Yusuf University

The Islamic Resistance Movement’s University System Built Within the Occupation’s Prison Walls

Yusuf University: The Islamic Resistance Movement’s University System Built Within the Occupation’s Prison Walls

by Mujamma Haraket

Dr. Ibrahim al-Maqadma

Introduction

This article reviews the “Yusuf University” infrastructure. Created by Dr. Ibrahim Maqadma, who was a leader and foundational member within the Hamas movement, the “Yusuf University,” which Maqadma inaugurated shortly after being incarcerated in 1984, was a unique institution. It was an entirely resistance-run institution that spanned various prisons administered by the occupation. Reviewing the extant witness accounts, this text provides as in-depth a picture of the Yusuf University as can be currently gleaned.

Biography

Dr. Ibrahim Maqadma (“Abu Ahmad”) was born in Jabalya Camp on 14 May 1950 to a refugee family who had escaped the Nakba in 1948, resettling from their homes in Beit Daras to Gaza City and, thereafter, to al-Bureij camp in central Gaza. He received his primary school education from Jabalia-based schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA); he was, reportedly, an outstanding student. In 1968, he enrolled in an dentistry program at a Egyptian university. Here he became acquainted with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which he became active in during his college years.

After graduating, Maqadma returned to Gaza and worked as a dentist at Al-Shifa Hospital. He also took radiology courses and practiced as a radiologist. Alongside Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Musa Abu Marzouk, and Ismail Abu Shanab, Maqadma was one of Sheikh Yassin’s earliest and youngest mentees; indeed, Marzouk, Maqadma, and Shanab were all teenagers when they began fevidly attending Yassin’s impassioned sermons.[1] In the mid-1970s, Maqadma maintained an “internal inquiry” security apparatus within the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Maqadma, alongside Abd al-Rahman Tamraz, Ahmad al-Milh, and Yahya Sinwar, was a foundational member of the Security and Dawaa Apparatus (Munazzamat al-Jihad wa al-Da‘wa, abbreviated as “Majd”), which was formed in October 1983 and targeted collaborators. Maqadma was entrusted with the role of acquiring weapons and ammunition for the resistance fighters.[2] When Yassin was arrested in June 1984 for amassing a significant weapons cache that the occupation’s Shabak (viz., Shin Bet) intelligence service deemed was being prepared for military purposes, Maqadma was amongst those alongside with the sheikh who was also incarcerated.

Following an investigation into Yassin’s resistance activities by the Shabak, Maqadma was imprisoned alongside the sheikh in 1984. He was sentenced to eight years and thus remained within the occupation’s prison system until 1992. After completing his sentence and being released, the occupation endowed him with the sobriquet of “the brain of Hamas.”[3] A number of Zionist analysts averred that he was the most prominent resistance thinker of his day. Likud member Gideon Ezra, who was elected to the Knesset in 1996, deemed him one of the “most dangerous Palestinian” for the Zionist security services.[4] This demonstrates how much of a threat he posed to the occupation.

When Maqadma was released, he contributed to the founding of the Izz al-din al-Qassam Brigades and led its Rafah cell.[5] This made him a target for the Palestinian Authority. In the period between 25 February and 13 April 1996, the Palestinian Authority’s security services spearheaded a widespread campaign of detaining some 900 targeted activists within Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; these included “senior political and military leaders such as Mahmoud al-Zahar, Ahmed Bahr, Ghazi Hamad and Ibrahim al-Maqadma, who was severely tortured.”[6] The Palestinian Authority charged him with “establishing a secret military apparatus in Gaza”; he thus remained in its prison system for three years and was released in 1999 after three years of detention. Due to the Palestinian Authority’s tight grip over all government-affiliated institutions, Maqadma was forced to leave the Palestinian Ministry of Health, prompting him to begin working as a dentist at the Islamic University of Gaza.

