bears is “the preservation of justice,” he is fair neither to his people nor to himself.

It is the duty of the Jerusalemite murābiṭ, therefore, to rid the normalizing ruler of his injustice that results from two forms of enslavement: “enslavement of the soul” and “enslavement of the people.” This may be achieved by revealing the traces of this dual enslavement in this ruler’s management of public affairs and its pernicious effects on the human condition. Some of these slavish indications and effects in the normalizing governance which the Jerusalemite murābiṭ undertakes to expose and repel are discussed below.

One of the indications of the normalizing ruler’s willful enslavement is that his compliance with the Israeli will causes him to lose the trusteeship sense of “justice.” The trusteeship origin of justice lies in its being an innate value that is derived from “the Just,” one of the most beautiful names of God. However, the normalizing ruler’s compliance with the Israeli will drives him to sever his connection with this origin, so that he no longer considers “justice” as a trust; since the trust of justice obligates him to fulfill its heavenly requirements that he had pledged to his Lord. Rather, he is more inclined to view it as a mere political procedure that, in principle, entails giving everyone his due just like any other secular political measure. To be sure, the basic principle in political arrangements is that their foundation is one, namely “sovereignty,” “authority,” or “rule.” The normalizing ruler is therefore prepared to give up his freedom in proportion to what he believes he could gain in terms of the illusions of increased sovereignty and possession by which the Israeli will deceives him.

Since the normalizing ruler is attached to the basis of political governance, which is sovereignty, he restricts himself to this attachment to the exclusion of others. Thus, he disregards its underlying foundation, which is “human oversight;” otherwise, he would not have enslaved his people to the Israeli will. In this occupational will, he discerns nothing except a ready endorsement of his reckless indifference to this oversight, believing—quite gullibly because of the eclipse of his reason and lack of insight—that such will is only interested in the further consolidation of his authority. And since he does not care about the authority of human oversight—except in cases in which the latter is merely formal—he has severed his connection with even the secular basis of human justice. Thus, he now takes into account in his governance neither trusteeship justice nor secular justice.³² Consequently, his compliance with the Israeli will not only confines him to his usual injustice but rather thrusts him into “absolute injustice.” In his actions and deeds, he no longer observes human nor divine authority.

As stated earlier, the normalizing ruler’s submission to the Israeli will has detrimental effects. One of these is his loss of the sense of human value in himself as well as in others. His betrayal of himself has cut off his innate nature from its heavenly origin; knowing that the innate nature is the repository of values, it should be evident that there is no humanity without the innate values. Likewise, his betrayal of the trust of justice has tainted his governance with absolute injustice; and if mere injustice violates human dignity, what might one assume to be the case with absolute injustice? It is no wonder, then, that he would eventually end up stripping himself of his Adamic character, as he directs—in anticipation of future surprises—his injustice onto others, whether they be his own people or other peoples on whom he could lay his hands. He would do whatever it takes to achieve his despicable goals, either by silencing voices, buying individuals off, concluding deals, giving bribes, or pledging allegiance to those who are neither by religious nor by rational standards to be given such pledge. All this he does—in full view and earshot of the entire world—because the hand of “Israel” takes care of him. Thus, the normalizing ruler has retained of the human being nothing, save the image of the Arab or the Muslim; his soul is the Israeli will incarnate.

Perhaps no one can liberate the normalizing ruler from both his subordination to the Israeli will and his betrayal of the trust of justice which harms his Adamic character other than the Jerusalemite murābiṭ. The latter is the most cognizant of the truth of normalization and the most in possession of the means to confront it. The murābiṭ has become convinced that normalization is no less pernicious than the evil of the occupation, just as he has come to believe that the duty of repelling normalization (i.e., incarnation) takes precedence over the duty of fighting the occupation of the land (i.e., settlement). Repelling normalization is urgent because it is an occupation of the innate nature; and the occupation of the land is easier after the occupation of the innate nature than before it. Opposing normalization is equally obligatory because this new phase of normalization—the regimes’ open and public normalization—is unprecedented, as these regimes have overturned their previous positions that expressed defiance towards the Israeli occupation. And it is all the more urgent because some of these regimes adopt normalization as a means to consolidate their oppressive rule and humiliate their peoples.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon the Jerusalemite murābiṭ to undertake two duties. First, “the duty of alerting the ruler to the pernicious effects of normalization on his rule;” owing to the heavenly knowledge that his innate nature acquires, he is able to discern that which the ruler does not. Second, “the duty of alerting the society that is governed by this ruler to the effects of normalization upon its very being;” owing to his knowledge and experience of the suffering of Palestinian society, he recognizes that which others do not.

