Wael Sawah

The Muslim Brothers in Syria inthe Syrian Revolution: power and

impact

MELESS 2013 - Rabat

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1. Introduction

In 1954, the Arab diva, Sabah, was expected to sing on the stage of a movie theater in the city of Hama, but a bomb that was thrown at the entrance of the theater stopped her from singing. Since that date ad until the late President Hafez al Assad’s coupd’état, not a single singing performance was performed in the city. The Bomb was exploded by the Muslim Brothers Society (MB), who, ever since, shares the political hegemony in the city with the Arab Socialist Movement that was established by Akram Horani in the early 1940s, but in an increasing imbalanced balance. The Arab Socialists who merged with the Baath Party and then split and were divided into supporters of Assad and dissidents to him started to lose their influence gradually. The Muslim Brothers started to gain more influence, until the big battle took place between them and Assad in1979.

When the Syrian revolution broke out in March 2011, the Muslim Brothers were not in their best conditions. They were the “biggest unknown in Syrian politics,” as Journalist Robin Wright describes them.1Their presence was mainly in exile as they had very few activists inside the country, because of Law 49, which was passed in 1980 and would sentence any member of the group to death. They were not in contact with the developments inside the country, and only a few years prior to the revolution, Robin Wrights quotes the MBs former leader Ali Sadr al Din al Bayanounias telling her: “You assume I know what is going on inside the country. I don’t.”In addition, their image had been stained afterthey quit Damascus Declaration and formed an alliance with FormerVice-president Abdul Halim Khaddam, who enjoyed little popularityand had a bad name among Syrians. This image became even staler when they announced a truce with the Syrian regime in 2008, in appreciation to the Syrian position regarding the Israeli war on Gaza that time.

However, the Muslim Brothers have several factors that have placed them in the first row of the political actors in the

1 Wright, Robin: Dreams and Shadows, the Penguin Press, 2008, p 245

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Syrian political scene after the revolution: they are the best organized political group, have resources, and enjoy support fromregional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.

This paper will examine closely the Syrian Muslim Brothers’ developments in the first decade of the third millennium. It willquickly remind of the groups’ history in Syria, move to speak about the clashes between the Group and the Syrian regime in the late seventies and early eighties, speak about the MBs in Diaspora, before focusing on the following points: the Muslim Brothers during Damascus Spring (2000 – 2001), the political morphological change after that, the assassination of Rafik al Hariri and the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, the War on Gaza (2008), and the current Syrian revolution.

This paper will argue first, that the struggle between the MB andthe Baath Party was originally a conflict to dominate the middle class in Syria; secondly, that the MB is not one body and it has been subject to serious changes at the political and ideological levels; and third: there is little chance for the Syrian political actors to diminish the role of the MB in the current situations, and therefore, there must be a realistic way to look on their political role in the future.

2. Quick review of the Muslim Brothers history in Syria

2.1 Social milieu: a battle on the middle class

In 1930, Syria’s population was divided as follows: 62% lived in the rural areas, 25% in cities, and 13% were Bedouins.2By1960 therural areas’ residents had dropped to 53%, the Bedouins to 5%, while city dwellers jumped to become 42%.3It is within these thirty years that the Muslim Brothers emerged, thrived, and 2Hiadeh, Said, Monetary and banking system of Syria, The American Press,1935, 12.3Reissner, Johannes, Ideologie und Politik, Arabic translation under al Harakat al Islamiyah fi Souria, Riad el Rayes Books, Beirut, 2005, 33.

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fortified, based on the same city dwellers that were the base forthe pan Arabists and Marxists. Unlike the Muslim Brothers in Egypt4, the Syrian Muslim Brothers do not have a known ‘birthday’5. But there is a general agreement among historians that the group was established sometime in the 1940s, as a resultof the merging of several Islamic societies that were formed in the 1930s and early 1940s. However, there is a general tendency also among historians to consider as the Brothers’ antecedent a group that was formed in the city of Homs, under the name of “Shabab Mohamad,” (the Youth of Mohamad,) in 1934. Another two landmark points were two conferences that were held in 1937 Homs and 1938 in Damascus. However, the movement still needed the mostimportant and eloquent Islamic leader in Syrian history, Mustafa al Sibaii, to return from Egypt in 1941 and start his struggle tounite all the Islamic groups under the auspices of the Muslim Brothers.

In the 1950s, the Muslim Brothers became a political force that should be taken into account. And although Syria’s liberal politicians, such as Khaled al Azm and Shukri al Kuwatli, did nothave much respect for them, it was not easy to ignore them. The result was that the Brotherhood was represented in most of the Syrian cabinets, even under Khaled al Azm who was not a great admirer of them.6

4 The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by teacher and cleric Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949) as a pan-Islamic organization dedicated to uniting all Muslims under a caliphate (Islamic theocracy.) For detailed information see: Farmer, Peter, A Brief History of the Muslim Brotherhood, available at: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-brief-history-of-the-muslim-brotherhood5Reissner, ibid, 129.6Khalid al-Azm (1903 – 1965) ) was a liberal leader and five-time Prime Minister, as well as Acting President (April 4 - September 16, 1941). AlAzm was known for his economic skills and bold political positions. In his memoire, Azm does not speak highly of the Muslim Brothers; however, the MBs were less critical to him than any other PM in the 1940s and 1950s. They described him in their newspaper as a leader who “works, reforms, and cleanses.” (see al Manar Newspaper, January 8, 1949.

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The Group was banned when Syria joined Egypt in the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958. The Brotherhood went underground. But when Syria broke up with Nasser in1961, the Brotherhood won 10 seats in the next elections. They did not enjoy this victory for long, as they had to go underground once more after the Baath coup in 1963, alongside all the other political groups.7

In the 1960s, the Baath and the Muslim Brothers were dividing theSyrian middle class between them. The middle class, which had tired of both liberal and military governments, decided that Syria needed a different government. The liberal government had failed at many levels: it failed in the 1948 War with Israel, failed in preventing the military from taking over the country several times between 1949 and 1954, failed to avert unification with Nasser’s Egypt between 1958 and 1961, and failed to form a strong national government to lead the post-unity era, when unionbroke up in 1961.

