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In 1994, Tariq Ali interviewed Said for the BBC, and Said repeated his opinion that Hamas had no ideas on offer:

In my opinion, their ideas about an Islamic state are completely inchoate, unconvincing to anybody who lives there. Nobody takes that aspect of their programme seriously. When you question them, as I have, both on the West Bank and elsewhere: "What are your economic policies? What are your ideas about power stations, or housing?", they reply: "Oh, we're thinking about that." There is no social programme that could be labelled "Islamic." I see them as creatures of the moment, for whom Islam is an opportunity to protest against the current stalemate, the mediocrity and bankruptcy of the ruling party.

As to Hamas and its actions in the Occupied Territories, I know that the organization is one of the only ones expressing resistance.... Yet for any secular intellectual to make a devil's pact with a religious movement is, I think, to substitute convenience for principle. It is simply the other side of the pact we made during the past several decades with dictatorship and nationalism, for example, supporting Saddam Hussein when he went to war with "the Persians." (Peace and its Discontents, p. 111.)

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