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No room for political Islam in
Syria
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - At the gates of the popular
as-Sehour Mosque in Aleppo (north Syria) a sign
reads, "No to explosions!" showing a bomb with a
red line going through it. This is a sign of
Syria's willingness to cooperate with moderate
Islam that does not encourage terrorism. It is
also a signal that Washington and Damascus have a
common enemy in Islamic fundamentalism.
Further south in the capital Damascus, a
regime-friendly moderate Muslim cleric named
Mohammad Habash stands as a member of the Syrian
parliament, advocating the abolition of law No 49,
which says that membership in the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood is a capital offense, punishable by
death.
This law was passed when in June
1980 members of the Brotherhood tried to
assassinate president Hafez Assad. By calling for
a rapprochement, Habash wants to absorb the
Brotherhood, and other Muslim groups, to make them
regime-friendly. Ending the extremism of yet
another radical Islamic group would serve the
interests of both Syria and the United States.
Habash, who came to parliament in March 2003 while
war was raging in neighboring Iraq, has served as
a liaison between the Syrian government and the
Islamic opposition, embodied by the outlawed
Brotherhood. His calls on the government so far
have been responded to favorably, and it is
expected that law 49 will be abolished during the
upcoming Ba'ath Party conference, scheduled for
June.
Syria, which is facing increased
pressure from the US, realizes that the only way
to avoid isolation is to create a united front at
home, where the Ba'athists and all their
traditional enemies (the Brotherhood included) can
work together for a united and strong Syria. Since
pressure increased on Damascus in 2003, Syria has
stressed that it wants to reach out to what it
describes as "nationalist opposition", men who are
not funded, allied, or in support of a
US-engineered regime change in Syria, like the
US-based Farid al-Ghadri. One week after the fall
of Baghdad, the Doha-based al-Jazeera TV
interviewed members of the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood, and all of them called for dialogue
with the regime, rather than confrontation,
stressing that there was no Ahmad Chalabi among
the Syrian opposition, and pointing out that they
would never side with the US against Syria,
despite their history of conflict with the
Ba'athists. The message was noted, and highly
appreciated by the Syrian government.
Reconciliation with the
Brotherhood
When President Bashar Assad
came to power in July 2000, long before Syria's
relations plummeted with Washington, he raised the
motto: "More friends for Syria, and less enemies."
On July 22, five days into his constitutional term
as president, 40 Islamic leaders in the Arab world
published an open letter to Assad in the Jordanian
daily al-Dustur, calling on him to turn a new page
in his relations with the outlawed Muslim groups
in Syria. It was signed by the leaders of the
Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian Muslim
Brotherhood. Five days later, on July 27, Assad
responded promptly and released 30 members of the
Muslim Brotherhood from jail, who had tried and
failed to launch a rebellion against his father in
1982. He also released members of the
Brotherhood's allies, the Islamic Liberation Party
(Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami) and the Lebanese
Islamic group Haraket al-Tawhid al-Islami
(Movement of Islamic Unification), which had
launched an insurrection against the Syrian army
stationed in Tripoli in 1986.
Other
gestures included the return of Abu al-Fateh
Baynouni, the brother of the Brotherhood's leader,
Ali Sadr al-Din al-Baynouni, from exile in
September 2001 and permission to publish and sell
some of the books of the Syrian Brotherhood's
founder, ideologue, and scholar, Mustapha
al-Sibaii, after having been on the Ba'ath
blacklist for over four decades.
Assad's
greatest gesture was a general amnesty in which
600 political prisoners were set free in 2000, 90%
of whom were from the Brotherhood. In November
2001, Assad released another 113, most of whom had
been arrested in 1979 for a massacre conducted on
Ba'ath Party cadets in Aleppo. In December 2004,
Assad released another 112 members of the
Brotherhood, and most recently, 55 prisoners were
set free, mostly from the Brotherhood, on February
12. In turn, the Brotherhood supported the new
leader by issuing statements praising his promised
reforms, claiming that he was not responsible for
the mistakes of the past. In May 2001, they issued
a National Honor Pact, articulating their demands,
but also recognizing the legitimacy of the
Ba'athist regime, something they had refused to do
since the party came to power in 1963.
