Historical Foundations: The Limits of Secular Nationalist Activism in the Academic Fortress

In 1961, an arrest on campus, subsequently known as the “chained student” case, exposed the university as a direct arm of the state’s security apparatus.Footnote ²⁰ Such incidents transformed the campus into a site of struggle, where nationalist organizing through local committees came at high personal and academic cost. The tension between the institutional security concept and Palestinian national identity became even more palpable in the mid-1970s, when students protested against mandatory guard duty in the student dormitories. Although the university presented guard duty as a civic obligation for all students who lived in the dormitories regardless of background, the Palestinian students at HUJ saw the requirement as participation in a discriminatory policing mechanism that reinforced the status of Palestinians as second-class citizens.Footnote ²¹ As Maya Wind has argued, HUJ’s Mount Scopus campus has functioned since 1967 as a strategic territorial anchor for Israeli control of East Jerusalem, and student guard duty reinforced that role.Footnote ²² For Palestinian students, refusing to participate in guard duty was not just a rejection of a university rule but a refusal to act as agents of their own dispossession in a highly securitized, nationalist space. Guard duty risked turning students into instruments of surveillance over one another, undermining the trust needed for collective organizing.

National consciousness among Palestinian students in Israel matured in the 1970s, epitomized by the establishment of the National Committee of Arab Students in 1973.Footnote ²³ As Ibrahim Makkawi notes, this body was central to Palestinian “national identity development,” uniting students across university campuses to lead nationwide struggles, such as the 1975 strikes against land dispossession in the Galilee.Footnote ²⁴ The institutional response remained largely punitive, marked by quick hearings and expulsion from the university; nevertheless, pockets of solidarity also emerged. One example was the 1984 protest by professors from Ben Gurion University in support of hunger-striking Arab students.Footnote ²⁵ This rare instance of advocacy from within the academic establishment demonstrated the students’ capacity to mobilize allies and challenge the dominant narrative, offering a brief respite from the prevailing sense of isolation.Footnote ²⁶

Ultimately, however, the secular nationalist model encountered an uncompromising wall within the “academic fortress,” as Haim Yacobi has described the Mount Scopus campus’s physical and symbolic enclosure.Footnote ²⁷ By the onset of the first Intifada (1987–1993), the students’ growing conviction that “my existence is political” reflected a generation worn down by state suppression and direct, often violent friction with Jewish student groups.Footnote ²⁸ It also reflected their realization that Israeli universities would not officially recognize their alienation, their struggles with the language, nor the claims of discrimination made by Palestinian nationalist student groups. Understanding that secular Palestinian nationalist activism could not resolve these challenges, students began to seek alternative frameworks of survival. This set the stage for the rise of the pious Muslim student activism, which offered a new communal and moral compass, shifting the focus toward building internal strength within the restrictive confines of Israeli higher education.

Early Islamic Student Activism at Hebrew University: Cultivating Identity in a Cautious Space

Within this context of confrontation between secular nationalist student activism and the university, Islamic student activism emerged. Pious Muslim students at HUJ first organized in 1981, in the context of the Islamic awakening then occurring throughout the Middle East, including Israel.Footnote ²⁹ Some of these students came from families deeply involved in the Islamic Movement, bringing established religious networks and sociopolitical convictions from their home communities onto the campus. They initially held small group educational and faith-based meetings; attended regular prayer at al-Aqsa Mosque; organized trips to religious and historical sites around Israel; distributed Islamic literature, magazines, and tapes; attended sporting events; and offered student scholarships.Footnote ³⁰ In particular, these students found that HUJ’s proximity to al-Aqsa Mosque and its religious scholars and preachers, as well as nearby religious colleges and libraries in Jerusalem and Ramallah, fostered an environment conducive to religious learning.Footnote ³¹

Marwan, born in Tamra in 1963, described the formation of informal pious Muslim student activity at HUJ in the 1980s, noting that they were a group of students with an Islamic religious orientation. “We focused on religious lessons more than on politics,” he noted, adding that “what characterized that period was the need for the Islamic Movement to crystallize. . . . Religious shaykhs and preachers from the West Bank and Gaza greatly influenced youth from within [Israel] through lessons and Friday sermons.”Footnote ³² This reliance on external religious authorities points to a proactive attempt to address what was perceived as an epistemic void in the Israeli state and its school curriculum, suggesting a strategic bypass of institutional ideological frameworks through alternative knowledge systems imported directly onto campus.Footnote ³³

As Marwan explained, “We were educated students, preoccupied with intellectual matters. We were part of a broader generation in the Middle East, learning the concept of governance anew and examining the meaning of jihad. The youth did not understand the objectives. Sayyid Qutb, their interpretation of him was radical, especially his book, Maʿalim fi al-Tariq [Milestones].” Like their peers elsewhere, the pious Muslim students at HUJ engaged with the ideas of popular Muslim and Arab thinkers at the time, such as Saʿid Hawwa (1935–1989), the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria; Fathi Yakun (1933–2009), a Lebanese politician and preacher who advocated for Sunni–Shiʿi reconciliation; and ʿAbdullah ʿAzzam (1941–1989), a Palestinian religious, political, and military leader in the Afghan war against the Soviets. It is no surprise that Muslim students in the 1980s debated about political organization and the struggle against colonialism, reflecting the prevailing mindset of the time. Ultimately, they chose the ideas that matched their reality in Israel.

Marwan acknowledged that the students “connected with all political trends” and held intellectual and ideological debates “but without political competition.” He noted that the pious Muslim students “had good relations with everyone,” including al-Jabha, the student organization of Hadash, the leading secular Arab party in Israel. However, “we did not have a relationship with the university, and I do not know if they knew anything about us.”Footnote ³⁴ Marwan’s sense of being unseen by the university administration may have worked to the students’ advantage; it helped them avoid direct conflict with the administration and their Jewish peers and instead let them use the academic fortress strategically as a site of productive invisibility where their identity could form far from any institutional surveillance.

This environment at HUJ later gave rise to Adam li-Adam (Human to Human) in 1995. Salim, one of its founders, attended HUJ between 1995 and 2003. Describing the group’s activity, Salim recalled a tense atmosphere; a wave of suicide bombings in Jerusalem made students wary of drawing attention to themselves. “We did not want eyes on us,” he said. “We held religious lessons behind closed doors to protect our identity.”Footnote ³⁵ Although the group’s secrecy was a form of survival politics within an alienating institutional setting, the students did not experience their ghurba as a burden; instead, they turned it into a catalyst for building an autonomous community sheltered from institutional pressures.Footnote ³⁶

As Salim further explained:

Salim’s account shows how their secret group meetings helped students mitigate the psychological effects of surveillance. The private enclave gave them a sense of dignity and tranquility while navigating the university’s institutional and psychological pressures.

The meetings of Adam li-Adam took place in the Mount Scopus dormitories, and study groups devoted to the Qurʾan and the sunna were held at al-Aqsa Mosque. As Salim noted, “We used to spend weekends in Jerusalem, which strengthened the connection with al-Aqsa.” Although Adam li-Adam lacked a clear hierarchy and leadership structure, Salim noted that the group “strengthened our self-confidence in facing the identity crisis we experienced in dealing with the city’s temptations. We went through a cultural crisis in the face of Western culture. There was an identity crisis within the Arab student community.” Salim’s comments highlight the cautious attitudes of pious Muslim students toward the university, the city, and their concerns about both personal and collective identity. These same anxieties about visibility, belonging, and institutional surveillance also shaped how Salim and his peers anticipated the university’s reaction to their organizing.

The students’ actual or imagined lack of a sense of security (ḥiss amnī), particularly the feeling of being watched, marked the early days of pious Muslim student activism and came up regularly in interviews. This strategic emphasis on a nonconfrontational, internal focus on identity and community building reflected a real politics of survival and adaptation in a closely monitored environment, distinct from the overt political resistance of the secular nationalist groups at HUJ. According to Salim, more conservative male and female students were drawn to the group’s activities. He explained:

The trajectory of Adam li-Adam, moving from an informal circle for religious study to a more organized group, exemplifies the development of pious Muslim student activism in a challenging sociopolitical context. Despite external pressures and suspicions, the group provided crucial support for its members, fostering a sense of community and self-confidence. Its inclusion of Christian and unveiled women students suggests that it sought to move beyond a narrow sectarian focus on Islamic identity and create an inclusive environment for all Palestinian students at HUJ, reflecting broader aspirations of religious unity while cutting across gendered lines.

My interviews with Marwan and Salim underline the strong connection between students at HUJ’s Mount Scopus campus and al-Aqsa Mosque. For these activists, HUJ’s location in Jerusalem made it a preferred institution for learning. The physical proximity to the mosque enabled students to integrate spiritual practices into their daily lives, such as attending fajr (dawn) prayers at al-Aqsa, an experience that became a defining element of their time in Jerusalem. The university drew students from across the country, and this convergence transformed the campus into a singular religious and political hub, distinguishing it from other Israeli academic institutions. The university became more than just a security-oriented academic fortress; it also grew into a vital center of life, where sacred space and, eventually, more open pious Muslim religious activism intersected.

The al-Risala Student Movement

In 1996, Adam li-Adam moved from its underground phase to form al-Risala, an official pious Muslim student organization. As Salim explained, “We had fears about the university, but things went smoothly, and dealing with them was very technical. If you wanted to reserve a hall, you would do so through the university’s security department. Initially, we were apprehensive about how the university might react to the group’s iftar (meal after fasting) during Ramadan. Al-Risala did not clash with the law nor conflict with the state … we followed the law and did not seek a confrontation with the university.”Footnote ³⁹ Similarly, Farida, who had been active in both Adam li-Adam and al-Risala, presented al-Risala as seeking “to build something new, humanitarian, public, and with Islamic culture, not just focusing on religion.”Footnote ⁴⁰

Establishing al-Risala was deeply embedded in what Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian has identified as the “politics of fear.”Footnote ⁴¹ For many Muslim students at HUJ in the 1990s, this fear was not a dormant historical trauma but a rational, daily-life reality rooted in collective memory of Israel’s military administration (1948–1966) and constantly reinforced by the university’s securitized bureaucracy. Students also believed their fear was justified by HUJ’s historical treatment of secular nationalist Palestinian student groups, having observed how the university systematically disciplined them. As Shalhoub-Kevorkian has argued, the state’s “security theology” created a “surveillability” that Palestinians carried with them, manifested here in “clarification meetings,” security department protocols, and police interventions.Footnote ⁴²

The quietism of the pious Muslim activists in Adam li-Adam was a response to this pervasive apparatus. Their later shift to the more official and open activism of al-Risala reflected a similar navigation of the Israeli institution. By aligning their religious rituals with university administrative procedures, such as reserving auditoriums and halls and following security protocols, students used the university’s own framework to legitimize a previously hidden communal presence. This suggests that the campus environment, despite being experienced by Palestinian students as a site of surveillance, also provided a structured legal safety net that allowed religious activism to flourish as a nonconfrontational alternative to secular nationalist politics.Footnote ⁴³

Despite their fears, the university did not hinder al-Risala’s growth or its activities. Its approval of al-Risala’s activities, however, should not be interpreted as a sign of institutional tolerance; rather, it underscores how the pious Muslim activists internalized the rules of the game. As Shalhoub-Kevorkian posits, the most effective form of surveillance occurs when the surveilled subjects embody the state’s logic of security, exercising self-censorship and quietism to navigate a hostile environment without triggering immediate repression.

The real challenges to al-Risala came from student groups affiliated with the Islamic Movement itself, as well as from other Palestinian student blocs that dominated campus politics. Two competing pious Muslim groups operated at HUJ at the same time as al-Risala: Iqraʾ, affiliated with the Northern faction of the Islamic Movement, and al-Qalam, associated with the Southern faction. Although both groups sought to cultivate and empower Islamic religious identity and shared common religious ground, the ideological rift between the two parent factions, along with their leaders’ intervention in student activities, intensified competition for student loyalty. Although the 1996 split was a formative event in the Islamic Movement’s history, which sparked a leadership crisis, it also, over time, gave rise to a new generation of followers whose involvement began with student activism.Footnote ⁴⁴

Like al-Risala, both al-Qalam and Iqraʾ maintained a nonconfrontational approach to the university. Iqraʾ organized exhibitions and offered academic guidance, including test preparation. It also supported pious Muslim students through religious lessons, Eid celebrations, al-Aqsa trips, and social and student activities, aiming to ease confusion, remove barriers, and help students achieve their academic and life goals. Al-Qalam focused on finding agency within the constraints of Israeli academia. As Ahmad, a leader with al-Qalam, explained about the organization, “Yes, the university controls it. It is an Israeli institution, not a Palestinian one. External control and internal control are based on responsibility, shariʿa, and the law. This is what we learned from Shaykh Abdullah Nimr Darwish.” This understanding informed the cautious engagement of all the Muslim student groups: although university security inquired about their activities, it did not prevent them from organizing. Ahmad emphasized the importance of safeguarding students’ futures: “At the same time, I did not want to overload the students, so I did not want to lead them to self-destruction (tahluka); I wanted the parents to feel reassured about their children belonging to a national Islamic group. We want to protect the students so that their activity does not affect their progress in education and career.” Ahmad’s discourse on avoiding tahluka reflected a pragmatism of presence, a key characteristic of the Southern faction’s ideology, which sought to balance religious identity with citizenship within the Israeli state, prioritizing the long-term socioeconomic survival of the Palestinian elite-in-the-making over immediate political friction. It also shows how Islamic activism offered a safe path for identity expression, one that minimized the risk of institutional sanctions while maintaining a distinct religious national boundary.Footnote ⁴⁵

This pragmatic outlook extended to al-Qalam’s approach to national commemorative events, which often carried a high risk of confrontation. As Ahmad explained, “We were trying not to clash with the Jewish students, especially on national occasions. Collision is not our goal.” Instead of overt confrontation, al-Qalam and similar groups developed innovative strategies to express national identity and historical narrative, which were beyond the university’s control and away from the risk of clashes with Jewish students. Ahmad highlighted this shift, noting that “there is the alternative [to holding Nakba-related events on campus], from revisiting the Nakba in the abandoned villages of 1948 to [holding] a volunteer day in an unrecognized village in the Negev,” before adding that “outside the university … there is no censorship for the love of the homeland.” Ahmad referred to these outings as being “voluntary acts of faith: Friday prayer, cleaning, putting up fences,” and constituting “an actual embodiment of love for the homeland,” as they enabled the students to engage in meaningful acts of remembrance and identity affirmation away from institutional oversight, while also protecting their academic and professional trajectories.

This shift away from campus represents a move toward extrainstitutional agency. By relocating the commemorative act of the Nakba to the physical landscape of the Negev, for example, students bypassed the university’s “academic censorship,” transforming a religious voluntary act into a powerful, spatialized reclamation of national memory.Footnote ⁴⁶ The experiences of Muslim students at HUJ reflect broader educational and political dynamics observed across the Middle East. As Fida Adely has argued, educational institutions in the region are not merely sites of instruction but “critical arenas” in which individuals negotiate and redefine their religious and national identities, often in response to state-driven socialization.Footnote ⁴⁷ Salamanca and others further contextualize this process, framing the Palestinian experience within a “settler colonial” structure that is “not an event” of the past but an ongoing reality.Footnote ⁴⁸ Through this lens, HUJ served as a site where this structural logic manifested, whereas the students’ persistence, exemplified by their spiritual and political focus on al-Aqsa, represented an Indigenous presence that resisted erasure. Higher education became a vital infrastructure for national endurance, where the “past [was] the present” in the daily conflict over identity and space.Footnote ⁴⁹

Furthermore, these dynamics were deeply gendered. Adely challenges the view of higher education as a purely secularizing force, demonstrating that for many women, the university becomes a space where religious piety and academic ambition coexist. She shows how women have used their educational journeys to negotiate traditional roles, gaining agency by reinterpreting their religious identities in the public sphere.Footnote ⁵⁰ This framework is essential for understanding how Palestinian female students at HUJ navigated the intersections of national struggle, religious devotion, and gender expectations.

