As such, the history of the Syrian Ikhwan from the late 1960s until the events of Hamah in the early 1980s was essentially that of the Aleppo wing. This wing’s hold over the Ikhwan would radically alter the character of the movement that al-Sibai had established and it distinguished the Syrian Ikhwan as the only Brotherhood branch that dared to move from the dawa phase to the jihad phase in the struggle to create an Islamic state.
The Slide into Violence
Whilst the Aleppo wing was the driving force for the militarisation of the Ikhwan’s struggle against the regime, it was not the starting point of violent activism. The push for a more militant approach came predominantly from those Ikhwani from Hamah who made up one component of the Aleppo wing. According to Hasnawi, the shift into support for a more violent approach came from the fact that ‘the Hamah branch, which was known historically for force and rigidity and toughness, joined them [the Aleppo wing] and also because of the presence of Said Hawa and Adnan Saad Eddine. They were from Hamah but part of the Aleppo wing.’15
Hamah already had a tradition of conservatism and militant Islamist activism, which had first emerged in the early 1960s. Much of this activism was focused around the Sultan mosque that was the base of the famous Hamah scholar Sheikh Mohamed al-Hamid. Known for his rigidity and uncompromising stance, he had left the Ikhwan on account of Mustafa al-Sibai’s moderate and flexible stance but remained close to the movement. As Syrian Ikhwan Said Hawa observed:
He educated his brothers to love Hassan al-Banna, to love the Muslim Brothers, and to love all the Muslims … He believed that in order to stop the apostasy the Muslims must join hands despite their many controversies. And although he was a Hanafi Sufi, he had always declared his readiness to put his hand in the hand of the fiercest Salafi to stop this apostasy.16
Al-Hamid was an ardent anti-secularist and anti-nationalist and his ideas had a strong following among Hamah residents who had a reputation for being closed and introverted.
The citizens of Hamah were particularly agitated by the policies of the new Ba’athist regime. They reacted extremely negatively to the influx of newcomers from the countryside that flooded into urban centres during the 1960s. Furthermore, the fact that the new Ba’athist regime was Alawite created particular resentments. There had been a long-standing feud between a number of Alawite peasants who worked the land belonging to rich Hamah landowners who had been officers in the Ottoman army. The coming to power of the Alawites only served to exacerbate existing tensions in the area. Therefore it is not surprising that it was out of the Hamah branch of the Ikhwan that support for a more radical alternative emerged.
However, this more radical approach was not confined to Hamah. The 1960s and 1970s had seen a progressive radicalisation of the Syrian Ikhwan that was in line with the increased radicalism of other Ikhwani branches at the time, inspired by the Islamic revivalist current that was taking hold across the Arab world. It was also a reflection of the fact that some of the Ikhwani who had spent time in the Gulf came under the influence of a more inflexible interpretation of Islam that they then spread among their fellow Ikhwani upon their return to Syria.17
This radicalisation was also a response to the policies of the Ba’athist regime, which were upsetting traditional structures and patterns and threatening certain interest groups. Growing political and cultural disaffection within Syria during the 1960s and 1970s brought the Ikhwan increased popular support, as it sought to articulate the forces of conservative Islam and to represent those parts of society that were most affected by the regime’s policies of nationalisation and centralisation. These included the professional classes and traders – the Ikhwan’s natural constituency – who were adversely affected by the rise of agricultural co-operatives in rural areas and consumer cooperatives in urban areas.18 The regime’s large-scale land reform and wealth redistribution projects were considered a threat to the very way of life of this class. Urban traders, well known for their conservatism and religiosity, were also perturbed by the flow of migrants coming into the cities from rural areas and upsetting the traditional social balance. Slogans such as ‘Aleppo for the Aleppans’ began to appear in the cities, reflecting this malaise. The Ikhwan was quick to capitalise on this disaffection: as one commentator has described, by the 1960s the Brotherhood had become ‘the most implacable opponents of the Ba’athis and the forward arm of the endangered urban traders’.19 As such it became the staunch defender of the urban middle class against the encroaching rural population. It is perhaps no surprise that many Ikhwani who went on to take up arms against the regime came from traditional conservative urban families.