The
Brotherhood found more reason to cooperate when in
2001, Assad refused to join in the US-led war on
Afghanistan, and in 2003, in the war on Iraq. They
hailed his commitment to the uprising in
Palestine, and his support for Hamas, Islamic
Jihad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Brotherhood
also hailed Assad's refusal to abide by US
terminology on terrorism, vis-a-vis Hezbollah and
the Palestinian resistance, and his declared
commitment to restore the Golan Heights to Syria,
and Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Both Assad and
the Muslim Brotherhood believe and often said that
democracy cannot be imported to Syria by the US,
nor can it be imposed by President George W Bush.
The only way to democratize is from within, they
say.
New fear of political Islam in
Syria
Assad continues to promote moderate
Islam through regime-friendly clerics like
Mohammad Habash and the Aleppo-based preacher
Mohammad Kamil al-Husayni, who are free to preach,
teach and tutor students as they please, with no
intervention from the government. Through men like
these, he hopes to curb the influence of the
Brotherhood and other Islamic groups in Syria.
Assad, however, and all secular or moderate Syrian
Muslims, realize that with the failure of Arab
nationalism, Islamic nationalism is taking over
the Middle East. Watching the Arab defeat in
Palestine since 1948, the Muslim defeat in
Afghanistan in 2001, and the Arab defeat in Iraq
in 2003, many Syrians and Arabs in general have
turned to Islam for salvation. The crippling
economic conditions, the lack of political parties
to follow, and the increasing worldwide appeal of
Islam all made the Brotherhood an attractive
outlet for many of those in misery.
Based
on the local motto, "If you want to popularize
anything, ban it" the Brotherhood began
capitalizing on state restrictions and appealing
to the masses in secret after they tried to topple
the Ba'athist regime from Hama twice, in 1964 and
1982. Behind-the-door lectures were held, fiery
sermons were conducted, banned books by Said Qutub
and pamphlets speaking of an Islamic state were
distributed. All of this ended right after the
violent showdown between the Brotherhood and the
state in the 1980s, and many lost faith in the
Brotherhood for having ordered its members to
enter into such an ill-planned and destructive war
against the Syrian government.
From the
early 1990s onwards, however, mosque going, blind
adherence to cleric instructions, fasting, and
women wearing headscarves became increasingly
common in Syria, a country traditionally famed for
its moderate Islam. In the 1950s, when secularism
was the trend in the Middle East, it was difficult
to find many veiled women among university
students in Damascus. Today, it is difficult to
find many unveiled woman among university students
in Damascus. Clearly, an Islamic trend was
emerging in Syria that must be combated
immediately. The secular and moderate Syrians
watched in disbelief when it was revealed that
many senior members of al-Qaeda in Europe were
Syrians. In April 2004, several Islamic
fundamentalists who had been to Iraq in 2003 found
their way back to Damascus, with arms they had
obtained from Iraq, and attacked an United Nations
building in the residential Mezzeh neighborhood of
Damascus, sending shockwaves through Damascus.
Radical Islam is not being taught at
schools in Syria, mainly because schools are
closely monitored to avoid that by Syrian
authorities. Yet, the popularity of Islam, not
only in Syria but throughout the world, explains
why so many of the actions taken in its name
frightens the regime in Damascus. And out of the
thousands who come to Syria to study Islam from
all over the Muslim world, nobody can guarantee
that a few of them will not transform into
fundamentalists.
At the Sheikh Ahmad
Kaftaro Islamic Foundation in Damascus, there are
5,000 students, 20% of them being foreigners.
Although its founder and leader, Syria's late
Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, was a moderate cleric who
advocated a secular state, he never could
guarantee that all of his students would graduate
with similar views on Islam. His son Salah Kaftaro
elaborated, saying: "There is no room for
political Islam on our agenda."
Today,
much is being speculated in the Western press that
if regime change takes place in Syria, the
Brotherhood would replace the Ba'athists in a true
democracy. The Iraqi example gives enough reason
for this fear because in the Iraqi elections of
January 2005, the clerics won with an overwhelming
majority, and Iraq's new Prime Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari is from the Islamic al-Da'wa Party,
which had fought Saddam Hussein in the underground
throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Although it has
pledged to work with the US, many are uneasy in
Washington with the fact that a believer in
political Islam like Jaafari should rise to power
in Iraq, fearing a similar scenario in Syria. That
is utter nonsense.
