Abdullah Nimar Darwish

Abdullah Nimar Darwish was born in 1948 in Kafr Qasim

Darwish was born in Kafr Qasim in 1948. As a young man he was a member of the Israeli Communist Party. In 1969 he married a woman from Qalqilya.

He completed religious studies at the Islamic college in Nablus in 1971. He then returned to Kafr Qasim, called for a return to Islam and worked as a teacher at the local high school. In 1971 he founded the Islamic Movement in Israel.

In 1979 he set up an underground group called Usrat al-Jihad, which aimed to create an Islamic state. He was arrested in 1981 and convicted of membership in a terrorist organization. He was released in 1985 in the Jibril Agreement.

After his release he called on his followers to give up violence and to act within the law. He supported the Oslo Accords and taking part in Knesset elections. In 1996 this led to a split between his Southern Branch and the Northern Branch led by Raed Salah.

With Rabbi Michael Melchior he helped organize an interfaith meeting in Alexandria in 2002 and founded the Religious Peace Initiative. In 2007 he spoke at the Global Forum for Combatting Anti-Semitism as the first Muslim leader to do so. He died on 14 May 2017.