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| Against infighting: Sheikh Sa'd Sharaf lectures a class on Islam and Society at Al Rawda Technical Community College in Nablus. Josh Mitnick |
West Bank scholars push for spiritual reply to Hamas extremism
To compete with a more powerful Hamas, religious scholars from the rival Fatah Party advocate embracing religion.
By Joshua Mitnick | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 31, 2007 edition
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Nalbus, West Bank - Standing before his class on Islam and Society at Al Rawda College, Sheikh Sad Sharaf cites the Koran to land a not-so-subtle jab at Hamas's recent takeover of the Gaza Strip.
When Muhammad died, explains Sheikh Sharaf, who is a member of the rival Fatah Party, burial was delayed until a successor could be agreed upon in order to avoid a power struggle over the Islamic caliphate. "This proves that infighting is illegal in Islamic terms," he concludes.
As Fatah struggles to contain the spread of Hamas in the West Bank, Palestinians like Sharaf are pushing for an Islamic critique to compete with the militant brand of religion practiced by the new rulers of Gaza.
Some advocate a liberal brand of Islamic politics that would support territorial compromise, while those with a strict interpretation of the Koran are attacking Hamas for straying too far by mixing religion and politics. But most agree that any challenge to Hamas must include a new spiritual formula.
The recent dominance of Islamic politics in Palestinian life is part of a pan-Arab trend in which religious parties have become the main opposition to regimes perceived as corrupt and undemocratic, says Hanna Siniora, codirector of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information in Jerusalem.
"Thirty or 40 years ago, it was fashionable to be leftist and socialist. Now it is becoming fashionable in the Arab world to be an Islamist," he said.
Hamas's rise has coincided with growing disillusionment with the secular ideologies that dominated the Palestinian national movement starting in the 1950s.
Whoever comes out against Hamas will have to make up for lost time. For more than two decades, Hamas, originally a local branch of Egypt's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, has entrenched itself in the fabric of Palestinian life through bold attacks on Israeli civilians and a broad web of charity institutions that filled a social and religious void left by a corrupt secular establishment.
Sharaf is trying to convince Fatah to establish a council of religious scholars that will be able to counter the rhetoric coming from Hamas.
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