...This chapter examines the Islamic Resistance Movement or Hamas, which was established at the beginning of the first Palestinian uprising in December 1987. This analysis of Hamas focuses on its social dimensions and on the relationship between its social and political sectors, primarily in the Gaza...

... of political Islam in the Middle East. Although Hamas itself is a relatively recent phenomenon, it is rooted in a decades-old history of Islamic activism that began with the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza City in 1945. Hamas' evolution and influence were primarily due to the nature of Hamas...

...This concluding chapter offers a brief commentary on the implications and repercussions from Israel's 2008–2009 attack on Gaza, and on Gaza's current situation. The devastating assault on Gaza was not only about destroying Hamas as a political force. This was an attack against the Palestinian...

...Many in the United States and Israel believe that Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, and that its social sector serves merely to recruit new supporters for its violent agenda. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the critical period of the Oslo peace...

...This chapter explores the evolution and role of Islamist social institutions in Gaza, beginning with the reformist work and philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood and continuing through the first Intifada and the Oslo period. Emphasis is given to the primary role of the social sector (e.g...

...This chapter evaluates the political impact on the Islamist movement and its social institutions of the following: the second Intifada, Israel's 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, Hamas' 2006 electoral victory, the subsequent international boycott of the Hamas-led government, and Hamas' June 2007...

...This chapter situates the polemic over Sabbatianism as a problem of authority. It casts Jacob Sasportas versus the Sabbatians, particularly Nathan of Gaza. If Sabbatian prophets and their followers drew on their ecstatic physical experience of redemption as the source of legitimacy...

... to the new movement emphasized the renewal of revelation both in the period of its rapid spread prior to Sabbetai Zevi's conversion as well as in the years that followed. Beginning with the leading Sabbatian propagandist, Nathan of Gaza, and continuing well into the eighteenth century, Sabbatians spoke...