Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
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EPILOGUE
In recent decades, the “Muslim Brotherhood” has been widely perceived as a homogeneous movement putting forward a rigid ideology irrespective of the Middle Eastern country in which it operates. But a closer look at the Syrian Brotherhood’s history and social base suggests that, for all the apparent similarities among the Ikhwan’s various branches, there are also significant differences, for each is shaped by a different sociopolitical context and national culture. In the case of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, it could even be argued that the organization was always more a Syrian party than simply an offshoot in Damascus of the wider Ikhwani movement. Indeed, it seems as if its political history, social composition and ideology have been more informed by the evolution of the country’s peculiar sociopolitical and geographical landscape than by the rigid doctrine inherited from Hassan al-Banna more than eighty years ago.
The story of the Syrian Brotherhood’s emergence is quite telling of the organization’s fundamentally local origins. While its organizational structure was set up on the model of the Egyptian Ikhwan in the wake of Syria’s independence from France, and personal and ideological ties also linked the two movements, the actual social and intellectual roots of the Syrian Brotherhood are found in much earlier times. The organization’s original leaders were deeply inspired, both in their political practice and in their ideological leaning, by the “Salafiyya” trend in Damascus—a nineteenth-century reformist movement whose call for the adaptation of Islamic thought and practices to the evolving circumstances of the modern world led its supporters to embrace constitutionalism and political liberalism. But this did not mean that the Syrian Brotherhood was going to put forward a progressive doctrine, for its social base was in the conservative constituencies of the Islamic clubs and societies which had flourished during the inter-war period. French control of education and the introduction of secular reforms did little to appease a populist tone eventually echoed by the Syrian Brotherhood’s rhetoric upon its foundation. The peculiar intellectual and political background against which the Syrian organization was created ultimately meant that, in contrast to its Egyptian sister, the local Brotherhood would embrace early on the game of politics in its contemporary sense—abiding by the rules of parliamentary democracy, forming political parties and engaging in compromises.
The Syrian Brotherhood’s local roots, however, meant that it also drew on more radical strands of Syrian Islamic thought. Damascus had been home to Ibn Taymiyya, a religious scholar influential in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Syria who is often, though not uniquely, remembered for his literalist interpretation of the Qur’an and for his fatwa condoning the killing of the “infidel” Alawis. The memory of his teachings was revived by the 1963 takeover of the political system by the Ba’ath Party, a secular political platform which the Alawis rapidly came to dominate. These aspects, combined with the growing frustration felt by the Sunni urban middle class at the new regime’s pro-rural bias, socialist programme, replacement of elites and ideological failure, all contributed to fuelling a wave of support for the Islamic opposition. The Syrian Brotherhood rapidly gained support as the opposition’s most comprehensive and powerful component. Yet, despite the inclusive legacy of the organization’s early participation in politics, the protest movement led by the Ikhwan in the 1970s was not immune from a rampant sectarian undertone aimed at the rulers’ minority background.
There was something profoundly “Syrian” about the Brotherhood’s radicalization. Such a process indeed resulted, at least partially, from a leadership crisis which, in the late 1960s, had pushed its “Damascus wing”, the most moderate, to split from the rest of the organization—thereby stressing the extent to which the regional factor, always key in Syrian politics, was also part of the Syrian Brotherhood’s development. The roots of the crisis were manifold and ideology, as such, was not a significant factor. But the result nonetheless had profound consequences for the organization: when the opportunity for a confrontation with the Ba’ath arose in the late 1970s, its most moderate members would not be there to influence the group’s choices. The increasingly radical bent assumed by the Brotherhood was also the product of a more regional phenomenon which had its roots in Sayyid Qutb’s thought and found its first concrete application in Syria through the deeds of Marwan Hadid. Even though he was originally a Syrian Brother, the jihadist ambitions Hadid had charted for the Brotherhood were, at the time, not shared by the group’s leadership, who quickly decided to sideline him. When he was murdered by regime forces in 1976, however, he became a martyr and his views spread more widely through local Islamic circles—to the extent that some vowed to take revenge for his death.
Small but violent cells affiliated with “Marwan Hadid’s group”, which would later become al-Tali’a al-Muqatila or the “Fighting Vanguard”, spread throughout the country with the aim of pushing the whole Islamic movement into armed confrontation with a Ba’ath regime deemed to be infidel. At first, the jihadist platform acted independently from the Brotherhood’s leadership and without its consent. But the rapidly growing popularity of some of its charismatic leaders, such as Adnan Uqlah, ultimately meant that members of the Ikhwan also started to join the jihadist group and thereby pushed the two organizations closer together. For the Brotherhood’s leadership, the rapprochement with al-Tali’a was also inspired by a dose of political opportunism as, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the struggle against the Ba’ath had reached its apex and the regime seemed about to implode. Of course some, within the Brotherhood’s “Hama clan” in particular, may have sympathized with the kind of ideology put forward by al-Tali’a at that time, but they were first and foremost national politicians, not holy warriors or jihadist ideologues.
