Only with nausea can one fathom that Nizar Rayan was a professor of law.
Nizar Rayan (also spelled Rayyan), law professor (Islamic law) died on Jaunary 1, 2009 as a result of an Isreali bomb directed at his Jabalya, Gaza residence. All four of his wives and two of his daughters also died in the blast. In keeping with his religion’s traditions, his remains were quickly enterred the next day.
By day, the bearded Rayan, 49, was a law professor at the Faculty of Shariah & Law at the Islamic University in Gaza City.
But this was not your typical law professor.
By night, he was Superhamas, as he donned the public face of the Muslim fanatic group Hamas and was said to be one of its leaders.
This law professor wore combat clothing and a Kalashnikov. He publicly called Israel the “evil state” and once proposed that:
“There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination.”
In October of 2001, his own son died as a suicide bomber which killed two Israelis. He is believed to have coached his son in this act.
The Israeli government claimed that Rayan's house was serving as a weapons store and Hamas communications centre.
Rayan’s hate did not stop at Israel. He was an avowed enemy of his own people’s alternate government for Gaza, a secular political organization known as Fatah, which Rayan sought at every turn to intimidate. In politics more resembling Gheghis Khan than modern diplomacy and leadership, Rayan warned Fatah that they’d be dealt with by a law enforcement strategy of “only the sword and the rifle”.
Rayan studied law in Saudia Arabia but he was jailed in 1994 for his part in terrorist activities.
Jeffrey Goldberg of the American magazine The Atlantic, who met Rayan two years ago while researching a book, writes that Rayan’s interpretation of the Koran was striking. Rayan primarily believed that the only good Jew is a dead Jew because “they killed the prophet (Jesus).
Just who was law professor Nizar Ryan?
Goldberg writes:
“I asked him if he believed, as some Hamas theologians do, that Jews are the sons of pigs and apes. He gave me an interesting answer that reflects a myopic reading of the Koran. 'Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce. So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people.'
“What are our crimes? I asked Rayan. 'You are murderers of the prophets and you have closed your ears to the Messenger of Allah. Jews tried to kill the Prophet. All throughout history, you have stood in opposition to the word of God.'"
In response to Rayan’s killing, the Arab press is referring to it as an “assassination” and a “murder” as well as “Israel's policy of bombing the homes of Hamas leaders is against international law”.
But Rayan, as a professor of law, had no business inciting war and violence. Especially egregious is his coaching of his own son to commit a suicide bombing.
This type of law hypocrisy smacks of Robespierre who, in 1794, while publicly extolling the virtues of the rights of man, held the reigns of a government that guillotined thousands of his own countrymen.
And with the wagging of that same tongue, Rayan apologists now demand the help of law?
Maybe the world needs an alternate definition of the word; one for Rayan's law school students, and another for the rest of us.
It is difficult to understand the use of the words law , justice, and law professor or even lawyer in the context of the kind of politics Rayan professed, smack as they do of biblical times.
From another planet, and with some sympathy and understanding, much of his rabble can be written off as quaint or vive la difference!
But when death for the sake of politics is the hallmark of a so-called law professor's personal inclinations, the truth ought to outed. Nizar Rayan was visited by none other than his own spectre of law and justice.
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