During the 2000s, the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus oversaw two operations rooms within the Gaza Strip—one based in Gaza City and the other in the south. Although their counterintelligence work was fairly modest, this security apparatus would undertake motor-based forward observation patrols. Despite being targeted by the group, Maqadma and Ismail Haniyeh managed to carve out a significant working relationship with a more sympathetic internal faction, which would pass along their intelligence findings to the resistance members. As Netanel Flamer recounts,

[i]n one instance, for example, the PA war room noticed that a vehicle moving through the Islamic University of Gaza was being tracked. A quick check showed that the vehicle belonged to Ibrahim al-Maqadmah, a senior operative in Hamas’s military branch; the information was immediately passed on to al-Maqadmah by the PA’s contacts in Hamas, including Ismaʿil Haniyyah.[7]

Despite this, Maqadma remained a harsh critic of the Palestinian Authority, lambasting its repressive curtailments of freedom in the Gaza-based newspaper, al-Risalah, where he called on it to grant the people of Palestine their deserved freedoms, remarking:

“We want real freedom of opinion to prevail among us, as set forth by Islam under fair governance that would safeguard human rights, led by the right to human dignity. We want to have our own legal and judicial system, which is not polluted by whims and the contingent economic interests of a certain class.”[8]

Alongside three of his bodyguards, Maqadma was martyred in a targeted helicopter strike undertaken by the occupation in March 2003; a mosque was subsequently erected in his honor in Jabalya Camp. In addition to his resistance work, Maqadma is survived by the many books he authored, including Milestones on the Road to the Liberation of Palestine, The Demographic Conflict in Palestine and a book of poetry titled Do Not Steal the Sun.

Yusuf University

Palestinian prisoners in a study group

During his detention, Maqadma was elected as the leader (emir) of the internal Hamas prisoner’s bloc’s various sectors.[9] One of Maqadma’s most innovative contributions as resistance leader was his creation of a critical trans-institutional educational network, which he developed during his decades of incarceration. Known as the “Yusuf University” after the Prophet Yusuf ibn Ya’qub (peace be upon him), this center of learning was initially established in Negev Prison.[10] With the help of other Hamas comrades who were detained within the occupation’s carceral system—especially those who were formally trained scholars—Maqadama developed curricula for those who wished to obtain a university degree within the prison walls.[11] Maqadma began by meeting with his comrades to outline the kind of educational programs he wished to see instituted and subsequently formed a number of committees to prepare the courses. Soon thereafter, the Yusuf University was born, with lectures held at regular, official intervals. Rather than relying on an outside parent university, the Yusuf University was unique insofar as it was originally born from within the resistance, with imprisoned resistance members serving as instructors, students, and administrators.

According to Islam Ahmad Muhammad al-Sa‘ati’s research on political organizing within the occupation’s prison system, Yusuf University served as a site “where young people learned and gained wisdom from their elders’ experience in various sectors including education, cultural work, political science, social studies, and security studies.”[12] Maqadma’s ecumenical purview was influenced by his broader social worldview, according to which properly comprehending Islam and the coeval interests of the Ummah required political mobilization.[13]

According to another academic account, while imprisoned in Negev Prison, Maqadma’s fellow prisoners personally exhorted him to oversee the administration and organization of the “Yusuf University,” which until then had only remained a fledging idea; he subsequently “transformed” the prison semblance “into workshops for training resistance fighters and activists.”[14] Maqadma formed specialist committees to prepare the curricula and lesson plans. According to Abdullah Qandil, director of Waed for Prisoners and Released Prisoners, Yusuf University produced “thousands” of educated Hamas leaders and resistance fighters.[15]

Unfortunately, little has been published on the “Yusuf University,” which has hitherto not received any proper academic treatment. However, drawing from witness accounts, we are able to glean at least a partial understanding of it. A revealing archival biographical record for the Qassam fighter Maher Abu Surur, born in 1971 in Bethlehem’s ʿAida Camp. After his 7 May 1984 arrest, Abu Surur spent four months in the occupation’s carceral system—specifically, in Ktzi’ot Prison, also known as “Negev Prison” due to its location. With the “Yusuf University” having only recently been formed, Abu Surur became one of its first pupils. According to his biographical entry, Abu Surur “graduated” after pursuing theological studies.[16] Animated by this experience, upon being freed Abu Surur sought to expand the “Yusuf University” system beyond the prison walls and “began working day and night […] gathering young people, including middle and high school students, to engage in study of the Quran; this was paired with athletic studies and student recognition ceremonies. He utilized the Zahra Public Library at the Siddiq Mosque in ‘Aida Camp’ as a means to instill the concepts of Islam deep within the young generation’s hearts.”[17]

