HAMAS: Resistance and Mobilization through Islam

Research output

Complete citation

Poljarevic, Emin. “HAMAS: Resistance and Mobilization through Islam.” Review essay. Social Movement Studies 12, no. 4 (2013): 477–482. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2013.787761.

Status

Published (2013)

Publication type

Scholarly review essay

Overview

This review essay examines scholarship on Hamas as both an Islamic movement and an organisation operating within conditions of occupation, resistance, welfare provision, electoral politics, and armed conflict. It considers how religious ideas, organisational structures, social networks, and political opportunities interact in processes of mobilisation. Rather than treating Islam as a self-sufficient explanation, the essay evaluates how Islamic language and institutions acquire political force through historically specific practices, constituencies, and strategic choices. It also addresses tensions between movement identity, internal decision-making, governance, and changing relations with Palestinian society. The essay’s contribution is methodological as well as substantive: it shows that understanding Hamas requires attention to ideology and religion without reducing collective action to doctrine, and attention to political context without treating religious commitments as merely instrumental.

Research question or central concern

How should Hamas’s mobilisation be explained without reducing the movement either to Islamic ideology or to political strategy alone?

Main argument, approach, and contribution

The essay uses social-movement analysis to assess competing accounts of Hamas, connecting religious framing, organisational capacity, political opportunity, welfare activity, and resistance. Its contribution is an integrated explanation of ideology and mobilisation.

Keywords

Hamas; social movements; Islamism; mobilisation; resistance; political opportunity; religious framing; Palestine