SMOKERS’ CORNER: THE MAKING OF HAMAS

During the 1970s and 1980s, a dramatic political shift permanently altered the geopolitical topography of the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. Islamism gained momentum as secular nationalism declined. It was a collapse accelerated by the defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. At the time, Western powers viewed Islamism, a right-wing ideology opposed to socialism and secular nationalism, as a useful counterweight to Soviet-backed nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and, later, Libya. One of the most consequential applications of this strategy unfolded in…