Is there a future for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria? Abdullah Al Hassan 01-04-2019

Is there a future for the Muslim
     Brotherhood in Syria?

      Abdullah Al Hassan

          01-04-2019

Introduction:
The movement of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood returned to
work, efficiency and public after the revolution, and the
departure of its leadership and cadres from the country in the
early 1980s had dried up to the maximum sources of its
presence inside Syria, which made it, for decades, an external
movement, with no weight, but, at the organizational, there has
been a level of cohesion, thanks to a number of factors,
including, of course, religious, family and reconciliation links,
which have kept their existence alive beyond borders, as well as
their links with some Arab and Western countries.
Could the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria return strongly to the
political scene in the Syrian revolution without a regional
locomotive?
In the Brotherhood's return to the forefront, and even their
strong presence, in the formations that claimed to "represent the
Syrian revolution", especially the National Council, and then the
National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces,
there was an essential external factor, and can't be considered
an assistant factor only, the Turkish-Qatari axis has been the
basis and the regional legitimacy of the movement, since the
Antalya conference "Syrian Conference for Change," which
took place over three days (which began on 31st of June, 2011),
it was clear that Turkey and Qatar were firmly behind the
Muslim Brotherhood, at a time when the administration of the
president Former Barack Obama has no reservation on the rise
of the Islamists in the Arab world.
But over the past eight years, the Syrian scene has undergone
major and radical changes, and between the tides, the
Brotherhood's political hopes ranged not only through the
changes that took place in the Syrian military field, but also in

the regional and international scene, especially after the Gulf-
Gulf dispute.
What is the reality of the Syrian Brotherhood today? Is their
dream of reaching the power in Syria still realistic or it's just a
delusion?

The Problematic of unfinished development
Reading the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is an
issue that goes beyond the historical documentation of the
political movements that Syria has known since the
establishment of the Syrian state in 1920. The atmosphere of
political movements in Syria may explain to us an important and
important part of the Brotherhood's thinking and political
practices.
The movement of the Muslim Brotherhood was established in
Egypt in March 1928 following the fall of the Ottoman
Caliphate in 1922 and expanded in Syria and other Arab and
Islamic countries. From the messages of the movement's
founder and first mentor Sheikh Hassan Al-Banna, especially
his letter "Between Yesterday and Today" we can understand
that its main aim was to revival of the Islamic caliphate, which
Sheikh Hassan al-Banna referred to when he said, "Thus,
Brotherhood, God wanted to inherit this burdensome legacy, and
to shine the light of your call in the folds of this darkness, and to
prepare you for the elevation of His Word, and to show his law,
and the establishment of his state again, and to see God who
wins, God is strong and dear."
In Syria, there may be different stories of the documented
history of the Brotherhood's founding. But what is certain is that
Syria was one of the first countries where the Muslim

Brotherhood's invitation originated outside Egypt. This is due to
the approach of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in
communicating with Syria and the Islamic countries, to establish
the concepts of advocacy. However, the Syrians enjoyed special
status among the Egyptian Brothers because of the presence of
Sheikh Mohammed Saeed al-Arifi, a religious scholar from the
city of Deir al-Zour, who was well respected by Hassan al-
Banna. This was the reason for the interest of Syrian students in
Egypt to study and to take care of them such as Al-Sibai and
Mohammed Al-Hamed.
All this helped spread the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood
in Syria after it influenced many Syrian preachers and
reformers. The establishment of the first licensed center for the
group in Aleppo was in 1937 under the name "Dar al-Arqam"
and other associations in Damascus, Homs and Hama. These
assemblies held several conferences, which allowed them to be
more organized and coordinated among themselves. In 1942, the
scholars, preachers and men of Islamic associations met in the
Syrian governorates and decided to unite their ranks within one
group, which was the Muslim Brotherhood, for the whole of the
Syrian region. From Egypt was Said Ramadan (son in law of
Imam Hassan al-Banna and his personal secretary), then after
three years, in 1945, Mustafa Sibai was chosen as the first
general observer of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.