Another telling witness account is provided by Hamas member Ahmad al-Saʿati, who served as Hamas’ media officer in the Gaza strip beginning in 1990. Later that year, Al-Saʿati was held by the occupation in Negev Prison, where he would remain for two years. Reflecting on this period, he notes that “[the] ordeal strengthened me, especially the experience of Yusuf University, which the detainees established within the Negev detention center. It was a real university in every sense of the word, granting degrees in jurisprudence (fiqh), recitation (tajwid), and political analysis, and my fellow detainee Dr. Ibrahim al-Maqadma, may God have mercy on him, played a major role in that at the time.”[18]

The Yusuf University soon burgeoned, spreading beyond the confines of the Negev site where it was inaugurated. An iteration was established in the Megiddo prison, evidenced by a third witness account—an anonymously authored editorial piece published by the Palestinian Information Center. Here, the former prisoner observes that, despite the harsh conditions:

[…] the creative civilization of the Palestinians in the ‘Israeli’ prisons manages to shine through, as, through the labor of hundreds of prisoners, their cramped, gloomy cells are transformed into schools and universities. These prisoners established the Yusuf University, peace be upon him, within the dreaded Megiddo Military Prison. The significance of the name is clear: Yusuf, peace be upon him, was unjustly imprisoned and remained in prison for several years. Here he became a trusted steward over the land’s resources, saving Egypt and the surrounding region from famine by applying God’s guidance.[19]

This account then goes on to detail the curriculum of the Megiddo-based Yusuf University, emphasizing that the courses include theology, political history, science, and cultural studies. He also notes that, as we know was also the case in the Ktzi’ot/Negev Prison, “[at] Yusuf University, prisoners teach one another.”[20] The prisoners apparently would divide their time to take an equal number of science and politics/culture-related courses. Those who delivered the lectures included “doctors, engineers, legal specialists, teachers, and Islamic law scholars.”[21] The courses would commence at Megiddo Prison after the Fajr prayer and breakfast, with the first class being a study circle on the Holy Qurʾan and the rules of Tajweed; this would last for about an hour. This was then followed by three seminars. One of the classes would be mandatory, while the student was free to choose the other two “electives” himself. During most semesters, the mandatory seminar was on Islamic law while the elective seminars covered grammar, politics, jurisprudence, and history. Upon the third seminar’s conclusion, the prisoners would perform their noon prayer and then have their lunch.

Subsequently, the Yusuf University classes would resume, continuing until the Maghrib prayer. The courses on offer during the evening included language classes on Hebrew, French, Russian, and German, as well as classes in project management, political leadership, Arabic calligraphy, and nursing. Although the occupation barred Yusuf University from partnering with local universities, the instructors (many of whom were also academics associated with the resistance) and administrators managed to coordinate their exams with the Palestinian Ministry of Education’s curriculum.

The Yusuf University students also formed extracurricular academic activities. One of the first such groups was a book discussion group, where incarcerated Palestinians would convene to review what each had recently read; the group also reviewed how to properly annotate, summarize, and analyze a literary text. The club also organized a “top reader” competition where the three members who had read the highest number of books would be rewarded. Writers also created “majallat ha’it,” or “wall magazines,” meaning bulletin boards they would publicly present their writing for others to read and respond.[22]

There was also an emphasis on learning and translating texts from Hebrew, English, or French into Arabic. Ghazi Abu Jiyab, who spent 17 years within the occupation’s prison system, learned four languages.[23] As a consequence of the Yusuf University’s robust translation department, many who graduated from the program went on to work as translators for newspapers or literary publishers after their release.

After the detainee mastered the requisite subjects and passed an exam prepared by the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf, they would receive an official certificate. The Quran study session lasts a full hour, according to a report prepared by the Palestinian Media Center.