Gender Issues and the Islamic Student Groups

Male and female Muslim students at HUJ shared identity issues, and both sought safe religious frameworks. These frameworks safeguarded them from the temptations of secular modernity and Israelization, enabled collective observance of religious commandments, and provided essential student services. All these factors motivated Muslim students to connect with the different Islamic student organizations active at HUJ.

Modernity, feminism, and Israelization did not present as abstract ideological challenges; rather, they manifested as immediate, gendered anxieties that threatened the socioreligious fabric of Muslim students’ lives. For male students, entering the secularized and highly Westernized environment of an Israeli campus induced a profound crisis of identity, rendering them vulnerable to what they perceived as severe moral trials and temptations (fitna). In response, the early generation of male student activists of the 1990s, exemplified by Salim, constructed a defensive model of moral masculinity.

This localized masculinity anchored itself in ethical self-restraint, modesty, and a deliberate withdrawal from the secular social scene of the university. The early pious Muslim students centered their masculine identity on personal piety and spiritual discipline to withstand the campus fitna. In doing so, they sought to insulate themselves from the pressures of cultural assimilation and the erosion of traditional patriarchal structures, framing their self-restraint not as a lack of agency but as a deliberate act of religious resilience.Footnote ⁵¹

As the political landscape shifted in the 2000s, this defensive posture evolved into a more assertive, reflexive religious masculinity, embodied by subsequent student leaders like Ahmad. Faced with an increasingly securitized campus environment and growing institutional alienation, the younger generation of male activists redefined the gendered expectations placed upon them. An Islamic masculine ideal that prioritized communal responsibility (masʾūliyya) and spatial protection countered secular masculinity, often associated with a departure from religious boundaries. To be a pious Muslim man in the 2000s meant serving as a guardian of the collective identity against external pressures, negotiating with university authorities, and actively organizing the muṣallā (prayer space) as a physical and symbolic sanctuary for the entire student body, including women.

For female Muslim students, the encounters with secular modernity and Israelization triggered distinct gendered anxieties that centered on structural visibility, cultural erasure, and identity fragmentation. Entering the predominantly secular Israeli academy compelled these women to navigate acute pressures to assimilate, which often manifested as implicit or explicit demands to shed their traditional attire. For them, Israelization was more than an abstract political process; it posed an intimate threat to their modesty and religious conviction, pushing them toward cultural drift. In response to these fears, pious female students increasingly adopted the hijab (headscarf) and jilbab (outer garment) as deliberate, counter-hegemonic tools. Rather than reflecting a passive compliance with patriarchal norms, the reclamation of Islamic dress served as a highly visible statement of spatial and cultural autonomy. By visually marking themselves as nonassimilated, women students at HUJ constructed a portable moral boundary that shielded them from the alienating and secularizing forces of the campus environment. Simultaneously, this distinctive attire served as a vital intracommunal signifier, enabling pious Muslim students to recognize one another, reinforce group solidarity, and foster a shared sense of belonging within a highly fragmented university setting.

These women also faced unique gendered expectations that required them to balance academic advancement with the preservation of communal honor and authenticity. They had to contend with the dual stereotype of being perceived as oppressed or “backward” by the secular Israeli hegemony, while simultaneously managing internal communal anxieties over their public exposure in an alienating urban environment like Jerusalem. Their participation in the communal mosque and Islamic student groups gave them a vital platform for negotiating these dilemmas. Within these protective religious frameworks, women could pursue higher education without sacrificing their religious convictions, turning the shared prayer space into a crucial site where they could challenge Western, liberal feminist paradigms and articulate a distinct model of pious, educated Muslim womanhood.