While the middle class in the countryside formed the social base of the Baath, city dwellers formed the base of the Muslim Brothers, especially in Homs, Hama and partly in Aleppo. The Baath Party started in the early 1940s as a small circle of elitists (teachers, doctors, lawyers) who were based in Damascus and other cities. However, this circle did not have any politicalinfluence, and when its leader Michel Aflak ran in the 1949 elections in Damascus, he got only a few votes. The Baath had to wait until a popular political leader, Akram al Horani, who had formed another party that had spread among peasants and farmers in the Syrian countryside, decided to merge with the Baath Party in 1954. This merger moved the Baath Party social base from the

7 The Muslim Brothers were not the only political party that was banned after Baath came to power. The second military statement issued a few hours after the Baath announced its coup on March 8, 1963, announced theban of all political parties. All the independent news papers were also closed, including the Muslim Brothers’. The only paper that was exemptedfrom that was al Baath Newspaper.

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cities to the country, leaving a bigger space for the Muslim Brothers to expand their bases in the cities.

It was for that competition that, over the 1950s, the relationship between the two movements was not very good. Both movements did not do very well in the parliament, but had greaterinfluence in the street. Playing the democratic game, they both suffered from a similar dilemma: how much democratic could they really be, and how far could they go in the democratic game. The Baath found a contradiction between democracy and its radical socialist doctrines; the Muslim brothers with Islam.

A major conflict that the Muslim Brothers had to address during the democratic era in Syria was how to compromise between the democratic game they were participating in and the ‘true’ Islamicteachings expressed at the time by the Muslim Brothers’ rising theorist, Sayyed Qutb. Qutb had risen as the most influential theorist in the Muslim Brothers Society in Egypt, and had been developing his theory about the sovereignty of God. For him, by ignoring God’s revelation, man rebels “against the sovereignty ofGod on earth.”8Qutb claims that man should implement the way of life God has sent to man through Muhammad, the Qur’an, and its laws. Through these means, Qutb believes that God has provided man “divine guidance concerning everything, including faith, morals, values, standards, systems, and laws.”9 In other words, God has provided him with a system of life. If a man is obedient to this system of life, he will never do something that is prescribed outside of God’s guidance. When he follows his own desires or the guidance of other humans, he obeys himself or another person.10 In Syria, MB theorists elaborated this idea. Among them, excelled Mohamad al Mubarak, who says:

8Qutb, Sayyed. Milestones, American Trust Publications, Indianapolis,1990, p:89Qutb, Sayyed. In the Shade of the Qur’an; volume 5; Surah 6. (Translated and Edited by Adil Salahi) United Kingdom: The Islamic Foundation, 2002, page 207. 10Loboda, Luke, The Thoughts of Sayyed Qutb, available at: http://ashbrook.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2004-Loboda-The-Thought-of-Sayyid-Qutb-PDF.pdf

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“Islam is not limited to the doctrine, the rituals, and the principles of cooperation and ethics it imposes, butgoes beyond that to build a cooperative society that it presents to humanity, including the building’s base and structure, but also the details in some aspects.”11

The Brothers’ conflict with the Baath made the former very activeduring the election seasons, in order to ensure a number of seatsin the parliaments, but at the same time, they would spare no efforts in order to expose ‘the counterfeit democracy,’ and the ‘anarchistic materialist communism.’12

And this worked on certain occasions, because as we will see in this paper, the Muslim Brothers enjoy a high level of pragmatism and flexibility. A Lebanese researcher finds them “pragmatic withother forces and governments but rigid in a pure Islamic environment. They are Jihadist in their debates with al Qaeda andcivil in the elections.”13

2.2 March 1963: unbalanced game

However, this game reached an end on March 8, 1963, when their rival, the Baath, led a coup d’état that put it in government, where it has stayed ever since. The first response made by the Muslim Brothers’ Leader at the time, Issam al Attar, was to reject the coup. He addressed his followers at Damascus University announcing his “rejection of this coup and any military-dictator rule and standing for the constitutional-democratic rule.”14 In return, the Baath banned the Muslim Brothers, but also all the other political parties. Almost 11 Al Mubarak, Mohamad, “Nizam al islam: al AkeedawalIbada’ (Islam’s system: doctrine and worships), Al Faissaliyah Bookstore, Mecca, SA, 1984.12 See for example, Al Manar Newspaper, August 10, 194713 Al Amin, Hazem: Jubnul Ikhwan al Muslimeen fi Khidmat al Jamaa wal Umma, (the Muslim Brothers’ Cowardice in service of the Society and the Nation), alHayat Newspaper, July 8, 2012. 14 See al Issam al Attar Website, available: http://www.issamelattar.net/ia/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=891

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immediately, the first rank of Muslim Brothers left Syria to Lebanon and then to other countries.

The first battle between the Muslim Brothers and the new regime was not delayed. It took place in the city of Hama in April 1964,when the Muslim Brothers called for student strike, which soon spread to be a general strike, only to end as an armed struggle, between the MB fighters, who sought refuge inside the major mosque in the city of Hama, led by a young leader, Marwan Hadid, and the army.15 The battle ended with the destruction of the mosque and the arrest of Marwan and other leaders. This was the beginning of the armed struggle between the Muslim Brothers and the Baathist regime. The old ‘democratic game’ had reached an end, and both the Baath and the Muslim Brothers took up arms as ameans of political confrontation.

In the early 1970s, after Hafez al Assad assumed power in anothermilitary coup against his own Baathist comrades, the Muslim Brothers held their first power demonstration in Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, when the draft constitution had no reference to the statereligion. Assad, who had come to power trying to give a differentimage than the radical one his predecessors had, absorbed the protests and added to the draft an article that stated the President must be Muslim.16However, there remained a huge questionwhether an Alawi President may be considered a Muslim one. Barak Barfi believes that it would be a mistake, however, to view Syriaas a praetorian state ruled by a small Alawi clique. Instead, it is the support of the silent Sunni majority that has allowed the Assad regime to stay in power. During his thirty-year reign, Hafez forged a pax Assad with them based on three pillars—providing the country a level of security from outside threats, creating an inclusive regime where Sunnis were given a stake in

15 In his renowned book Asad, the Struggle for the Middle East, University of California Press, 1989, Patrick Seale, says that Marwan Hadid formed in1965 in Hama Kata'ib Muhammad (Phalanxes of Muhammad) to fight against the government – p.322-316 Forty years later, when President Bashar al Assad issued a new constitution, he did not change this article which frustrated seculars and Christians alike.