ʿAbd Allāh Yūsuf al-Laddāwī’s Note

The martyred Qassam commander, ʿAbd Allāh Yūsuf al-Laddāwī’

The martyred Qassam brigades commander, ʿAbd Allāh Yūsuf al-Laddāwī, refers to the Yusuf University in an important passage from his text, Seeds of Hamas. The passage,[24] which reveals further details yet—including that Nasser Barhoum was responsible for the certificate system—worth reproducing in length, reads as follows:

The University of Yusuf (peace be upon him)

In light of the escalating Palestinian uprising and in parallel with Israeli repression and widespread arrests among Palestinians, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) made the best use of the periods of detention. Prison was an important stage of education for the movement’s members and supporters, a living experience in the life of da’wah, and even considered a gift and a leap forward. Hamas took advantage of the period of imprisonment to bring about an intellectual coup and an educational revolution, using that period of the Hamas detainee’s life to prepare him for the outside world, preparing intensive programs and holding courses and lectures. Credit goes to the martyred thinker Dr. Ibrahim al-Muqadama for bringing about a qualitative shift in the Negev prison—the largest prison in terms of prisoner capacity—which consisted of:

A. Studying the reality of prison life.

B. Preparing an educational program that lasted up to a year at some levels.

C. Holding a number of educational and intellectual sessions, up to five meetings per day.

This brought about an educational revolution. In light of this activity, detainee Nasser Barhoum suggested to Dr. Ibrahim al-Muqadama that certificates be issued to detainees after they took exams in the courses they were studying, and that the Negev detention center be named Yusuf University. This was well received among the detainees, and everyone was eager to pass the exams.

The certificates awarded by Yusuf University were given to the movement’s detainees, who were proud of them and sent them to their families, who proudly mounted them in their homes. This endowed the certificates with psychological value as they served as a means for encouraging the cultural movement. Yusuf University’s programs and courses were adopted by some local universities and colleges. The detainees were keen to write and summarize the lectures in anticipation of questions and examinations, resulting in a sound youth cadre that contributed to spreading Islamic awareness and leading the Palestinian uprising. The idea for the Holy Quran and Sunnah House emerged from prison after specialized courses were held there. Dr. Ibrahim al-Muqadama cited an example from a prisoner’s diary, saying:

I spent eight and a half years in prison as if I were in the exam month at university. Life in its initial stage was spent in Ashkelon Prison educating myself. After dawn prayer, I would sit and read fifty pages of Quran exegesis every day, then exercise with the young people, and then hold three sessions, each lasting three hours. In prison I read Tafsīr al-Qurṭubī, Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Tārīkh al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, and everything related to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian cause. I also wrote poems, and I do not regret a single day I spent in prison.

Dr. Ibrahim was a leading example, in addition to many others who contributed to enriching educational thought and deepening the Islamic identity of Palestinian society. The freed prisoner and mujahid Majdī Ḥammād, may God have mercy on him, told me after his release from Israeli occupation prisons in the Wafāʾ al-Aḥrār deal that he could list a thousand titles of books he had read in prison.

Conclusion

The “Yusuf University” system is of great significance, as it not only produced generations of informed resistance leaders but galvanized the Hamas movement into treating the prison as a site ripe for political activism and mobilization. This precipitated a broader current of activism within the Hamas movement that saw the creation of sundry resistance-run university systems within the occupation’s carceral system. Although strictly speaking the Yusuf University was a temporally limited phenomenon, its lasting influence can be detected in the contemporary Palestinian prison-university system.

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[1] Jean-Pierre Filiu, Gaza: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 158.

[2] “Ibrahim al-Maqadma. A dentist who helped build Hamas’ military apparatus,” Al Jazeera, 3 July 2024; retrieved online (15 April 2026): https://shorturl.at/n5JbK.

[3] “19 Years Since the Assassination of Al-Maqadma: The Man of Politics and the Gun,” Palinfo, 8 March 2022; retrieved online (16 April 2026): https://palinfo.com/news/2022/03/08/263707.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Jeroen Gunning, Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence (London: Hurst Publishers, 2007), p.119 n. 111.

[6] Qossay Hamed, Hamas in Power: The Question of Transformation (The Two States Solution, The Resistance, The Negotiations with Israel) (Cambridge: IGI Global, 2022), p. 105.