As the previous sections showed, this generational shift demonstrates that pious Muslim masculinity on campus was never a monolithic or stagnant concept. Instead, the shifting narratives, from Salim’s individual ethical insulation against fitna to Ahmad’s collective spatial guardianship, encapsulate how male students dynamically co-constructed their religious manhood in conversation with changing structural barriers. By weaving these shifting definitions of masculinity alongside women’s adoption of the hijab as a parallel form of symbolic negotiation, the Islamic student groups effectively transformed the communal mosque into a comprehensive gendered sanctuary. This third space allowed both men and women to successfully resist the dual pressures of state-sponsored Israelization and secular modernity, asserting their standing through the reclamation of their religious traditions.Footnote ⁵²

Many women students found a home at HUJ in the pious Muslim student groups, drawn to frameworks with which they were familiar. Farida’s path illustrates how this unfolded individually. She participated in Adam li-Adam and then al-Risala from 1996 to 1999. Although she had grown up in a conservative religious home, Farida had not been exposed to the ideas of the Islamic Movement until she reached the university. “This was a world I had never known before,” she told me.Footnote ⁵³ Farida felt compelled to join the pious Muslim student groups because she felt “a religious inclination.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Her devotion to religion grew as she became more involved with these groups. Although she did not wear the hijab when she first began her studies, she later adopted it, because, in her words, the headcover was indicative of “her commitment.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Indeed, wearing the hijab functioned as a visual marker of the movement’s strengthening presence and a form of symbolic resistance within the academic fortress, providing visibility and agency for female participants.Footnote ⁵⁶ This specific religious visibility remained a paramount priority, positioning the veiled woman as the essential “model for imitation” in its communal mission.Footnote ⁵⁷

Iqraʾ appealed to women students by offering women-only activities and by imposing gender segregation at larger events. Rather than viewing these restrictive boundaries as exclusionary, many female participants embraced this institutionalized separation as a protective mechanism that facilitated their comfortable integration into public university life while maintaining religious propriety.Footnote ⁵⁸ Fatima, who was active in Iqraʾ from 2009 to 2015, recalled that the gender segregation at Iqraʾ events was a matter of convention, noting that “There were some rules of etiquette or everyday things during the events: the boys sat in the front and the girls in the back.” Noting that the male and female members of Iqraʾ also engaged in separate and different kinds of activism, Fatima acknowledged that this gendered differentiation stemmed “from the moral and religious convictions of the staff members.”Footnote ⁵⁹ The imposition of gender segregation and separate activities for men and women within the pious Muslim student groups was, in fact, linked to a much larger debate within the Islamic Movement about ikhtilāṭ, the mixing of men and women. As Fatima explained, the goal of the Islamic Movement was to control student activism as much as possible, and the students and staff members of Iqraʾ enforced the rule “not to mix or mingle.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Fatima’s description of gender segregation as being smoothly implemented suggests that many female students did not see this practice as an imposition by the Islamic Movement but rather as a “moral commitment” that facilitated their safe participation in the public sphere. By accepting these “behavioral controls,” women negotiated their presence in a secular Israeli institution while adhering to a strict religious gender code, effectively creating a parallel sociality within the campus.

This moral commitment to gender segregation, however, created difficulties for some of the women who joined al-Risala. As al-Risala sought to unite pious Muslim students under one umbrella, many of its members also were affiliated with al-Qalam and Iqraʾ. Marwa, an activist with Iqraʾ in the early 2000s, urged other Iqraʾ members to abandon al-Risala, claiming that it had violated important religious codes, specifically the separation of men and women, and was lax in fulfilling religious commandments. Marwa was willing to speak to male classmates, when necessary, but, according to the teachings of the Islamic Movement, and specifically the Northern faction with which she was affiliated, the mixing of men and women together was inappropriate and unacceptable. Marwa offered a different perspective from Fatima’s, as Marwa did not believe that the Islamic Movement imposed its will on a student group. Rather, Marwa embraced the gender code that Iqraʾ enforced, viewing it as a sign of religious piety.