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the government, and fostering a stable and open business environment. Before Hafez Assad came to power in 1970, there wereeight coups in seventeen years. But he didn't only stabilize Syria by removing tanks from the streets: he also liberalized theeconomy in order to win over the Sunni urban notables ostracized by Assad’s Ba’ath predecessors.17

But the radical wing of the Muslim Brothers, who were now dividedbetween two lines and leaderships, was not satisfied, and Marwan Hadid, the fervent leader of the 1964 rebellion in Hama started an armed wing and called it the “Fighting Vanguard.”18Hadid himself was arrested again and died due a hunger strike. There ismore than one answer to why the radical wing formed their armed group, and how they moved from occasional armed struggle into having an actual organized wing. One explanation is given by Mohammad Hafez, who holds that there are two reasons for the Islamists’ violence: political or institutional exclusion, and indiscriminate and reactive repression by the state.19Filor Nigoghosian asserts that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood violently rebelled due to a combination of political exclusion and repression, intense grievances due to loss of status and power, ideological framing and justification, and decisions made by the organization20. Others simply attribute the move to the fact that for the first time Syria has a non-Sunni ruler on the top of the power structure. In his own way, Nicolaas Van Damme explains how 17Barfi, Barak: Why Libya Isn’t a Model for Syria, February 14, 2012, available at: http://www.tnr.com/article/world/100716/syria-assad-libya-qaddafi-nato#18 Many including Adnan Saad al Deen, a former leader of the Muslim Brothers strongly reject that Marwan Hadid founded the ‘Fighting Vanguard’ and insist that he never viewed himself as completely separatefrom the Brotherhood, even though the relation between him and the groupwent through different phases. Others however, such as Adnan ‘Oqla, one of the Vanguard leaders, deny this and confirm that Hadid himself founded the armed group..19Hafez, M. H: Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World, Lynne Rienner, 2003, p 11020Nigoghosian, Filor: The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood between Democracy and Violent Rebellion, available at: http://neweasternpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/the-syrian-muslim-brotherhoodbetween-democracy-and-violent-rebellion-by-filor-nighoghosian

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Sunnis were discriminated against in admission to the Military Academy, while minorities, especially Alawis, were given preferential treatment.21 There became an obvious sectarian polarization within the society and the armed forces. In the government, Alawis dominated the highest positions of power, and these positions were secured by sectarian loyalties and favoritism.22

2.3 A step towards Terrorism

There was a clear transformation in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhoodfrom a being a social, political, and parliamentarian movement into a movement that became notorious for its violence, terror, and sectarianism. But this was not unique to the MB Group. The Baath Party had, earlier, taken the same step. It moved from a party that played the parliamentarian game in the 1950s, to a party that achieved its goals through coups that led to the killing of not only the “class enemies” but also the Party comrades themselves.23

The death of Marwan Hadid shifted the struggle between the MBs and the regime to a higher level of violence. From the mid-1970s until 1979, the Group was blamed for killing a number of Alawi scholars and professionals, including the rector of Damascus University, Mohamad al-Fadel, the doyen of Syrian dentists, Ibrahim Na'ama, and the commander of the missile corps, Brigadier'Abd al Hamid Ruzzug.

21Van Dam, Nicolaas: The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Baath Party, 2011, London: I.B. Tauris, p 3522Teitelbaum, J. (2011). The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, 1945-1958: Founding, Social Origins, cited in http://neweasternpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/the-syrian-muslim-brotherhoodbetween-democracy-and-violent-rebellion-by-filor-nighoghosian/23 In 1970, Hafez al Assad led a coup against his Party pals, and sent them to jail. Three of them died either in prison (Salah Jdeed) or shortly after they were released (Nour al Din al Atassi and Yousef Zouayen).

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On 16 June 1979, the game rules changed dramatically. An MB-affiliated officer, who was a member of the Fighting Vanguard, carried out an attack on cadets at the Aleppo Artillery School, officially killing 32; unofficial sources say the "death toll wasas high as 83."24 All of them were Alawis (the sect of President Assad). This was the beginning of the fiercest war between the MBand the Baathi regime. Overt three years, terrorist attacks occurred repeatedly, and the government “tended to ascribe these attacks to the Brotherhood, but as more loosely defined armed groups appeared, especially in poor neighborhoods, it became difficult to determine the extent of the Brotherhood's involvement.”25

The Aleppo massacre was the beginning of full-scale warfare wagedby the Muslim Brothers against the regime. The series of hostilities was crowned with a failed attempt to assassinate President Assad himself. On 26 June 1980,President Assad "narrowly escaped death" when attackers threw two grenades and fired machine gun bursts at him as he waited at a diplomatic function in Damascus.26 The following day, troops belonging to Assad’s brother, Rifaat, flew to a prison near Palmyra and attacked Islamist inmates, killing a number that has never been verified, but varies between 500 and 1200 inmates. When the writer of these lines was imprisoned in the same prison only a year after the massacre, he saw the blood stains of the victims on the walls of the cells.

But the MB movement was not isolated. A huge movement that was spurred basically by the professional syndicates which represented the urban upper middle class broke out at the same time as the MB movement. Prior to 1980, Syria’s professional associations remained “the primary venues of open and vocal opposition to Bath rule.”27Parallel to the never-ending conflict between the Baath and the MB, another conflict had always been 24 Seale, Patrick, Asad, the Struggle for the Middle East, University ofCalifornia Press, 1989 – p.31625Carré, Olivier and Gérard Michaud. 1983. Les Frères musulmans :Egypte et Syrie (1928–1982). Paris: Gallimard, pp 135 – 137.26 Seale, p: 328

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present before 1980. This conflict was another example of the political division of the middle class. The urban upper middle class felt humiliated and isolated by the invading army of less educated cadre that occupied eminent post due to favoritism.

