Azzam Tamimi (sometimes spelled Azam Tamimi) is a British Palestinian academic and political activist. He is currently the director of Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London and appears regularly on al-Jazeera, Press TV and other Arabic and English language television stations, and frequently publishes opinion pieces in the Guardian.[1] He is also a prominent member of the Muslim Association of Britain and the Stop the War Coalition. Tamimi has written several books on Middle Eastern and Islamic politics, including Rachid Ghannouchi, Democrat within Islamism and Hamas: A History from Within.
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Tamimi was born in 1955 and lived in Hebron in the Palestinian Territories until he was seven, when his family moved to Kuwait.[2] His father had fought against Israel.[2] After high school, Tamimi moved to London for college, receiving a B.S. in Combined Sciences in 1979 from the University of Sunderland.[2][3] He received a Ph.D. in Political Theory from University of Westminster, London in 1998.[3] Tamimi is married with three children and lives in Willesden, northwest London.[4] He and his family are British citizens.[5]
Tamimi has stated that the War on Terror launched by the U.S. and its allies in the wake of 9/11 is perceived by many in the Islamic world as a war on Islam.[6] He accused U.S. President George W Bush of attempting to stop terrorism through war, political oppression, and violations of human rights, and said that this would not work and would have the opposite effect.[7]
Tamimi is a strong advocate for the Palestinian people and a supporter of Hamas, and advised it on proposed changes to its charter.[8] Tamimi hoped a revision of the Hamas charter would make it a nonantisemitic document. "All that nonsense about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and conspiracy theories - all that rubbish will be out. It should have never been there in the first place." However, the revised document would still call for an end to Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian state on all of the Palestine mandate.[8]
Tamimi stated in 2004 that, as a Palestinian, he would never confer legitimacy upon Israel, "a state that is created on land robbed from my father, from my grandfather and from my mother."[9] He also classifies Zionism as a racist ideology.[10] Nonetheless, Tamimi favors talks between Hamas and Israel, believing that coexistence between Palestinians and Israel may be possible, and stating that "peace may still be achieved by talking about how to coexist."[11] He has elaborated that "Hamas would only agree to a negotiated settlement based on the idea of a hudna (longterm ceasefire). In reality, of course, that would mean recognizing Israel will exist within agreed-upon borders for a given period of time. It does not, however, mean recognizing that where Israel sits is no longer Palestinian."[10] For the long run, Tamimi advocates what he calls a post-apartheid South African solution, in which Israel "is dissolved just like apartheid was, and all people within mandatory Palestine become equal citizens."[10]
Shortly before the invasion of Gaza by Israel in late 2008, Tamimi argued for continuation of a truce that had been maintained for five months between Hamas and Israel, and for ending what Tamimi described as a siege placed upon Gaza by Israel.[12]
During a contentious interview on the November 2004 BBC program Hardtalk, Tamimi said that sacrificing his life for justice for Palestine would be "a noble cause. It is the straight way to pleasing my God and I would do it if I had the opportunity".[13] On August 21, 2006, London's Daily Mail published a report on a Tamimi speech with the following lead sentence: "A British-based Muslim radical appeared to back suicide bombing yesterday when he claimed that dying for your beliefs was 'just'." The article quotes Tamimi as saying that "fighting those who invade Muslims is a just cause."[5] In The Guardian, Tamimi responded to the Daily Mail report, stating that his speech was about sacrificing oneself for justice, and that "martyrdom is dying for justice and peace .. not blowing oneself up killing innocent people". He added in the Guardian piece, "the martyrdom that I said was the greatest form of sacrifice was the one that is incurred by a person who dares speak the truth in the presence of a tyrant."[14]
In an English-language Palestinian-Israeli debate on Iranian TV, which aired on Press TV on January 14, 2008, Tamimi debated Israeli lecturer Yossi Mekelberg. In response to Mekelberg stating that "We need justice for everyone, and I will tell you where...", Tamimi stated that: "Justice? You go back to Germany. That's justice. You turn Germany into your state, not Palestine. Why should Palestine be a Jewish state? Why?"[15]
In January, 2006, Tamimi wrote that creation of the state of Israel "was a solution to a European problem and the Palestinians are under no obligation to be the scapegoats for Europe's failure to recognise the Jews as human beings entitled to inalienable rights. Hamas, like all Palestinians, refuses to be made to pay for the criminals who perpetrated the Holocaust. However, Israel is a reality and that is why Hamas is willing to deal with that reality in a manner that is compatible with its principles."[16]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) provided the following quotation from an article published by Tamimi in 1998: "If the Westerners as a whole – and the Germans in particular – are immersed in feelings of guilt because of what they have perpetrated against the Jews, isn't it a just thing that they will act together to expiate for their sins by granting the Jews a national homeland in central Europe, for instance, within one of the German states? Or, why will not the U.S., the Zionist father through adoption, grant [the Jews] one out of its more than fifty states..?"[17][18]