Raising the ruler’s awareness of the dangers of normalization to his rule may be direct or indirect, depending on the extent of his subordination to the Israeli will. These dangers mostly begin by isolating the ruler from society, as it is the force to which he can turn once his consciousness awakens after realizing the danger facing him. His Israeli ally resorts to this strategy of isolation so that it may blackmail him, under the pretext of protecting him from people’s rage. These dangers end with the circulation of the prospect of occupying his land—just as the land of Palestine has been occupied—often through the establishment of military bases upon it. This “ally” keenly anticipates the moment when the widening gap between the ruler and society becomes unbridgeable. Haunted, perhaps, by the specter of the collapse of his rule, the ruler is often driven to making extreme concessions, even if they entail the abandonment of sacred things, let alone the constant depletion of his country’s wealth under the pretext of integrating it in the global circuit of civilizational openness, technological progress, and economic prosperity.

The Jerusalemite murābiṭ is keen on alerting the ruler to the dangers to which his Israeli ally constantly exposes him, hoping that he might open his eyes to what is being plotted against him and, accordingly, take precautions against them. This precaution on the part of the ruler might be an important step on the way towards his liberation from the yoke of Israeli will. The murābiṭ could then—by exposing more of the deception of this will—bring this ruler a step further by motivating him to rid himself of it altogether. Doing all this, the murābiṭ looks forward to the day when the ruler will be reassured by his advice and realize that his advisor has no ambition whatsoever in disputing his rule. It is the heavenly ascension which imbues his innate nature that rids his work of self-serving interests, let alone the will to subdue others. All his aim is instead focused on absolving himself of the responsibility of repelling the Israeli harm from the human being, be they Palestinian or non-Palestinian.

As for sensitizing society to the effects of normalization upon its being, we have already mentioned that the Jerusalemite murābaṭa is not necessarily a murābaṭa in Bayt al-Maqdis, although murābaṭa in the latter is paradigmatic. Rather, it is a general state of murābaṭa whose manifestations can be found in all the societies that adopt the Palestinian cause or sympathize with it. This state of murābaṭa should be even more plain and manifest in societies whose rulers engage in relations of normalization with the Israeli entity, despite their peoples’ indignation about the very principle of normalization, let alone the normalizing practices and activities in their midst, whether explicit or implicit. Consequently, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ’s campaigns to raise awareness in the societies that are coerced to normalize must be based on three conditions, which are three forms of attachment:

a. Reestablishing values on the divine attributes

The Jerusalemite murābiṭ undertakes to revive the original values that contradict the values of normalization, such as interests and material gains. He does so by cautioning against the forms of attachment to temporary and fleeting qualities that veil the innate nature, as well as alerting to the necessity of returning to the innate nature to acquire the capacity to repel enslavement to the Israeli will. If the basis for the values that have led to this enslavement were the temporary and fleeting qualities that have clung to the innate nature, then the basis for the values that would lead to liberation necessarily must be the opposite qualities; that is, the constant and everlasting qualities, which are none but the divine attributes.

For this reason, the Jerusalemite murābiṭ never ceases to urge his community to reflect on these divine attributes which are designated by the “Beautiful Names;” the latter being the source of the original values that are embedded in people’s innate nature. To be sure, the constant contemplation of these attributes strengthens one’s attachment to them and the absorption of the values that flow from them. By turning to these attributes, people indeed turn to their Creator, as though ascending to Him in their inner selves. So, when they seek help, they are helped; and when they ask, they are answered. It should be evident now that the first condition for liberating a society that is forced to normalize is for its people to regain their innate nature; and there is no restoration of it except by their attachment to the attributes of their Lord.

