http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GE10Ak01.html May 10, 2005
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.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> DonorsChoose. A simple way to provide underprivileged children resources often lacking in public schools. 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