Die Krise des Säkularismus in der Arabischen Welt
Der Nahostfachmann Asher Susser, Associate Professor für Nahoststudien an der Universität Tel Aviv, beschreibt in einem lesenswerten Artikel (PDF) den Aufstieg der Hamas nicht nur als Gegenwicht zur Fatah, sondern vor allem als Ausdruck einer Krise des Säkularismus im Nahen Osten. Susser, der derzeit an einem neuen Buch über Jordanien, Israel und die Palästinenser arbeitet, kritisiert vor allem westliche Schönredner nahöstlicher Verhältnisse:
There is a tendency on the part of scholars in the West, usually ideological multiculturalists, to underrate or even to ignore the cultural input of the “other” as a valid explanatory and analytical tool and to obfuscate the importance of religion as a factor in people’s behavior in the Middle East, even though it is fairly obvious that “religion is a key marker of identity in Muslim societies.”
(…) Processes of democratization and political pluralism, meanwhile, have tended to empower the Islamists. This has been true almost without exception, from Egypt to Morocco, and from Jordan and Palestine to Kuwait. The common refrain amongst Western observers of the Middle East had been that the Islamists dominated the opposition to authoritarian regimes primarily because no one else was given the chance—besides which, it was said, the Islamists always had the mosques at their disposal, no matter how repressive the regimes. Democratization and pluralistic politics have proven otherwise. Pluralism was intended by various Middle Eastern regimes and their Western supporters to counter Islamist influence by opening up opportunities for more secular political forces. But in practice, multiparty elections set the stage for the invariably strong showings of the Islamists, while secular liberals were exposed as having hardly any following at all.
An dieser Stelle sei noch einmal an einen älteren Aufsatz von Efraim Karsh (”Why the Middle East is so Volative”) aus dem Jahre 2000 erinnert, der ebenfalls einen gescheiterten Säkularisierungsprozess als wichtigen Schwachpunkt arabischer Staatenbildung ausmacht (und diese Problematik noch mit einem historischen Erbe verknüpft, dem des Osmanischen Reiches). Susser erklärt nun den Aufstieg der Hamas nicht allein damit, die einzige Alternative zur Fatah gewesen zu sein, sondern auch, weil die islamistische Ideologie viel Zuspruch findet:
–––In the Gaza Strip, it was said that the construction of mosques had greatly increased since the 1990s, and the attendance of worshippers had risen by 200 percent. Consistent polling data as of the mid-1990s revealed a Palestinian society steeped in religion and a religious worldview. A poll conducted in May 1995 at Birzeit University near Ramallah revealed that the most important self-descriptive categories for students were religiosity and political activism. Approximately one-third of respondents described themselves as religious and 43 percent said they were somewhat religious, while only the remaining fourth declared they were not religious. Just under 17 percent described themselves as leftist, and slightly less than 15 percent as secular. A similar poll conducted in 1996 at An-Najah University in Nablus—where the student body is almost entirely Muslim and partly rural, as opposed to Birzeit, where the student body is almost entirely urban and includes a significant population of Christians—likewise revealed that the most important self-descriptive category for students was religiosity, but the data showed far more extreme differences. Half of the respondents described themselves as religious and 42 percent as somewhat religious (that is, over 90 percent combined, as opposed to approximately 75 percent at Birzeit), while only the remaining 8 percent declared they were not religious. At most 7 percent described themselves as leftist, and only 4 percent as secular. In more recent polls, some 46 percent of the Palestinian public fully supported, and another 12 percent partially supported, a political system based on the Sharia even if this meant the absence of elections and political parties. A majority (56 percent) of the public agreed that men of religion ought to have influence over government decisions. Just over 46 percent of West Bankers and 57 percent of Gazans supported the imposition of the hijab in public spaces and schools, while only 20 percent in the West Bank and 15 percent in Gaza found that unacceptable. From all of the above, it was abundantly clear that the “the traditional nature of Palestinian society provide[d] Hamas with a highly fertile ground for expansion.”