In 1979 and 1980, the lawyers, doctors, writers, university professors, and engineers moved to express their dissatisfaction with the corruption and the rule of the security apparatuses. They all declared a one-day strike (March 31, 1980) to protest against the Syrian regime's lack of freedoms, the cruelty of its repression apparatus, and its violation of human rights. In addition, five leading opposition political parties led by the shrewdest permanent opposition leader, Riad al Turk, formed a coalition, the Syrian Democratic Rally, to benefit from the historic movement, and support the intellectual movement. The regime, which knew that it was a battle of to-be-or-not-to-be forit, had a brutal response, dissolving all the syndicates’ boards and appointing new ones loyal to Assad’s regime and arresting theleaders of the syndicates and political parties--including Turk himself, who spent 18 years in solitary confinement. Into the bargain, a huge campaign of arrests and military campaigns against the MBs and the Fighting Vanguard in 1980 and 1981 led toa weakening of the rebellions. But the Fighting Vanguard, led then by Adnan Oqla, a radical extremist who had even cut his relationship with the MBs themselves, prepared for what it thought would be a crucial battle.28

In February 1982, the Syrian regime decided to put an end to thismovement. The Fighting Vanguard had planned to start the battle in Hama, with a promise from the Muslim Brothers to provide 27Moore , Pete W. and Salloukh, Bassel F.: Struggles Under Authoritarianism: Regimes, States, and Professional Associations in the Arab World, available at: http://www.relooney.info/SI_Governance/Governance-Economic-Growth_39.pdf28The historical leadership did not have a high opinion of Adnan Oqla’s way of leading the Fighting Vanguard. This can be found in the former MBLeader Adnan Saad al Din, in his memoirs “, available in Arabic at: http://www.ikhwanwiki.com/index.php?title=%D8%B3%D9%86%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AA_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%B2%D8%B1_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%A9

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support from Iraq and Jordan, according to some Islamic literature. But Hafez al Assad played his last card in Hama. The government allowed a couple of hundred fighters to occupy the public buildings of the city, before shelling the city, destroying entirely the old part of the city. As military units ringed the city, mosque loudspeakers once again called for jihad against the Baath. This time, Hama was given no quarter. Much of the city was reduced to rubble and up to 20,000 people lost theirlives in three weeks of horrific bloodletting (less than 100 had died in 1964) led by Assad's brother, Rifaat.29A Syrian dissident who lives in exile describes what happened as follows:

Select [Syrian Army] units... under the command of General 'Ali Haydar, besieged the city for 27 days, bombarding it with heavy artillery and tank [fire], before invading it and killing 30,000 or 40,000 of the city's citizens – in addition to the 15,000 missing who have not been found to this day, and the 100,000 expelled."30

Patrick Seale, who authored a highly sympathetic biography of Hafez Al-Assad and was a close friend of the regime, elaborated on the incident saying that "every party worker, every paratrooper sent to Hama knew that this time Islamic militancy had to be torn out of the city, whatever the cost..."31Another countryman of Seale’s, who has always defended the Syrian regime,described how civilians were fleeing Hama while tanks and troops were moving towards the city's outskirts to start the siege. He cites reports of high numbers of deaths and shortages of food andwater from fleeing civilians and from soldiers.32

In fact, what really happened in Hama has never been found out, and maybe will never be. But what everybody can be sure of is that the Muslim Brothers reached the end of game at that time

29Gambill Gary Cm The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, available at: http://www.globalpolitician.com/21790-syria-islamism30Hdidi, Subhi, Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), January 11, 2002.31 Seale, 332-33332Fisk, Robert, Pity the Nation, Touchstone , London 1989: 185 - 186

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with the regime. Their followers were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. Their influence inside Syria diminished to almost nil. They had to move to a different phase of struggle. In brief, the Hama Massacre crushed the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and marked the end to an active and organized Muslim Brotherhood inside Syria.

However, it is fair to state here that the Muslim Brothers have never adopted the acts of terror which occurred in that era. The then Vice Superintendent and later the Group’s leader Ali al-Bayanouni has always repeated that the Muslim Brothers “believe that jihad should be against the foreign enemy. Our past experience does not encourage the implementation of this principle within one's country. Originally, we never carried weapons against governments. But the state in Syria and the regime in Syria were the ones that cornered a large segment of the citizens in these armed clashes. We succeeded, thanks be to God, in extricating ourselves from this dilemma, to review our march, and to affirm that we shun all forms of violence and that we opt for the democratic and peaceful course."33

The 1980s was an extraordinary decade in the history of the region. The Islamic revolution had already triumphed in Iran; radical Islamists managed to kill the Egyptian President Anwar alSadat; the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan succeeded in overthrowing the communist rule there and establishing the darkest form of Islamic rule in the modern ages; the Islamists’ struggle in Algeria led to their success in the 1991 elections there. But in Syria, Law No. 49drove the Muslim Brothers outside the country, and started a new era in the country.

3. Post-Islamism: a secular-Islamist new beginning

3.1 A step back from terrorism 33 Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, in Arabic 1905 gmt 17 Aug 05, cited by Syria Comment, available at: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/Joshua.M.Landis-1/syriablog/2006/03/bayanouni-khaddam-link-up-_114264946582158617.htm

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Syria’s experience with Islamism was, indeed, different from thatof other countries in the 1980s. The distinguished Iranian scholar Asef Bayat developed a theory on post Islamism based in facton the 1980s. In an essay published in 199634, Bayat defines post-Islamism as an era, where some Islamist trends, particularly in Iran under Khatami, will have to “coalesce with the reform movement.” Later, Bayat worked on the Islamist movement in Egypt and developed his theory in his book Making Islam Democratic,35 where post-Islamism represents an “endeavor to fuse religiosity and rights, faith and freedom, Islam and liberty.”36 I am not quite sure if Bayat was too optimistic in his aspiration to see the Islamists vote for “plurality in place of singular authoritative voice,” but there are a few points that deserve to be registered here. Since the mid-1990s, several movements, factions, leading jihadists, and individual militants have undergone remarkable transformations towards non-violence, thereby removing tens of thousands of former militants from the ranks of al-Qaeda supporters. Omar Ashour, a Lecturer in Politics at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter (UK), has supported Bayat’s view. Ashour states several examples to prove his view. In Egypt, al-Gama‘a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group – IG) declared a unilateral ceasefire in July 1997 that evolved into a comprehensive de-radicalization process in 2002, and the EgyptianJihad Organization, the movement that produced Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, also initiated a de-radicalization process. In Tunisia, al Nahda Party Leader al Ghanoushi declared in the late 1990s andearly 2000s his movement’s shift to the rules of the democratic game. In Algeria, similar de-radicalizing transformations occurred between 1997 and 2009. In Saudi Arabia, the government has had some success in de-radicalizing individuals and small groups who allegedly supported, or were loosely linked to, al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.37In Syria, the Muslim Brothers had to learn the lesson the hard way. 34Bayat, Asef: The Coming of a Post-Islamist Society, Critique: criticalMiddle East Studies, no: 9, Fall 1996.35Bayat, Asef: Making Islam Democratic: social movements and the post-Islamist turn, Stanford University Press, 200736Bayat 2007, p 11.

