Abdullah Nimar Darwish

Who is Abdullah Nimar Darwish?

Sheikh Abdullah Nimar Darwish, born 1948 in Kafr Qasim, is the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

After completing his religious studies in Nablus, he returned to Kafr Qasim and began advocating a return to Islam and Islamic tradition, and subsequently established The Islamic Movement in Israel in 1971.

In 1979, Darwish established an underground organization called Usrat al-Jihad, whose goal was to establish "an Arab Islamic state in Palestine." Two years later, he was arrested together with several accomplices, and convicted of membership in a terrorist organization. He remained in prison until 1985, when he was freed as part of the Jibril Agreement between the government of Israel and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command. Following his release, Darwish became publicly active and began to express opposition to Israeli Arabs taking part in violent behavior. In 1992, he explicitly condemned the killing of three Israeli soldiers by an Israeli Arab group.

Today, he remains the spiritual leader of the Southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and serves as the chairman of an organization which arranges for interfaith dialogue between Muslims, Jews and Christians. He has expressed a commitment to the rule of law, and to integration into the State of Israel and its institutions. In a 2001 newspaper interview, he said: