President Donald Trump recently swept aside 70 years of conventional wisdom surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict and proposed to temporarily depopulate Gaza.

Accusations of ethnic cleansing resounded globally, though these are yet to be levelled at Hamas for the October 7 attacks, triggering Israel’s devastating defensive war. Hamas has repeatedly called to reenact more atrocities, knowing it readily condemns millions of its Palestinian population to the crosshairs of a ferocious conflict.

Since October 7, not only do the Palestinians face conventional military might, they are exploited as human shields by Hamas and victimised – not only as instruments of terror warfare – but also commodified as targets of humanitarian aid which Hamas further exploits, corrals, hoards, and sells at extortionate prices further magnifying the suffering and destitution of Palestinians. Hamas’s entire power, and its rogue economy of terror finance, will never diminish until it is starved of the Palestinian humanity it exploits.

For the Muslim world, particularly the Arab Muslim world, anticipating the well-worn cycle of war, truce, ceasefire, rebuilding, and ultimately restitution for war once again, they are wary of confronting Hamas. They are also fearful for their own domestic populations and further reluctant to condemn Hamas.

Trump’s departure from the status quo is both a tectonic blow that has shocked the Arab world, and an unparalleled opportunity. Arab leaders, leaders in Britain and Europe and Hamas itself reject the notion of relocating Palestinians from the war-torn Gaza strip.

But fury and indignation aside, as Muslims it is time we accept collective culpability in both Palestinian suffering and Hamas’ tenacity.

At no point in this conflict did the Muslim majority world allow Palestinian civilians to leave the war-zone.

Both Egypt and Israel kept the Gaza territory sealed at Rafah. No Muslim majority nation provided safe harbour for the 2.14 million civilian population that lives in the tiny enclave.

In contrast, at every step, Muslim majority leaders balked at the suggestion that Palestinians might be moved out of the conflict zone. King Abdullah announcing 10 days after October 7 this to be a ‘red line,’ cemented the region’s position on the Palestinians that there would be de facto no changes on the ground, no matter the intensity of conflict and the density of the civilian population. Arab leaders across the world concurred.

Obligated to follow international humanitarian war, the Israel Defense Forces called, texted, and sent pamphlets – all in Arabic- urging Palestinian civilians to move from strike zones. This resulted in over 950,000 Palestinians being displaced alive from Northern Gaza as the war intensified.

Israel also called at the start of the war for the Al Mawasi area on the beachfront to be secured as a humanitarian zone – a move the United Nations initially rejected until necessity caused the world to relent. Far too late, a humanitarian zone was arranged.

In calling for the Palestinians to be relocated from the Gaza Strip, Trump is the first world leader to offer the relief from conflict since this war began. This is despite the fact that Islam itself mandates exactly such a response at times of intense persecution.

Trump’s suggestion may have rocked the world but it reminds Muslims (and Muslim majority world leaders) of the highest principles in Islam. These are values which place sanctity of human life above all, including attachment to land, and even the rights of God.

Islamic belief, as the Quran records, is that all mankind is but a migrant against the backdrop of Creation. The Quran is explicit when it comes to migration at times of persecution and threat to life.

In his elegant paper in the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, Islamic theologian and Chair of Islamic Studies Dr Zeki Saritoprak of Ohio’s John Carroll University, reviews the multilayered message of migration and in a separate paper a deeper examination of the status of migrants within Islam.

Because Islam sees this life as temporary, Saritoprak explains, individuals are all but fleeting travellers here, our primordial homeland, Heaven. In our temporary, brief lives, all of God’s Earth is God’s land, and the onus is on the Muslim to migrate from places of oppression and persecution into the safe harbour of the vastness of God’s Earth.

In Quran Chapter 4 Verse 97: ‘(As for) those whom the angels cause to die while they are unjust to themselves, (the angels) will say: What were you doing? They will say: We were weak in the earth. (The angels) will say: Was not Allah’s earth spacious, so that you could have migrated in it? So these it is whose refuge is hell – and it is an evil destination.’

In the next verse, understanding that not everyone will be capable of migrating, the Quran adds that those who were prevented, or unable to leave, remain innocent.

By referring to ‘those who were unjust to themselves’, the Quran refers to those persons who were convinced of the truth of Islam, but chose to remain among the disbelievers, who did not allow them to give expression to their beliefs, despite having the means to join the Muslims and avow Islam openly. Those who chose to stay and continue perpetrating atrocities in the name of combating oppression, persecution or other conflict, remaining with those who had departed from belief, are by the Quran’s explicit statement condemned.

The verse places moral authority on those with power to assist those to flee such persecution. This is a verse every Muslim world leader will surely be considering as they continually allow millions of Palestinians to languish in captivity to Hamas in the ferocious war between Israel and Hamas.

The Arab Boycott against Israel has held since Israel’s 1948 founding. The boycott’s central fulcrum has been not only territorial but ideological. While Israeli statehood has been realised, broad refusal of recognition of the Jewish State until Palestinian Statehood is realised has caused an impasse. Additionally, opportunities to form a Palestinian State have been thwarted, often by the Palestinian leadership, and the entire project has been devastated by terrorism. Too many continue to envision any Palestinian State erasing all Jewish Statehood in its entirety.

The central denial of acknowledgment of the State of Israel from the Palestinian position, the broad criminalisation of even normalisation with Israel across much of the Arab world has pitted the suffering of two nations against one another at the exploitation of Israelis and Palestinians themselves.

Arab nations, and most Muslim public opinion, harbours virulent hostility to Israel and rank antisemitism towards Jews. Islamist antisemitism has dangerously rendered this to the level of creed which Hamas has now globalised with unprecedented ferocity.

The Quran states those who seek refuge from conflict or other hardship must be cared for by those who have authority and governing power, as only God is owner of the land. As worldly caretakers of God’s earth, rulers, monarchs, presidents and others are called to open their borders to give them refuge in other lands also belonging to God, though the lands may be under the stewardship of worldly leadership.

There are so many examples in Islamic scripture, including the example of the Prophet and the principles as to how the misery of the Gazan Palestinians might have been eased. But as Muslims in our animus towards Israel we have turned away from our own sacred values.

Sending endless humanitarian aid and hundreds of millions of dollars (some donors gave billions over decades) has not secured the needs of the Palestinian people, nor has it shielded them from harm. Neither did it safeguard their lands, their fields, their homes, their hospitals, or their schools.

Equally, the Muslim majority world – many nations among whom regard the Quran as their constitution or Islam as their official religion – did not receive the Palestinians of Gaza from this war. Muslim superpowers denouncing the war that Israel has been forced to wage have never once during this war opened their nations, their peoples or their cities to those Palestinian civilians who might want to flee, even as their own populations are devastated at witnessing Palestinian suffering.

Quite in contrast, a multi-million dollar black market has flourished for those who can pay for passage out of Rafah crossing into Egypt, enriching oligarchs close to President Sisi.

None of this is acceptable to Islam, irrespective of the accusations piling upon Israel and the United States held solely responsible for the harms befalling the Palestinian people.

Much as popular pro-Palestinian opinion may lionize Hamas as ‘resistance fighters’, Islam sees them as murderous exploitative terrorists for whom the Quran reserves the highest orders of punishment and whom Islam sees as violating all bounds of faith and humanity.

Perhaps the true sting of Trump’s blasphemy is that an American President calls for the Muslim majority world to step up to their responsibility of protecting and affording shelter to the innocent civilians. This has not only stunned the Arab Muslim world, but it has also shaken Hamas who derive power from the captivity and exploitation of a massive civilian population. Hamas, the Muslim world, and the Islamist patrons financing Hamas have denied the Palestinians what the Quran orders all to do: safeguard those fleeing persecution and conflict from harm.

To embark on this collective task to rebuild Palestine, including rebuilding diplomatic relations, treaties, homes, schools, hospitals and the futures of the people of Gaza, is bold indeed. Palestinian victimhood is exchanged for Palestinian agency and Hamas is weakened further and one day soon, abandoned, moribund.

Muslims of today must take heed of an American President speaking to our Islamic values to honour the migration of a deserving people and to keep our word to God.

Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed, Senior Fellow, Independent Women’s Forum; Life Member, Council on Foreign Relations; X @MissDiagnosis