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The 1990s was the best decade for the late President Hafez al Assad. He was among the first to understand the changes that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory ofthe United States under Reaganism. Therefore, Assad made a seriesof decisions that slightly changed the regime’s facade and re-entered him into the international community. At the international and regional level, he supported liberating Kuwait and joined the International Alliance, and joined the Madrid Conference for the Middle East Peace Process; internally, he started to release a number of political prisoners including Islamists. His focus, thus, was to prepare the environment for his eldest son Basel to succeed him. However, Basel died in a caraccident in 1994, and Hafez had to summon his brother Bashar fromthe UK to accept the succession. To prepare the way for Bashar, Hafez had to arrange the internal and regional situation. He repaired relations with Iraq, improved the relationship with Jordan, enhanced his contacts with Iran, and eradicated the tension between his government and Turkey arising from Syria’s harboring a terrorist Kurdish group (PKK).

Assad also tried to reconcile with the Islamists in Syria. After his remarkable victory over the MBs, he spent the 1990strying to create equilibrium between his authorities and the pious society.He therefore managed to create a circle of clerics and religious leaders who were not on good terms with the Muslim Brothers, suchas Sufi schools, and popular imams. Assad did not mind leaving areas in the social and cultural space to these religious leaders, as long as they refrained from interfering in the political and economic arenas. The non-political flourished in the 1990s: the Sufi schools expanded, major Islamic higher education institutes operated and educated grads and undergrads students, and the strongest Islamic feminist group (Qubaysiat) flourished, targeting particularly women from the upper middle class and urban upper class that grew around the Baath Party and the Assad regime.

37Omar Ashour is He is the author of The De-Radicalization of the Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (London, New York: Routledge, 2009).

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As part of this policy, in the mid-1990s, the Asad regime relaxedits policy toward Islamic circles in Syria, exhibiting a certain degree of openness with respect to Islamic educational institutions, the building of mosques, and the appointment of clergymen.38In addition, it is widely known that Assad agreed thatthe leaders of the Muslim Brothers could return to Syria, provided that the movement refrained from resuming its legal operations in Syria. However, the MBs refused the offer. Ali al Bayanouni, the MB Leader at the time, stressed that his movement would not agree to return to Syria one by one and demanded the annulment of Law No. 49, enacted in 1980.39

3.2 Damascus Spring

When Hafez al Assad died in June, 2000, the stage was ready for the new player who had only to enter the stage and play his role—Bashar al Assad. But there were other actors who did not abide bythe text. Shortly after Hafez al-Assad passed away, 99 intellectuals signed a petition known as “the Statement of 99.” This paved the way for other intellectuals and politicians to demand publicly a number of political reforms, including the end of the state of emergency which had been imposed by the Baath regime since 1963. Thus began the Damascus Spring. Subsequently, hundreds of petitions were signed, dozens of forums and salons were initiated, and a totally new phenomenon appeared: sit-ins. Anew expression was introduced for the first time in Syria after decades of the absence of open debate: “civil society.”

There was one group which could not claim participation in the Damascus Spring: the Muslim Brotherhood. Contrary to the movementof 1980, the 2000 movement was an entirely secular one. The

38Porat, Liad: The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Asad Regime, Brandies University: available at: http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB47.pdf39Zisser, Eyal Syria’s Facade: Society, Government, and State (Tel Aviv:Hakibutz Hameuchad, 2003), [in Hebrew], p: 264; sited in: Porat, Liad: The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Asad Regime, Brandies University: available at: http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB47.pdf

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Muslim Brothers and most Islamist elements were mere observers. Their “inclination” was to give the new regime and system in Syria a chance to carry out a reform program, if there were any such program, or to show that it had the desire to carry out changes and help it in achieving this. They even expressed their readiness to “cooperate with the regime to achieve this and were ready to accept gradual reform."40

However, that was a good opportunity for the MB to adopt new strategies and learn a good lesson: they need to go back to the pragmatism of their founder Mustafa al Sibaii and the liberal erain Syria.

President Bashar al Assad was playing a different game. While he apparently did undertake some opening measures, such as releasingpolitical prisoners and allowing private media to publish for thefirst time in four decades, he preferred to continue his father’spolicy regarding augmenting non-political Islam. But he could notmaintain the upper hand in this situation. For Minister of Culture (a position that had been for decades controlled by secularists), he chose a conservative Sunni, Riad Nasaan Agha, who changed the secular environment at the Ministry but also at the cultural scene in general. He banned publishing and republishing critical books; banned public meetings that discussed secularism and civil society issues; and did not allow secular speakers to enter the country. Parallel to this, non-political Islamic groups expanded throughout the first decade of Bashar’s rule. Mosques were full of prayers; religious lessons were abundant for men and women; Islamic banks became a fashion; and hijab (women scarf) and niqab (women’s face cover) became very familiar among women in the cities and the country. When thePresident realized that he was becoming the weaker partner in thedeal, he tried to change the equation, but it was already too late for that.

The Muslim Brothers, who were mostly outside the country, were working on the political level. In fact, contrary to the secular 40 MB Leader Ali al Bayanouni to al Jazeera’s Ahmad Mansour, August 19, 2005

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opposition, which was based inside Syria, the Muslim Brothers hadmore flexibility in moving around, holding meetings, and discussing documents. The Muslim Brothers, who realized that the Jihadi spirit was retreating in the region and that the Islamist movements in Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt were adopting rather a political discourse, and watched closely the Damascus Spring movement, were in fact the first to make a post-Hafez political step, when they issued the ‘National Honor Pact,’ the first of several documents aiming to show that the Group had abandoned violence and was adopting democracy as a political tool.