Unlike the al-Da'wa
Party, which had a lot of supporters in Iraq, the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is still hated by many
for having inflicted so much senseless blood on
Syria in the 1970s and 1980s, forcing the regime
to transform into a police state. In a pure
democracy, a rough guess would give the Islamic
groups a 15-20% representation in parliament. The
reason that number is so much higher in Iraq is
that the Iraqis, having been living in such
miserable conditions since 1990, turned en masse
to religion.
That has not been the case in
Syria. Although religiousness is increasing, not
everybody is willing to support, or become a
member, in an Islamic political party. The
Islamists in Syria would not win a majority, since
a majority of Syria's 17 million, even the
mosque-goers among them, are advocates of a
secular Syria. Yet, the Islamic groups do
represent a certain segment of Syrian society that
cannot be ignored. Rather than have them on the
offensive, as they had been since the 1960s, Assad
hopes to contain their activities and meanwhile
appease their opposition through varying measures.
Appeasement would take the form of a relaxation of
political control, an amnesty for the
Brotherhood's exiled leadership, and pursuing a
foreign policy, vis-a-vis Palestine and Iraq, that
runs parallel with their political aspirations.
Curtailed, contained, politically and financially
bankrupt, the Brotherhood is forced to return to
Syria under Assad's regulations. Step one on their
agenda should not be resuming political activity
in Syria, but rather returning physically to
Syria. Once this is achieved, political
re-activation can be discussed. However, both the
Brotherhood and Assad know that while step one is
feasible and perhaps in the near future, step two
is still nothing but a distant dream since
authorities have made it very clear that once a
new party law is passed in Syria in June 2005, the
Muslim Brotherhood will not be given a license to
operate. The most they can dream of at this stage
is to return to Syria to live as private citizens.
A lesson from history
Many in
Syria and abroad are wondering how to deal with
radical Islamic groups, especially the Muslim
Brotherhood, and control their influence to avoid
problems if a healthy democratic culture is
created in Syria. The only solution would be to
create powerful and attractive alternatives to the
Islamic groups, and a strong civil society that
can lobby against the radical Islamification of
society.
A story from history gives a
perfect lesson for future conduct in Syria. In the
1920s, a Muslim society called al-Gharaa was
created in Syria. It started out as a charity
organization for the Muslim poor, and by the 1940s
began preaching political Islam. In future years,
many of its young members went on to found the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. In 1944, its leaders
presented a long list of demands to president
Shukri al-Quwatli. They included installing
special tramcars for rush hour to separate the
sexes, shutting down all cabarets and casinos that
served alcohol, arresting the owners of
nightclubs, and the establishment of a moral
police squad, similar to the one in Saudi Arabia,
to be charged with patrolling streets and
punishing all women appearing unveiled in public.
In May 1944, al-Gharaa violently protested against
a charity ball held in Damascus, which wives of
the ruling elite were planning to attend unveiled.
Demonstrators took to the streets,
carrying revolvers and knives, stoning cinemas
that welcomed women, burning nightclubs, and
attacking women on dates, or those promenading
unveiled. To win, the president decided to
discredit the clerics in districts were they
enjoyed most power; the poor neighborhoods of
Damascus. Quwatli got Adila Bayhum, head of the
independent Women's Union, to temporarily cease
the free distribution of milk to the city's poor.
When mothers came to collect, they were politely
turned away and told, "go to the shaykhs, let them
give you milk." This was echoed all over Syria.
Then, Quwatli cut off flour distribution
in Midan, where the Islamists were popular,
knowing perfectly well that nobody else could
provide bread since the government controlled all
flour rations in the wartime economy. The clerics
could not provide, and overnight the
demonstrations supporting the Islamic groups
turned against them. Such measures were repeated
over and over again by civil society groups during
the 1940s and 1950s, ensuring that populist Islam
remained weak, and that many alternatives to
political Islam exist in Syria. This is what Syria
needs to do today to curb the influence of the
Muslim Brotherhood, or any other emerging Islamic
group in Syria, to preserve a secular Syria.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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