This distinction, in turn, was definitely made clear by the episode of the failed “nafeer”. Shortly after the Hama massacre, Brotherhood leaders called the few thousand remaining Syrian Islamist fighters to gather in military camps based in Iraq and to prepare for a last-ditch battle with the regime so as to take revenge for the mass killings. The Ikhwani leadership, however, quickly realized the human and political cost such an operation would entail and decided to call the movement to a halt. The primarily political and pragmatic nature assumed by the organization’s leadership, in turn, alienated the most radical corners of Islamist constituency who stopped sympathizing with the Brotherhood. They went on, instead, to join the global Islamic struggle taking place in Afghanistan while waiting for the right time to return to Syria to settle scores, once and for all, with the Ba’ath. The growing strength of this Syrian jihadist trend was reinforced by the regime’s multiple attempts, after 2003, at pushing its home-grown Islamic radicals out of the country to fight the American occupiers in Iraq instead.
There, and before in Afghanistan, the Syrian jihadists acquired the additional military and ideological skills which would enable them to return home stronger than ever and well prepared to fight the Ba’ath. It is the merger of these trends that explains the prominence gained by jihadist groups in the framework of the Syrian uprisings. Not only is the sectarian aspect of their struggle evident and longstanding, it is also fuelled by a narrative of revenge for the past and by a rhetoric calling for the advent of an Islamic Caliphate over Syria. The regime’s willingness to foster the radicalization of the Islamic movement, for domestic reasons in the late 1970s and for external reasons in the early 2000s, was bound to eventually backfire.
But the spectacular re-emergence of Syria’s radical Islamic trend at the forefront of the uprisings is also the result of another long-standing dynamic: the fragmentation of the country’s moderate Islamic landscape. Ever since the Brotherhood’s exile and its long struggle for relevance, the country has been deprived of moderate voices on the Islamist front. There were, of course, religious scholars who always advocated the co-existence of religions and the peaceful proselytizing of society through social and cultural work, but most never engaged in politics. Some individuals of a moderate Islamist bent
could also have acted as a point of reference for many young Syrians in search of identity, but they had neither a nationwide organization to carry their vision nor a social base to tap into for political mobilization. Such a state of paralysis, in turn, created a political and ideological void which the Syrian Brotherhood was quick to fill when the opportunity arose after the Arab uprisings erupted in Syria.
The Ikhwan’s rebirth from the ashes can, of course, also be explained in reference to the memory of the struggle it led against the regime, to its historical legitimacy, or to its strong social base in cities such as Aleppo, Homs and Hama, which all act as major epicentres of the current uprisings. But perhaps the best explanation for the Brotherhood’s historical comeback at the forefront of Syrian politics and society lies in the group’s unique organizational capabilities. Its potential to mobilize networks and resources in a coherent and disciplined way across the country is unparalleled. This does not mean, however, that the Ikhwan should expect Syrians to welcome them back cheerfully, should the organization ever be allowed to return home. The organization will have to overcome the mistrust of Syrian society in order to rebuild a social base. While such suspicion is partly the product of decades of regime propaganda aimed at tainting the group’s image in markedly negative ways, it is also, and perhaps most crucially, the result of the organization’s thirty-year reluctance to look in a critical way at its own history.
“The Syrian Brotherhood has changed,”1 a leading opposition figure in exile, of Christian background, asserted confidently when asked whether he feared a takeover of Syria by the Muslim Brothers. But what exactly has changed? And changed from what? If the answer to that question is perhaps obvious to an exiled opposition figure who has held discussions on a regular basis with Syrian Brothers for the past thirty years in London, Istanbul and Paris, it might not be so evident to those corners of society long used to the Brotherhood’s absence and to the regime’s rhetoric. While this book has attempted to bring specific answers to these questions, and, as a result, raises new questions associated with them, the key challenge facing the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood will be their ability to address the remaining issues in a more open and public way in the years to come.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX 1
LIST OF THE SUCCESSIVE LEADERS OF SYRIA’S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
1945–1957:
Mustapha al Sibai
1957–1969:
Issam al-Attar
1972–1975:
Abdel Fatah Abu Ghuddah
1975–1980:
Adnan Saadeddine
1980–1985:
Hassan Houeidi
1985–1986:
Adeeb Jajeh (6 months)
1986:
Munir Ghadhban (6 months)
1986–1991:
Abdel Fatah Abu Ghuddah
1990–1996:
Hassan Houeidi
1996–2010:
Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni
2010–Present:
Riad al-Shuqfah
Source: Interview with Zouheir Salem, London, 28 July 2011.
APPENDIX 2
ABDULLAH AZZAM ON THE ROLE OF MARWAN HADID DURING THE 1964 HAMA RIOTS
Marwan [Hadid] went and gathered the youth who were around him. There was a mosque right at the foot of his apartment building where the youth would usually sleep, as he would bring them up and teach them there. He went to the Sultan [Mosque] and gathered them, each one of them carrying a grenade and a gun. Some of the youth were still in high school! They began saying Allahu Akbar! and announcing their fight against the state. So, the tanks came to Masjid as-Sultan and fired on it, with the youth standing on the minaret. The minaret fell with the youth in it, and the mosque was demolished with them inside.