b. Reestablishing Islam on the Jerusalemite character

The Jerusalemite murābiṭ urges his citizens to reflect on the connection between “Jerusalem” and their religion in a way that enables them to confront the challenge of Israeli enslavement. For every form of enslavement, there is an appropriate reflection that would repel it. In other words, he urges them to reformulate the relationship between “Islam” and what we have called the “Jerusalemite character.” As previously explained, the latter refers to “the spiritual heritage that is unique to Bayt al-Maqdis and to which all the messengers and prophets n contributed in different forms and degrees.” Reformulating the relationship between Islam and the Jerusalemite character entails a shift away from the narrow and apparent conception that what happened in Bayt al-Maqdis to the Messenger e is just one of the miracles that indicate his prophethood and status, or a mere phase of the call to Allah in Mecca. Such a reformulation drives us, rather, to a broader and more profound conception that deems the “Jerusalemite character” to be the spirit of Islam itself, such that there is no Islam without this character. As already stated above, the Holy Qurʾan uses the expression of “surrendering the face to Allah” to articulate this spirit. Thus, the “Jerusalemite character” and “surrendering the face to Allah” are two appellations of the same truth. To be sure, “Bayt al-Maqdis” is indeed the “house of surrendering the face to Allah.”

Accordingly, the mission of the Jerusalemite murābiṭ lies in sensitizing his fellow citizens to the fact that normalization inevitably leads them to lose the “Jerusalemite character” that is the essence of Islam. If this character is lost, Islam will be lost as well, and so will their connection to it. So, it should be evident that the second condition for liberating the society that is forced to normalize with the Israeli will is the belief that the spirit of Islam, without which there is no Islam, is “surrendering the face to Allah;” and “surrendering the face to Allah” is the Qurʾanic expression of the “Jerusalemite character.”

c. Reestablishing the soul on divine proximity

The Jerusalemite murābiṭ believes that the renewal of the human being cannot take place except by the renewal of his soul, because its truth is that it stands as the generating force for all other types of renewal, be they moral or material. The Jerusalemite murābiṭ founds this spiritual renewal of the human being on two basic pillars: “renewing the connection to the attributes of Allah” and “renewing the connection to Allah’s divine self.” The human being renews the connection to the divine attributes by returning to the origin of his innate nature; that is by renewing the covenant of testimony (mīthāq al-ishhād). As for renewing the connection with Allah’s divine self, the human being achieves it by observing patience in prayer, renewing his fulfillment of the covenant of trust until he achieves the prostrating state which brings him closest to his Lord. In that state, he finds in his heart what the prostrating person finds in his prayer even while engaging in ordinary worldly affairs. For anyone with insight, it is evident that the human being’s awareness and observance of the presence of Allah—the Most Compassionate—in all actions sparks in his innate nature a heavenly spirit that is capable of breaking idols and subduing tyrants.

Although the Jerusalemite murābiṭ is initially only concerned with confronting the tyrannical Israeli idol (ṭāghūt) that is intent on enslaving the hearts of Arabs and Muslims, his jihād of renewal encompasses every human being. It should be evident that in the human being’s servitude to anything whatsoever besides Allah lies the death of his humanity; and, by contrast, its life lies in his liberation from everything besides Allah. Hence, by working to renew the soul in the members of his society, with the aim of warding off the Israeli will’s enslavement of them, the murābiṭ is indeed working on renewing the soul in the human being qua human being, in order to repel his enslavement to any will, whatever it may be. And since no tyrant in this era has reached the extremity of Israel in enslaving the human being, whether through occupying his land or corrupting his innate nature, then whosoever succeeds in being liberated from the enslavement to the Israeli will shall be ever more capable of being liberated from other tyrannies.

It becomes evident therefore that the third condition for liberating a society that is forced to normalize with Israel is for its members to fulfill the two heavenly connections: “the connection to the divine attributes through the innate faculty,” and “the connection to the divine self through the state of prostration.” Whenever people rightly fulfill this condition, they should be certain that their Lord would support them with a heavenly spirit that enables them to rid themselves of the Israeli incarnation. More importantly, they would then assume the status of the bearers of the trust of renewing the human being in this era that lost its decency. Thus, this new human being would become capable of confronting the forms of tyrannical incarnations that are ever lurking around him.