The Ikhwan also tapped into growing feelings of resentment related to the Alawite nature of the Ba’athist regime. For many Sunnis, the fact that the new regime was dominated by Alawites who represented a minority in a country with a Sunni majority was too much to take. Even the moderate al-Attar commented when the Ba’athists came to power: ‘I saw the sectarian face of that movement’.20 The Ikhwan was therefore able to play on the sectarian dimension of the country’s political landscape to further discredit the regime and to justify taking a more militant stance against it.
Of course not all the Syrian Ikhwani subscribed to this more militant approach; those in the Damascus wing continued to advocate restraint. Yet their voices were increasingly ignored as the more radical current surged ahead and stamped its mark on the movement. As one Syrian Ikhwani noted, ‘This radical jihadiya in the Ikhwan wanted to assassinate the approach of al-Sibai. We were studying “Milestones on the Road” at that time rather than “Preachers not Judges”.’21 The desire to ‘assassinate’ al-Sibai’s teachings was such that his book Islamic Socialism was banned within the movement in the 1960s as it was considered too liberal. At this time, young Ikhwani also began reading other radical thinkers including Abu Ala Maududi, Abu Hassan al-Nadwi and Ibn Taymiyyah. Clearly the movement had completely shifted in nature from the early days of al-Sibai to take on a new uncompromising rigidity. One indication of this is that whereas the Ikhwani scouts of the 1940s and 1950s used to play drums and sing songs, by the 1970s the brothers were writing books recommending that tambourines be banned for being un-Islamic.22
The Syrian Ikhwan also began to produce more militant scholars, the most important being Said Hawa, who was to become one of the most respected jihadist scholars of his generation. Hawa, who came from Hamah and joined the Brotherhood in the 1950s, came to advocate the idea that Muslims were once again in the time of Riddah (apostasy); they had abandoned Islam and this dangerous situation must be countered. His stance centred around the quest for purity in internal and public life and he taught his followers that they should distance themselves from the impure kafir (heathen) world and refrain from listening to the radio or watching television, going to the theatre, reading newspapers or magazines, or engaging in the study of any philosophy, literature or ethics.23 He also advocated jihad against those he considered to be impure: Shi’ites and Sufists, not to mention communists, nationalists, Nasserists, leftists and liberals. Hawa’s book Soldiers of Allah: Culture and Manners, which called for jihad against the regime, was distributed in its thousands in bookshops, street stalls and mosques and became a major point of discussion for all Syrian Ikhwanis.
Hawa was extremely frustrated by what he described as the reactionary stance of the Ikhwan’s traditional leadership. After he returned from a stint in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s he called upon the Syrian Ikhwan to restructure itself so that it could move away from being a party of dawa to one of jihad. Hawa was a charismatic figure who, because of his scholarly achievements, had more influence than other leading figures within the Ikhwan. As such his call to turn the Brotherhood into a jihadist party that could lead a rebellion against the Ba’athist regime could not be ignored. His comments provoked a major internal debate within the Syrian Ikhwan and exacerbated the factionalism that was already present. Whilst the traditional leaders were calling on the Brotherhood to work behind the scenes
and to focus their efforts on dawa, Hawa instigated his followers to prepare for military action. He allegedly involved his young followers in physical training including wrestling, boxing and street fighting, and he divided those who followed him into family units and fighting brigades.24 By this point, the traditional Ikhwani ideas of the Damascus wing were clearly completely out of tune not only with the Ikhwan in Hamah but with the movement more widely.