3.3 The National Honor Pact

With the election of Ali Sadr al-Din al-Bayanouni as the movement’s general supervisor in 1996, the MB’s leadership started a different discourse and approach than it had in the past 3 decades. Both the regional development and the personalityof the new leader played a role in changing the Group’s discourse. Al-Bayanouni is a sophisticated, outgoing person, who studied law and joined the Group as young as 16. In May 2001, theMuslim Brotherhood in exile announced their “National Honor Pact,” in which they rejected violence and called for the upholding of human rights. They saluted the modern state with itsinstitutions, rule of law and separation of powers. They made reference to pluralism - political, ethnic and religious. According to the same document, civil society was to play an important role in upholding democracy.41

The Pact was not a message to the opposition only; it was also a message to the new regime under Assad the son. As al-Bayanouni, the Muslim Brothers’ leader since 1996, puts it, when President Bashar al Assad first came to power, the Muslim Brotherhood was “conciliatory, stating that he was not to be held responsible forthe ‘crimes of his father,” but “[Bashar] Assad has repeatedly

41Kawakibi, Salam: Political Islam in Syria, available at: http://aei.pitt.edu/11726/1/1511.pdf

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rejected his opponents’ extended hand.”42“The pact, which expressed the Brotherhood’s commitment to democracy among other things, was greeted with enthusiasm by the Syrian opposition, butit was less well received by the Syrian government.”43

The MB said that it had “waited for a while before presenting this national comprehensive imitative, hoping that Syrian President Bashar al Assad would have the honor to unite all the nation’s elements calling for a rational dialogue.”44

The Pact’s basic point was that Syria has an Islamic and an Arab identity and that the country’s religious identity does not harm its national unity. Based on that, the Pact defined its goals as follows:

1. Building a new Syria, as “a contractual state, where the contract is based on the free, conscious will of both the ruler and the ruled.”

2. The modern state has to be based on separation of powers, witha priority for the rule of law.

3. Syria should be a pluralistic state that accommodates different views, and where the opposition and the civil society play the role of monitor.

4. The army’s role should be limited to protecting the country from foreign aggression.

5. Civil society institutes should play a leading role in protecting the society, enriching it, and guiding it.

6. Acknowledging the other (ideologically, culturally, and politically).

42 Al bayanouni, Ali Sadrudin: No one owns Syria's uprising, The Guardian, 15 April, 2011.43Sayegh, Yezid: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Carnegie Middle East Program, available at: http://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=4837044 For the content of the National Honor Pact, please see: http://altagamoh.adimocraty.free.fr/9-1.htm.

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7. Rejecting all kinds of violence and advancing security solutions in the political life.

8. Prioritizing human rights for citizens and individuals, and protecting women’s rights and their equality with men at the communal, humanitarian, and civil levels.

9. Combating the ‘Zionist Project,’ as the “greatest danger that faces our nation and our country.”45

This discourse is no doubt different from the militia’s discoursein the 1980s. Still, it is risky to go too far in accrediting it as a democratic discourse. First, the basic principle on which the Pact relies is that “Islam, in its transcendental goals and supreme values. . . is a cultural reference and a personal identity for this nation.” Second, the Pact will acknowledge differences, but only “within the national principles and the general good for the nation.” The question is who decides the nation’s good and the national principles; the implied answer will be Islam, as the reference and identity of the nation. Third, the pact, though it abandoned violence, did not renounce the MB’s role in past violence.

3.4 The political Program 2004

The second step in the Muslim Brothers’ new trend was issuing a new political program, entitled “Political Project for Future Syria.” The project, which drew a lot of discussion and opposing positions, did not deny any of the promises made in the Honor Pact, but – being a major document that would determine the performance of the Muslim Brothers in the coming years – it was more conservative and based more on Islamic rules and verses of the Quran.46The new project, as it declares in its preface, statesthat Islam is enshrined as "a code of conduct for the devout Muslim," a "civilizational identity" for all Syrians, the

45 Ibid.46 See a translation of the Project in Arabic at: http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=5804

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official religion of the country, and the highest source of legalauthority. It also concludes that “the best interests of the nation are realized and the potential for it to truly inherit this earth is fulfilled and subsequently attain the true implication of the Quranic verse: ‘And I (Allah) created not the Jinns and humans beings except they should worship me’ (51:56).

The new project is based upon three main principles: first, “progressive Islam and its tolerant dogma, sublime values and code structure that is built upon justice and equality;” second, “our Islamic group which is gathered upon the word of piety, and which works tirelessly to spread the code of Allah within the souls as well as throughout the lands, through aims, programs andmethods which are all subject to revision and development;” and third, “our view of ‘The Modern State’ . . . , the construction of which we consider to be a public demand of all our fellow citizens, as this entity will prove to be the expanding umbrella which caters for all equally.”47

‘Progressive Islam’ and ‘our Islamic group’ have priority over ‘our view of The Modern State.’

Islam, according to the document, is “a religion that encompassesall aspects of life with its teachings and legislations covering all dimensions, whether they be spiritual, educational, economic or political.” The best path towards good and sound governance is“Shura or the process of consultation.”

Having stated this seemingly as a precondition, the MB moved to talk about ‘common denominators’ between itself and the other political parties in the country. These would include:

a. Adopting and practicing values of tolerance and mutual co-existence and the acknowledgment and upholding of human rights.

b. Recognizing racial, religious, cultural, intellectual and political plurality and the right of expressing each of these trends, within the framework of constitutional boundaries agreed upon by the Syrian people.47 Ibid

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c. Agreeing that all citizens are equal before the law and upholding woman’s rights and affirming her equal standing with men in all considerations of human and civil capacity.

d. Rejecting violence as a means of inducing change and adopting debate as the means of interaction in fields of intellect, politics and culture.

e. Rejecting dictatorship and single-party autocracy, whilst affirming the right of the nation to freely choose its political system.

f. Resorting in political efforts to the ballot box and adopting means of democratic work.

g. Basing all efforts upon the principle of national unity, andplacing national interests before individual and private gains.

h. Belonging to the Arab framework and the Islamic civilizational authority.

i. Countering the Zionist project with all its political, cultural and economic traits.

The real progress, however, was that the Group condemned “terrorism, whether it be the act of terrorism exercised by a state or by individuals.” Yet it refrained from acknowledging that it itself had practiced terrorist acts. In fact, it rather blamed the Baathist regime for such acts. The Group recalled the old days when the Muslim Brothers “remained committed to the method of beautiful preaching and peaceful dialogue, advocating the Quranic principle ‘Call to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching’, but . . .since the 8th of March 1963, an autocratic, despotic and oppressive regime was imposed upon our Syrian homeland, which practiced various forms of tyranny against all political forces but singled out the Islamists for the most brutal means of oppression.” The document stopped short of saying that the Baath despotism was the reason behind the armed acts that they committed against the regime and its supporting Alawite sect in 1979 – 1982.

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But the document did not close the door on the possibility of acknowledging the MB’s faults in the past, if the acknowledgment came from both sides, as “a one-sided revision is insufficient and all parties concerned must embark on a similar route so that the radical transformation we seek on a national level can be attained.”