Figure 2

The fundamental point of this first chapter is that the trusteeship approach requires referring the image of the Israeli abuse of the Palestinians—both in land and in heritage—to the spirit of this abuse: “offending God” and “harming the human being.” We have explained how the occupation of Palestinian land—i.e., “settlement”—manifests in the Israelis’ disputation with God over the attribute of the “Sovereign” because they wanted to possess this land as Allah does. We have also explained how the occupation of Palestinian heritage—i.e., “incarnation”—manifests in the “overturning of values;” an overturning that leads to a disruption of the Palestinian’s relationship with time and, thus, with space. It manifests equally in the “stripping out of the innate nature;” a stripping out that leads to normalization which is, in truth, a loss of the innate nature, a loss of the soul, a loss of holiness, and a loss of decency. The latter among these is represented in “heedlessness to the divine gaze,” the “loss of moral discernment,” and the “practice of hypocrisy on the largest scale.”

Likewise, the trusteeship approach requires referring the image of the occupied land to its spirit, which is “holiness;” and referring the image of the occupied innate nature to its spirit, which is “authenticity.” Thus, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa is but the restoration of the sanctity of the land which the Israeli occupation has desecrated, and the restoration of the authenticity of the innate nature which the Israeli incarnation has falsified.

Therefore, confronting the desecration of the land, which is offensive to God, entails a return to “the covenant of trust” that is taken from the human being. This covenant is ordered in three levels. First, the lifting of Israeli sovereignty from anything in the land of Palestine, starting with the state and ending with existence. Second, the consolidation of the culture of trusteeship, which consists of reflection on cosmological and normative signs, the preservation of the spiritual heritage, the observation of divine will in the world, and the prioritization of the fulfillment of duty over the obtention of right. Third, the restoration of the lost trust; and it has two conditions. The first condition is that the aim of the project of murābaṭa is not the acquisition of a specific property, nor the preservation of a specific trust, but rather the preservation of the covenant of the trust or the preservation of the principle of trust itself. This world is on the verge of becoming a “post-trust world;” the markers of which are “the slaughtering of the Umma” and “the Deal of the Century.” The second condition is the adoption of an approach that does not restrict itself to material power but rather extends itself to spiritual power; not being restricted to undertaking one specific means of confrontation, but rather adopting all possible means, nor stagnating on these means, but rather exhibiting a constant impulse to innovate and devise new ones; and not confining murābaṭa exclusively to the land of Palestine, but rather extending it to the entire globe, while preserving the specificity of each murābaṭa, wherever it may be.

On its part, the Jerusalemite murābaṭa’s repulsion of the falsification of the innate nature, which is harmful to the human being, requires returning to the “Covenant of Testimony,” which was also taken from the human being. It also occurs on three levels. First, to resist the manifestations of the Israeli will in the conduct of the normalizing individual, by exposing his betrayal of the trust of freedom that he bears, which leads him to enslave himself to this will. Second, to resist the manifestations of the Israeli will in the normalizing ruler’s governance, by exposing his betrayal of the trust of justice that he bears, which leads him to enslave both himself and his people to this will. Third, to sensitize the society that has been forced to normalize to the extent of the harm that normalization inflicts on its being. This may be achieved by reestablishing values on the divine attributes, reestablishing Islam on the Jerusalemite character, and reestablishing the soul on divine proximity.

Translator Profile

Monir Birouk is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco. His research interests straddle the fields of literature, ethics, and contemporary Arab-Islamic thought, with a focus on the dialectic between modernity and ethics in the thought of the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane. He earned his doctorate from Mohamed V University in Rabat, Morroco.

Editor Profile

Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra is teaching fellow in religion and politics at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He completed his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at Georgetown University on 19th/20th-century transnational Islamic discourses of reform. Mohammed is the translator and editor of Istiʿādat al-Khilāfa: al-Niẓām al-ʿĀlamī wa Tafkīk al-Istiʿmār (Beirut: Arab Network for Research and Publishing, 2018), the Arabic edition of Salman Sayyid’s influential Recalling the Caliphate (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014). He currently serves as the Managing Editor of Muftah Magazine.

Suggested Citation

Taha Abderrahmane, “The Jerusalemite Murābaṭa: On the Frontier of the Islamic-Israeli Conflict,” trans. Monir Birouk, ed. Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra, Ummatics, March 3, 2025, https://ummatics.org/the-jerusalemite-murabata/.