By Allah, some of the trustworthy residents of Hamah narrated to me—and Allah Knows best—that, after a few days, when they were removing the rubble from on top of these youth who had been killed, they could hear tasbih and takbir from underneath the rubble.
Anyway, it was Written for Shaykh Marwan that he remains alive, so, they took him to court. This was done in the open, so that the Ba’thists could claim that they implement justice. They allowed some foreign journalists to attend the hearing. The judges in this case were Mustafa Tallas [Tlas] and Salah Jadid. Mustafa Tallas was the defence minister in Syria, and Salah Jadid was the most powerful Nusayri to have any position in the country.
They said to him: “Why did you carry weapons and go against the state?”
Shaykh Marwan answered: “Because there is a Nusayri dog named Salah Jadid—he is saying this to Salah Jadid!—and there is a dog who ascribes himself to Ahl as-Sunnah named Mustafa Tallas, and they desire to kill off Islam in this land, and we reject and will fight against Islam being wiped out in this land as long as we’re alive”.
He then dared the Revolutionary Guards to kill him inside the courthouse, but the police guarded Shaykh Marwan in front of the foreign journalists, so that it would not be said to the world that he was killed in the courthouse.
They said to him: “You are working for someone else”. He replied: “I am working for Allah, the Mighty and Exalted. As for the one who is serving others, then he is the leader of your party”. They said: “You say that Muhammad al-Hamid is with you, but he hates you”. Marwan replied: “{But if they turn away, then say: ‘Allah is sufficient for me. There is none worthy of worship except He. Upon Him I depend, and He is the Lord of the mighty Throne.’”} [at-Tawbah; 129]”
It was a powerful court case. He was sentenced to death along with a group of the youth. Some of the youth were acquitted, however. Those who were acquitted began to weep, and those who were sentenced to death began to smile. The foreign journalists were in a state of shock: those who are acquitted are weeping, and those who are sentenced to death are smiling? So, the youth sentenced to death said to them: “We are being granted Paradise, and they are being prevented from Paradise”, and they were taken to prison to await their executions.
Shaykh Marwan later said to me: “I never lived a time in my life that was sweeter to my heart and soul than those days in which the youth and I were awaiting our executions”. And it might have been during those days that Shaykh Marwan wrote:
The soul shall rise tomorrow * And it shall meet Allah at its appointed time.
These are the words of Marwan Hadid. Anyway, one of the scholars of Hamah, Shaykh Muhammad al-Hamid, went to Amin al-Hafiz—who was the Syrian president at the time, from Hamah, as well—and said to him: “What do you want to do with Marwan Hadid?” He replied: “We sentenced him to death”. Muhammad al-Hamid said: “Are you saying this with a sane mind? Do you think that Hamah will remain silent against you if you execute Marwan Hadid? You will face unending problems!” Amin replied: “What do you think, Shaykh?” He said: “I think you should release him and acquit him”. Amin said: “Go and release him yourself”. Saykh Marwan Hadid later said to me: “So, Shaykh Muhammad al-Hamid came and said: “My children—and he was their teacher, whom they all loved—come!” They said: “To where?” He said: “The state has acquitted you”. So, we said to him: “May Allah Forgive you, as you have prevented us from Paradise”.
Shaykh Marwan returned, and he knew no rest. He was basically a bomb about to explode.
Source: Abdullah Azzam, Fi Dhilal Surat at-Tawbah, pp. 21–25, available online at: http://forums.islamicawakening.com/f18/abdullah-azzamon-marwan-hadeed-2222/ (Wording and style retained as in source).
APPENDIX 3
ABDULLAH AZZAM ON MARWAN HADID’S DEATH
The people of Hamah are just like the Afghans. They are bedouins who do not play around, just like the Afghans.
Anyway, after a while, [Marwan Hadid] disappeared, only to reappear in Damascus. He lived in an apartment, and began to gather and collect weapons. Allahu Akbar—he did not know of something called free time or boredom, and he did not know of fear. He gathered machineguns and grenades. Whenever he would hear of a place in Damascu
s where there was a grenade available, he would send one of the youth to go purchase it.
At this time, the intelligence was searching for him—ya Salam!—and at this time, I was at the University of Damascus. I was seeking to complete my degree at the university; I got my Bachelor’s in Shari’ah from Damascus, and my Master’s and Doctorate from al-Azhar. While I was standing in the university, a youth—one of Shaykh Marwan’s students—came up to me and said: “Do you wish to see Shaykh Marwan?” I said: “What? Right away!” So, I went to him and entered his residence, and I looked at a face that did not belong to the people of this dunya. It was so pure and strange; the light emanating from his face. The first words he said to me—and he knew me from our days in Palestine—were: “O Abu Muhammad! Do you not long for Paradise?” And this was the last time I ever saw him.
Anyway, the police were searching for him, and what was he doing? Gathering weapons. He was searching for weapons that he could use to get rid of the Nusayris. One day, the intelligence discovered his apartment and surrounded it. Shaykh Marwan had two of his students with him, as well as his wife, with whom he had not yet consummated the marriage. He had said to her: “I do not wish to consummate with you, as I feel that this would prevent me from other things”, so, he remained a virgin. Yes, he married, but did not consummate.