An academic confession must be made here: one cannot judge a 140-page document by summarizing it into a few bullet points, but this paper cannot provide a bigger space to present the document in more details. As one can see from the points mentioned above, the Brothers’ political project was as follows:

1. The Muslim Brothers have decided to go in a different direction than the one they followed since the 1960s. They have publicly announced that they reject violence.

2. The change in their platform, albeit important, will not turnthem into a civil movement, as they restate throughout the document that their major ideology remains “our firm belief in Islam as a code whose texts and scriptures interact with the realities and emerging challenges of life, all within the generalframework of the maqassid al- Sharia,” and therefore, Islam “is considered the main and highest source of reference for all legislation, whilst the people are the source of authority.”

3. Although the document points to one or two cases when their electoral lists included the names of Christian candidates (who never won of course), there is no way to forget that the Group represents a religious-sectarian social base: the Sunni Muslims who, despite being a majority, do not make up the entire population. Therefore, the group cannot claim to be representative of the Syrian people.

4. This is reflected clearly in the first two articles in the constitution that they propose, and which declares “the Arab and Islamic identity of the Syrian society,” and states that “the official religion of the country is Islam.” Now if we understand that for the Muslim Brothers, Islam is only Sunni Islam, we will

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have the right to conclude that the document will exclude some 35% of the non-Sunni population from the right to be heads of state in future Syria.

5. The document draws a different image of the Syrian woman, which should be saluted. It looks at woman as “the core of humanity and the source of creation, and considers them equals indignity, humanity and responsibility. Women are the equal halves of men and the main principle in Islamic teachings is the equality between both apart from a very few exceptions stated clearly by Allah Almighty, for objective reasons and factors.”

6. The MB refused to acknowledge its role in the terrorist acts on the 1980s and 1990s, and consequently refused to do its part of self-criticism, which made many secular partners reluctant to engage with them in coalitions.

7. Equally important is the MB reluctance to condemn the terrorist attacks that swept the world during and on the heels of9/11.

The MB’s document created contradictory reactions. While it was welcomed by many Syrian political and civil groups, many others were suspicious towards it. The strongest reaction against it came from a secular exiled activist who lives in the United States – Wafa Sultan. She remarked:

“"Do they have the courage to openly declare their new beliefs and apologize for their past so that we won't need to dig up their past? They are calling [now] for a pluralistic, democratic society ruled by the principles of justice and equality. On what basis are they going tobuild this society?...Have they changed their fundamental beliefs? Why don't they give an answer to this question?...They used to commit crimes [and then] escape to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Jordan [in order to find] a safe haven, and now they are planning to return from these safe havens to the scene of their crimes to

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participate in building a democratic pluralistic societybased on justice and equality?!…

"The Syrian people are exhausted from the oppression anddespotism of the [Ba'ath] regime which has borne down onthem for more than 40 years. We suffered a great calamity when the Assad family and their band seized power in Syria, but we will suffer an even greater calamity if, when we get rid of this band, we find ourselves face to face with the Muslim Brotherhood - 'God forbid.' Are the [Syrian] opposition and secular and democratic parties, both in Syria and overseas - arethey aware of this truth? Will they be able to thwart the Muslim Brotherhood's plan to corrupt the new Syria? Assad's monopoly on power was a violation of the rights of the people and has led us to a miserable life; however, we do not want to replace it with something even worse."48

But many other political groups hailed the transformation of the MB. The Committees to Revive the Civil Society in Syria, a leading civil society and political player in the Damascus Spring, issued a statement in January 2005, welcoming this change and acknowledging that the Muslim Brothers as a part of the “Syrian national fabric.” This was a remarkable step, if one remembers that talking to the MB was considered a crime in Syria at the time. Four months later, in May 2005, apaper written by the Muslim Brothers was read at the only political forum that the government had not closed in 2001- the Jamal Atassi Forum – in a seminar about “How the Syrian political groups see reform.” This step was a landmark in thepolitical resistance against the regime. It was the first time a political forum had defied Assad’s ban on dealing withthe Muslim Brothers. It had a double message: first, the 48 Sultan, Wafa: Syrian Expatriate Asks: Who Are The Muslim BrotherhoodTrying to Fool? Available at: http://www.memri.org/report/en/print1430.htm

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political secular groups had recognized the MB as a politicalgroup that has a role to play in the Syrian life; second, thepolitical movement had bluntly defied the regime’s red lines—its attempts to exclude certain political forces from the political field. The regime’s response was tough: it shut down the Jamal Atassi Forum, which was the last channel that the government had allowed the opposition to use in order meet and talk. But worse than that, the security forces arrested the activist who read out the MB paper, Ali al Abdallah, and eight other members of the Forum’s Board. Whilethe other eight were released in a week or so, Ali himself stayed in prison for six months.49

3.5 Damascus Declaration

The following year, in 2005, the MB made another effort to signal their willingness to cooperate with the secular political parties in Syria. As stated above, the late President Hafez al Assad was quick to understand the international and regional changes that followed the collapseof the Soviet Union, and made several steps to get his country out of the isolation of the 1980s. In fact, the 1990swas the golden decade for al Assad family. In 1990-1991, Assad Senior’s shrewdness led him, again, to use international changes to advance his interests. He backed theinternational alliance to liberate Kuwait and joined for the first time the peace process in the Middle East. Assad was rewarded with financial assistance from the Gulf and political openness by the West. In addition, Assad became theabsolute ruler of Lebanon.50

49 Ali al Abdallah is one of the most immovable fighters against al Assad regime. No sooner that he was released late 2005 than he was arrested again in 2006 for another six months, and in 2007 for 30 months. He was released from Adra Prison on June 23, 2010, and re-imprisoned one day later for writing an article that was critical of Syria's ties with Iran. A Syrian military court charged him with weakening national morale.[5] The United States asked Syria to free him.

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In 2004, President Bashar al Assad made his first fatal mistake, when he did not read (as his father had done before) the new international mood after September 11, 2001. Assad defied the United States and the international community and decided to extend the presidency of his neighbor, Emile Lahoud of Lebanon, for another three years. This step could have been passed smoothly if there had not been a man called Rafik al Hariri.51

Rafik al Hariri, Lebanese Prime Minister for several times between 1990 and 2004, was the “mastermind of its revival after the civil war”52 and most influential Lebanese politicians, who had managed to be the sole leader of the Lebanese Sunnis. In 2000, he and his allies managed to occupy a comfortable majority in the Parliament. When Assad ordered the Lebanese constitution to be changed to extend the mandate of President Emile Lahoud, Hariri expressed his opposition, but then agreed. Many believed that Hariri’s approval was a tactic ahead of the 2005 elections, when he was expected to win, together with his Christian allies, the vast majority. This would have made the extension of Lahoud’sterm moot.

