Hamas and its vision of development

Abstract

This article accounts for the conceptualization of development by the Palestinian Islamist party, Hamas. It concludes that Hamas' s development can be seen in either two ways: 1) as broadly s mainstream neoliberal development; or 2) as significantly different and an alternative type of development. Which view taken depends on whether an Orientalist or non-Orientalist approach to understanding development is employed ( with Orientalism linking development, modernity and pro the West and denying it to the non- West ) . While an Orientalist view that development only occurs within narrow parameters, obliging the non-West to 'catch up', a non-Orientalist approach would study Islam on its own and therefore see Hamas' s approach to development as an alternative to mainstream thinking. To account for this, the article studies the basis of knowledge in Orientalism and Islamic thought alongside Hamas' s rise from its foundation in 1987 to its control of Gaza in mid-2007.