The Fighting Vanguard
As this more radical mentality permeated the movement, some elements began to take matters into their own hands and to carry out targeted attacks and assassinations. The 1970s saw an escalation of violent incidents against the regime, which the authorities blamed on the Ikhwan. The most important group that became engaged in violent jihad at the time had its roots in the Ikhwan. This was the al-Tali’a al-Muqatila (Fighting Vanguard), established by the Hamah resident Marwan Hadid whose armed exploits against the regime dated back to the early 1960s. Hadid, who came from a relatively prosperous family of cotton farmers, had grown up in the circles of the Muslim Brotherhood, where he had come under the charge of Adnan Saad Eddine during his time at secondary school. As a young man, Hadid was awarded a small loan from the Brotherhood in Hamah to complete his studies in agricultural engineering in Egypt and whilst he was there he befriended Sayyid Qutb. Hadid was so smitten with Qutb’s more militant approach that upon his return to Syria in the early 1960s he became one of the most prominent proponents of the Egyptian’s radical rejectionist ideology. As Adnan Saad Eddine explained, ‘When he looked at the Syrian regime he decided to divorce life and to go down the path of martyrdom and martyrs.’25
Hadid’s more revolutionary ideas resonated with the younger generation in Hamah and he soon developed his own group of followers, many of whom were still in secondary school. In 1964 this group came into direct conflict with the new Ba’athist state during a stand-off with the security services that resulted in Hadid and his followers taking refuge in the Sultan mosque.26 The new Ba’athist regime responded by attacking the mosque with tanks and artillery, bringing the sixty-foot minaret crashing to the ground and leaving 115 dead.27 Hadid and those of his companions who survived the assault were arrested and sentenced to death. However, Hadid was later released after an intervention by Mohamed al-Hamid, who pleaded his case with President Amin al-Hafez.
This experience did not deter the young Hadid, who after his release took to walking the streets wearing only a white jelaba, as if trying to create an iconic image of himself as a humble and devout man. Hardened by his prison experience, Hadid’s resolve to bring down the Ba’athist regime was stronger than ever. Yet where in earlier years he had appeared like a reckless hothead, his agenda was now in line with the increasingly radical mood of the time and he had no problem in drawing recruits. He set up the Fighting Vanguard, sending its members for military training in Palestinian Fateh camps in the Jordan Valley, and by the mid-1970s this underground group was carrying out targeted assassinations of figures within the Syrian regime. However, Hadid was tracked down and arrested in 1976 and died in prison following a hunger strike and sustained torture.
Although the Fighting Vanguard was clearly Hadid’s personal creation, the exact nature of its relationship to the Ikhwan remains deeply contentious. The Ikhwani maintain that at the time they had no control over Hadid’s actions and that they did not even know who was perpetrating the attacks. According to Adnan Saad Eddine in 1975:
People started wondering who was committing these killings. We were surprised but we were also embarrassed by it. One day we had a meeting of the Hamah administration in the house of Brother R … It was almost midnight when there was a knock at the door by a brother sent by another brother who said that an assassination attack had taken place in Damascus of a very important person.28
Similarly, Ali Saddredine al-Bayanouni, who had been arrested in 1973, noted, ‘At that time whilst we were in prison, I had no idea who was behind these attacks. When I left prison in 1977 I found that no one knew who was behind them.’29 As such the Ikhwan asserts that Hadid was not acting in its name but only in the name of his own group.
It certainly appears that the Ikhwan’s leadership had endeavoured to contain Hadid and to dissuade him from such reckless action. According to Obeida Nahas, a Syrian brother based in the UK, in 1968 the Ikhwan leadership warned the grass roots that they should not follow Hadid.30 Similarly, al-Bayanouni has stated:
Yes Sheikh Marwan was from the Ikhwan. He was of the opinion that a regime that took over by force can only be removed by force. This was contrary to the approach of the Jama’a. Therefore the Jama’a didn’t respond to his way of thinking and we resisted him through several dialogues. We had continuous dialogue with Sheikh Marwan in Hamah especially.31
Much of this bid to contain Hadid was driven by a fear that his actions, which had already resulted in Issam al-Attar being banned from the country, would bring further trouble for the movement. It seems that in typical Ikhwani style it wasn’t so much the fact that Hadid was prepared to use violence that bothered the leadership, but rather that he was doing so in an unprepared and reckless manner.