What concerns us in this historical narrative is the emphasis on
two issues, the first is that the emergence of this political
movement was influenced by the thought of resident outside the
Syrian border, the second issue is to adopt the idea of "Islamic
Caliphate", and the two issues are integrated to show that the
group does not actually believe in the national issue, it does not

recognize the geographical boundaries as it was adopted in
Sykes-Picot, and was later established with independence.
Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood may not differ from this
point of view, ie, their lack of recognition of Sykes-Picot, which
was shared by national movements in Syria, such as the Arab
Baath Socialist Party. But the difference between the
Brotherhood and the Baathist thought is that the former provides
answers to the historical delay from the utopia of the Caliphate,
that is, what the Islamists call the "Golden Age of Islam". While
the Baathist thought is based on the idea of nationalism, a
modern idea that has developed in the West and is linked to the
idea of the nation / state. The Baath Party, through its adoption
of socialism, regardless of actual practices, since its inception,
has linked itself to a clear socio-economic base, eager to
position itself in society, to improve its social situation and to
engage in political participation.
Brotherhood between policy and armed confrontation and
militarization
The political readings of erroneous movements, which are
capable of organizing, often lead to catastrophes against
themselves and against the political community in which they
work. This is a rule of value that applies to the Brotherhood in
Syria. Political action is not a matter of desire and will.
According to the expression of the late Syrian intellectual
Yassin al-Hafiz, it is a cold reading, often, of the power
balances. The choice of a political tactic or the resort to violence
is a matter subject to those equations imposed by real equations
and their relevance to the national issue as a whole.
The historical reading of the group refers to two stages in the
political work, namely, the post-independence stage and the
post-Baath Party's arrival to power in 1963. In the first stage, the

pragmatic Shami movement had an active and influential
presence in the movement, "Issam al-Attar wing". After
Independence the movement has adopted pragmatic positions,
and even contradictory with the positions of the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood, as in standing with the Arab leader Jamal
Abdel Nasser, and in the Arab dimension emerged the role of
the group clearly in the participation and mobilization of the
Arab Salvation Army in 1948 for Palestine, in response to the
draft partition issued by the United Nations United Nations.
Also they had a prominent presence in the popular resistance to
counter the Baghdad Pact in 1955, along with the Nazarenes and
the Baathists, communists and nationalists.
After the Arab Baath Socialist Party assumed power, the group's
view of the new authority changed. It is an authority that does
not believe in participation and does not allow to move (since
the moment the emergency law was declared) and it is stronger
and more organized than all the authorities that preceded it. It
may have been comparable to the group itself, in terms of
popular spread and support, especially within the peasantry and
labor classes in the rural and marginalized cities, which were
neglected by the group.
Thus began a fierce conflict between two contradictory trends,
each of which sees the other as a threat to it, because of its
capabilities and tools and allies, not to mention the spread. A
right-wing movement that calls for the slogan of Islam is the
solution. It calls for the revival of the Islamic state, which
includes all the Islamic countries, under the banner of the
Caliphate. It is spread among the major cities and the bourgeois
and feudal classes with few rural areas. And a left- nationalist
wing calling for fighting the bourgeoisie and feudalism and
calling for socialism. It also calls for " Arab nation" based on the
spread of Arab nationalism in the vast Syrian countryside as

well as some Syrian cities. It was also supported by the army's
strength after the coup. Thus, the clash became inevitable
between the two parties, especially for the group Hama and
Aleppo, for two reasons:
- The end of the idea of political action, which was led by the
mass of the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus after the decision
of the ruling power to ban the Muslim Brotherhood in 1964.
- The emergence of the most radical Hamawi movement,
especially with the return of Marwan Hadid from Egypt in 1964,
influenced by Sayyid Qutb's ideas and by the Brotherhood in
Egypt during their secret struggle against the rule of President
Abdel Nasser.
The weight of the Brotherhood remained clear in the city of
Hama after the arrival of Assad the father of power, and this can
be linked to several factors, including geographical location, the
nature of the city, and its social and Islamic heritage, and the
closure of itself away from the countryside. Within the group,
the writings and statements of Sheikh Muhammad Al-Hamed
showed firmness in the discussion of jurisprudential matters
without showing any possible flexibility. Perhaps his book
"Looks at the Socialism of Islam", which was a response to the
book "Socialism of Islam" by Sheikh Mustafa Al-Sibai, is
evidence of the difference of thought and mind work carried by
both men within the group, and they influenced on those around
them.
Sa'id Hawi and Marwan Hadid, who played a major role in
Hama's disobedience in 1963, played a greater role in the bloody
course of events.
The Authority has completely marginalized all its opponents, in
an attempt to get rid of them by highlighting the role of the

