Wahhabism in Gaza

    In the past, Palestinians in Gaza, like most Palestinians elsewhere, knew that the legal Islamic school they adopted was the Shafi’i school. Named after the Gaza-born jurist Muhammad bin Idris al-Shafi’i, this was the dominant school among Palestinians in Gaza until the mid-1970s. Until then, Sufi corners were rife in the city. Prominent religious scholars from Gaza, many of whom graduated from al-Azhar Islamic institute in Egypt, were affiliated with the Ash’arite school, a branch of the Shafi’i madhab especially common among Sunni Muslims in the Levant. The Muslim Brotherhood represented virtually the sole current of political Islam in Gaza, but things have changed dramatically ever since.