Al-Bayanouni has also asserted that because they were unable to convince Hadid to change his stance, the leadership expelled him from the Brotherhood.32 He has also stated that the leadership expelled other elements: ‘Some groups affiliated to Marwan Hadid adopted that name [Fighting Vanguard], but when the Brotherhood found out about their association, it expelled them from the party and cancelled their membership.’33 Yet in direct contradiction to these assertions, Adnan Saad Eddine, who was particularly close to Hadid and who was General Guide at the time, has explained the relationship somewhat differently. ‘Marwan and his like set up an extreme wing of the Ikhwan. He stayed in the Ikhwan and he didn’t leave it. We never kicked him out. But he had a wing that behaved the way it saw fit – it had nothing to do with the leadership.’34 Furthermore, regardless of what they thought about his approach, the Ikhwan was willing to provide Hadid with financial support to enable him to continue his jihad. Adnan Saad Eddine explains:
From his hideout he sent someone to me asking for support. I sent him two brothers … They met with him and told him what I thought of him and that I believed his programme would not bear any fruit and that it would be harmful to him and others. However, they told him that if he wanted financial support to cover his expenses we would give it to him.35
Moreover, the Ikhwan maintained links to the Fighting Vanguard right up until the Hamah events through Riyath Jamour, who was the secret link between the two groups and whose confession under torture led the regime to engage in a number of arrests of the Brotherhood.
Some of this ambiguity may be attributed to the fact that the Syrian Ikhwani have always had a contradictory relationship to Hadid. They have rejected his reckless approach but he has also commanded great respect on account of the heroism of his struggle. Hadid went beyond the Brotherhood, capturing the imagination of many Syrians, and when his death was announced there were large demonstrations in several cities. As such, there is still a great reverence for him inside the Ikhwan. Hasnawi, for example, referred to him as the movement’s ‘first mujahid’.36 In spite of the Syrian Ikhwan’s revisionist approach to its own history, it is difficult for it to completely dismiss or disown a figure such as Hadid who was viewed as a martyr and who arguably had more popular support than any of the leadership could ever have commanded. However, the current desperation of the leadership to whitewash their past and to prove that they have moved on has prompted them to do their utmost to distance themselves from Hadid and to play down the ties that were clearly present between them and the Fighting Vanguard.
Crisis Point
Hadid’s death was to have the opposite effect of that intended by the Ba’athist authorities, as it acted as a catalyst for further violence. The Fighting Vanguard was taken over by Dr Abdel Sattar al-Zaim, a dentist son of a tradesman who was ‘even better than his Sheikh [Hadid]’
,37 and the assassinations and attacks continued. The best known attack, led by Adnan Aqla, was the 1979 assault on the Aleppo Artillery School, which left eighty-three Alawite cadets dead and scores of others wounded. This attack escalated tensions between the Ikhwan and the regime as the authorities blamed the Brotherhood and embarked upon a widespread campaign to root out and arrest its members. It also precipitated the executions of a number of Ikhwani who were already being held in prison. The regime launched a propaganda campaign and began publishing articles glorifying ‘unorthodox’ movements in Islamic history that had fought against the Sunnis.38 Such moves were felt deeply by the conservative religious Sunni population as a whole and not just the Brotherhood. Clearly the Ikhwan was at crisis point.
By now, however, the Syrian Ikhwan had become like a headless body; it had no leadership that could direct the movement, let alone rein it in. This was because by this point much of the leadership had travelled abroad leaving the rank and file without proper control or direction. As Adnan Saad Eddine explains, ‘By then there was no member of the leadership there to guide the Jama’a. Some were in prison, some had left Syria, some had disappeared. We were in Paris attending an Islamic conference … whilst we were there someone came and told us of the news of the arrests.’39 As the jihadist current had taken root and the state intensified its clampdown on the movement, many key figures within the Syrian Ikhwan simply left the country. Syrian thinker Mohamed Jamal Barot has argued that after they had realised that they could not put the genie back into the bottle without breaking the bottle itself, the leadership fled before the adventure became too strong for them to stomach.40
The Muslim Brotherhood Page 8