[7] Netanel Flamer, The Hamas Intelligence War with Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), p. 83.

[8] Al-Risalah, 22 December 2001.

[9] “19 Years Since the Assassination of Al-Maqadma: The Man of Politics and the Gun,” op. cit.

[10] Hamas. “al-Haqiqa wal-Wujud” [The truth and the existence] (a semiofficial history of Hamas), 1990; also see Jeroen Gunning, “Re-thinking Western constructs of Islamism. pluralism, democracy and the theory and praxis of the Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip”, Doctoral thesis, Durham University (Durham, England, 2000), p. 270.

[11] “Asra Filastin. Wa-Thaman al-Nasr”, Majallat al-Bayan (al-Muntada al-Islami), no. 205, October - November 2004, n.p.

[12] Islam Ahmad Muhammad al-Sa‘ati, Dirasa li-ba‘d al-‘awamil al-mumayyiza li-shakhsiyyat al-qa’id al-siyasi wifq nazariyyat al-‘awamil al-khamsa al-kubra, Islamic University of Gaza (submitted to fulfill the requirements for a Master’s degree in Psychology/Mental Health from the Faculty of Education), 2012, p. 129

[13] Ibrahim al-Maqadma,” Public Opinion in the Muslim Society: Scholars and Rulers,” Al-Risalah, 26 February 1998; “To the Scholars of Islam,” Al-Risalah, 31 October 2003. Also see: Sharif Abu Shammaleh, Al-A‘mal al-Kamilah li al-Shahid Ibrahim al-Maqadmah (Complete Works of Martyr Ibrahim al-Maqadma), (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), p. 470.

[14] “Ibrahim al-Maqadma. A dentist who helped build Hamas’ military apparatus,” op. cit.

[15] Mustafa Abdul Rahman, “Palestinian Identity as Portrayed in ‘Prison Literature’: Experiences and Perspectives,” Arabi21, 17 February 2022; retrieved online (16 April 2026): https://shorturl.at/yAeEU.

[16] Tawfīq Yūsuf al-Wāʿī, Mawsūʿat shuhadāʾ al-ḥaraka al-islāmiyya fī al-ʿaṣr al-ḥadīth: Īmān – Buṭūlāt – Kifāḥ – Istishhād. Vol. 2 (Cairo: Dār al-Tawzīʿ wa-al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, 2006), p. 441. In 1993, Abu Surur successfully targeted Shabak agent Haim Nachmani in a martyrdom mission.

[17] Tawfīq Yūsuf al-Wāʿī, op. cit..

[18] “Dr. Al-Saati: Moving Between the Fields of History, Media, and Language,” al-Resalah, 28 November 2016; retrieved online (16 April 2026): https://shorturl.at/GiHZE.

[19] “In Prison, Palestinians Express Their Knowledge, Resistance, and Love of Freedom!,” Palinfo, 20 April 2007; retrieved online (16 April 2026): https://palinfo.com/news/2007/04/20/185666.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] It should be noted that the “wall magazine” is not a circulating magazine. However, there are Palestinian publications that focuses on the issue of prisoners and consist of articles authored by (formerly or currently) incarcerated resistance members, such as Nabd al-Qayd (The Pulse of the Prison). For my translation of select articles from a recent Nabd al-Qayd issue, see: Mujamma Haraket, “Pulse of the Prison Translated: New Short Essays from the Palestinian Resistance,” Substack, 6 January 2026; retrieved online (16 April 2026): https://substack.com/home/post/p-183650460

[23] “In Prison, Palestinians Express Their Knowledge, Resistance, and Love of Freedom!,” op. cit. This also speaks to the longevity of the Yusuf University system.

[24] For the full translation of this section of the book, see ʿAbd Allāh Yūsuf al-Laddāwī, Mujamma Haraket (Trans.), “The Seeds of Hamas: A Report on Promoting the Values and Morals of Islam in Palestinian Society” (2025) [Part Four], Substack, 16 February 2026; retrieved online (16 April 2026): https://mujammaharaket.substack.com/p/abd-allah-yusuf-al-laddawi-the-seeds-a81.