violent group, as well as the group in an attempt to ride on the
demonstrations of the protesters against the 1973 Constitution
and the materials contained therein, after shortened by the group
– in media - to the article specifying the religion of the President
of the Republic. With the absence of any prospect of a solution
in the absence of the voice of reason in the group and the
oppressive approach of power in the opposition of all opponents,
the organization of the " Vanguard Fighter " by Marwan Hadid
and his followers of radicals and militants, from February 1976
a campaign to assassinate several senior security officers and
politicians in the regime began, And bombings of government
buildings and offices of the Baath party, and then the violence
developed after the incident of artillery school in Aleppo in
1979, which was the door that allowed all kinds of extremism
and violence, until it reached the terrible massacre of Hama
1982, which ended uprooting the Vanguard Fighter.
The use of weapons by the organization of the Vanguard
Fighter, and the failure to overthrow the regime by force of
arms, the end of the Shami wing in the group, and the departure
of cadres from Syria are all factors that will explain the paths
that governed the Brotherhood's work after the Syrian
revolution. The lack of sufficient internal carriers make them
rely on the West and its regional allies to overthrow the regime
In addition to the mistake of reading the Libyan experience and
the international climate that accompanied the Arab Spring. The
group has supported the militarization in Syria because it
believes that a regime such as the Syrian regime can only be
overthrown through a comprehensive confrontation, not only
through political work or through a military organization related
to the group, which explains why it does not object to the
various forms that the military arena in Syria, including the
jihadi organizations, has created.

The future of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
Russia has settled the matter in favor of the Syrian regime, and
there remained pockets of the Islamic opposition in the province
of Idlib and its surroundings, with the control of the Turkish
army and its allies in the Syrian opposition to some cities and
towns in the north of Syria, and thus the survival of the Syrian
regime is inevitable, to limit the dispute politically to the
Constitution Drafting Committee, and the subsequent
presidential elections.
The Brotherhood has lost the dream of gaining power in Syria,
and often participating in it. With the return of the Syrian army's
control over the province of Idlib and its surroundings and then
on the northern regions of Syria, the Brotherhood will return out
of the borders of Syria, but the Turkish government still has
important pressure cards on the Syrian regime and its allies, the
most important of which is their military presence in the areas of
the "Euphrates Shield" and the "Olive Branch". Will it play for
its threatened national security - according to its claim - the
presence of the Democratic Union Party in East Euphrates or the
return of the Muslim Brotherhood and their participation in
power?

Conclusion
With the existence of real political work in the middle of the last
century, and with the presence of Muslim leaders, such as
Mustafa Sibai and Issam Attar, the project called by the Islamic
Imam Hassan Banna is missed, but with the strangulation of the
political action after the coup of 8th March, 1963 appeared in the
group a radical extreme movement, led by the brothers of Hama

and Aleppo - and still manages the group so far – justifies the
violent action in response to the regime's violence and uses
sectarian language.
The leaders of the Brotherhood in Syria were also influenced by
Egyptian leaders such as Hassan al-Banna, Gamal Abdel Nasser
and Sayyid Qutb, and with the beginning of the Arab spring
revolutions, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan became
the center of their magnanimity. He is described as the Ottoman
Sultan, on the other hand, the idea of acquiring power, and not
sharing it with the rest of the political forces, is the dominant
feature of the Brotherhood in Syria, Egypt and Libya. The idea
of "Moderate Islam" represented by the Muslim Brotherhood
was inspired by the success of the Turkish AKP, which came to
power through real economic and political projects, not through
Islamist media platforms that armed the Islamists, Salafis and
jihadists behind them.

References
  1. Hassan al- Banna, Memoirs Of The Invitation And The
     Preacher The, Dar Al Kalima for publication and
     distribution, 2011.
  2. Hassan al-Banna, Group of Letters of the martyr Imam
     Hassan al-Banna, Dar Al-Dawa for Printing, Publishing
     and Distribution, 1984.
  3. Document "Covenant and Charter" brothers Shuria, Al
     Jazeera Net, 26-03-2012.
  4. The Official Historical Encyclopedia of the Muslim
     Brotherhood.