Did you forget that Hamas canceled the Marathan recently because they are chauvinistic Islamic Shariah pigs?
Islamization of the Gaza Strip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Islamization of the Gaza Strip refers to the efforts to impose Islamic laws and traditions in the Gaza Strip. The influence of Islamic groups in the Gaza Strip has grown since the 1980s. The efforts to impose Islamic law and traditions continued when Hamas forcefully seized control of the area in June 2007 after being elected into power by the Palestinian people and displaced security forces loyal to the secular President Mahmoud Abbas. After the civil war ended, Hamas declared the “end of secularism and heresy in the Gaza Strip.”[4] For the first time since the Sudanese coup of 1989 that brought Omar al-Bashir to power, a Muslim Brotherhood group ruled a significant geographic territory. Gaza human rights groups accuse Hamas of restricting many freedoms in the course of these attempts.
Ismael Haniyeh officially denied accusations that Hamas intended to establish an Islamic emirate. However, Jonathan Schanzer writes that in the two years since the 2007 coup, the Gaza Strip has exhibited the characteristics of Talibanization, a process whereby the Hamas government has imposed strict rules on women, discouraged activities commonly associated with Western or Christian culture, oppressed non-Muslim minorities, imposed sharia law, and deployed religious police to enforce these laws.
According to a Human Rights Watch researcher, the Hamas-controlled government of Gaza stepped up its efforts to "Islamize" Gaza in 2010, efforts that included the "repression" of civil society and "severe violations of personal freedom." Israeli journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, wrote in 2009 that "Hamas is gradually turning the Gaza Strip into a Taliban-style Islamic entity". According to Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza's Al-Azhar University, "Ruling by itself, Hamas can stamp its ideas on everyone (...) Islamizing society has always been part of Hamas strategy."
Restrictions on women
Dress code
Successful informal coercion of women by sectors of society to wear Islamic dress or Hijab has been reported in Gaza where Mujama' al-Islami, the predecessor of Hamas, reportedly used a mixture of consent and coercion to "'restore' hijab" on urban educated women in Gaza in the late 1970s and 1980s.[9] Similar behavior was displayed by Hamas during the first intifada. Hamas campaigned for the wearing of the hijab alongside other measures, including insisting women stay at home, segregation from men and the promotion of polygamy. In the course of this campaign, women who chose not to wear the hijab were verbally and physically harassed, with the result that the hijab was being worn 'just to avoid problems on the streets'. Following the takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Hamas attempted to implement Islamic law in the Gaza Strip, mainly at schools, institutions and courts by imposing the Islamic dress or hijab on women.
Some of the Islamization efforts met resistance. When Palestinian Supreme Court Justice Abdel Raouf Al-Halabi ordered women lawyers to wear headscarves and caftans in court, attorneys contacted satellite television stations including Al Arabiya to protest, causing HamasÂ’s Justice Ministry to cancel the directive.
In 2007, Islamic group Swords of Truth threatened to behead female TV broadcasters if they didn't wear strict Islamic dress. "We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation," their statement said. The group also accused the women broadcasters of being "without any ... shame or morals." Personal threats against female broadcasters were also sent to the women's mobile phones, though it was not clear if these threats were from the same group. Gazan anchorwomen interviewed by the Associated Press said that they were frightened by the Swords of Truth's statement.
Other restrictions
In 2009, Hamas banned girls from riding behind men on motor scooters and forbade women from dancing.
The Hamas-led government implemented a ban on women smoking in public.In 2010, Hamas banned the smoking of hookah by women in public, stating that it was to reduce the increasing number of divorces.
In March 2010, Hamas tried to impose a ban on women receiving salon treatment from male hairdressers, issuing orders by Interior Minister Fathi Hammad and threatening offenders with arrest and trial. The group backed down after an outcry. In February 2011, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Hamas attempted to renew the ban, interrogating the five male hairdressers in Gaza City and forcing them to sign declarations that they wouldn't work in women's salons. According to one of the hairdressers, police called the five into a room where an unrelated detainee was chained to a wall by his wrists, and told to sign a pledge to give up their profession or face arrest and a 20,000 shekel fine. The man initially refused, but signed after his captors threatened "to take you to the cells because what you do is against Sharia [Islamic law]". During Hamas's reign over the strip, several beauty parlors and hair salons have been the target of explosions and other attacks, which Hamas has blamed on opposition groups. Male hairdressers for women in the conservative territory are rare.
In 2013, UNRWA canceled its annual marathon in Gaza after Hamas rulers prohibited women from participating in the race