On February 14, 2005, after Hariri had had coffee in his favoritecafé in downtown Beirut, a blast took his life together with manyof his colleagues, bodyguards, and passersby. No one can be sure of who killed “Mr. Lebanon,” but it is now a fact, that this murder, coming on the heels of the extension of Lahoud’s mandate,led to new conditions on the Lebanese scene that dealt a strong blow to the Syrian regime and to President Assad. The assassination prompted mass demonstrations, the resignation of the Lebanese government, and accusations against Syria from the Lebanese opposition, and it quickened the withdrawal of Syrian 50However, President Bashar al Assad skillfully wasted all the 1990s’ gains . For more about this see Scheller, Bente: The Wisdom of the Waiting Game: Syrian Foreign Policy under Hafez and Bashar al-Asad, a book under publication.Scheller, a diplomat, traces how Syria has, step by step, lost all gainsmade after 1990-1991.51There is no room to explain here that Syria had the upper hand in naming the Lebanese presidents and prime ministers since 1989. But this chapter is well known by all.52 The New York Times, March 25, 2005

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troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon.53Between 2005 and 2010, Lebanon was ruled by a government that opposed Syrian interests in Lebanon and stopped the benefits which Syrian officials had had before. A UN investigation led by Peter FitzGerald said that the government of Syria "bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded the assassination." Later the famous German judge, Detlev Mehlis, issued his well-known report accusing Syrian officials of being involved in the assassination. The United States recalled its ambassador from Syria and enacted the Syria Accountability Act.

The Syrian opposition, which was monitoring international and regional developments more closely than the regime, found out that it was good time to establish a new political umbrella unifying opposition efforts for democratic reforms. On October 16, 2005, a document that carried the title “Damascus Declaration” was signed as an attempt to unite the fractured Syrian opposition. The document was signed by a number of political parties and individuals, including the National Democratic Rally and the Muslim Brotherhood, Kurdish and Assyrianparties, and prominent dissidents from the Damascus Spring movement such as Michel Kilo and Riad Seif. The Muslim Brothers issued a statement on the following day announcing that they had joined the Declaration. However, it is widely believed now that the Muslim Brothers had also played a major role in drafting the original document. Two American scholars wrote in 2007 that the leading Syrian civil society activist Michel Kilo met with SyrianMuslim Brotherhood Chief Ali Sadruddin al-Bayanouni in Morocco and Europe. The two agreed on the content of the Damascus Declaration document.54

In fact, in this light, the Damascus Declaration might well be understood as an additional step in the process that both the secular opposition and the Muslim Brothers had started since the

53Seale, Patrick, Who Killed Rafik Hariri, the Guardian, 23 February, 200554Landis, Joshua and Pace, Joe: “The Syrian Opposition,” The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2006-07 edition.

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ill-fated Damascus Spring and in the reevaluation which the MB made to their political platform.

The change in the mood towards the MBs should be attributed to many factors, local and regional. But one important factor is definitely the character of the group’s, leader Ali Sadruddin al Bayanouni. It seems that Bayanouni has a proficient combination of pragmatism, personal charisma, and ability to convince others.But he also has a different understanding of Islam and of the Islamist movement. The late journalist who specialized in Syrian affairs, Anthony Shadid, described him as follows: “At 67, Bayanouni defies the image of a religious scholar. A father of seven, he is a trim, athletic man, fond of tennis, volleyball andswimming, with a knack for table tennis. He has the probing mind of a sharp lawyer, with a political sense that has helped him navigate the ebb and flow of the Brotherhood's fortunes over decades of sometimes violent activism.”55 A liberal Islamist scholar speaks of Bayanouni as follows:

“After his election in 1996, Bayanouni succeeded in pulling the Brotherhood out of the isolation in which the group existed after its massive defeat in the Hama Massacre of 1982. He shifted the Brotherhood from engaging in armed struggle to political and media efforts against the regime. Bayanouni emphasized peaceful resistance to the regime and expressed a willingness to engage its leadership.”56

Bayanouni, moreover, has the courage to acknowledge “mistakes,”57 and can address different audiences in different languages. And he is the only MB leader who would frequently repeat that the Brotherhood "is ready to accept others and to deal with them. We believe that Syria is for its entire people, regardless of sect, ethnicity or religion.

55Shadid, Anthony: Inside and Outside Syria, a Debate to Decide the Future, the Washington Post, November 9, 2005.56Ghadbian, Najib: Syria's Muslim Brothers: Where to next?, The Daily Star, September 17, 201057 Write: P. 246

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No one has the right to exclude anyone else."58 For some Islamic activists, years in the West radicalize them, reinforcing their alienation in a culture that is not their own. Not Bayanouni. He said his time in exile helped him reconsider his beliefs. "One of the things I learned," he said, "was to accept the other."59

4. The regional and international complications

4.1 Regional interventions:

Many argue that the Damascus Declaration (DD) was not a pure internal response from the Syrian opposition, but the product of internal and external conditions. This view is based on the “strange” timing of the DD, which coincided with the publication of the Mehlis Report. A nationalist political leader – who was a part of the Declaration but then withdrew after failing in internal elections two years later – accused the founders of DD of “betting on the international and regional developments including the Mehlis Report.”60 Another nationalist Marxist politician adds that the DD’s initiators were under the “American-backed Mehlis illusion.”61 No one can prove the relationship between DD and the Mehlis Report, and the timing could be utterly circumstantial. The testimonies of the two politicians could be disproved easily, since their testimonies came after their nationalist-socialist wing lost the elections inthe DD Congress held in December 2007. Still, one cannot brush away the international and regional connections with Syrian internal policies.

58Shadid59 Ibid60Hasan Abdul Azim, the leader of the biggest Nasserite Party in Syria, in his answers to questions about Damascus Declaration, Mukarabat Review, Issue 12 and 13, 2008 (in Arabic)61 Abdul Aziz Khayer, a leader of the Communist Action Party, in his answers to questions about Damascus Declaration, Mukarabat Review, Issue12 and 13, 2008 (in Arabic)

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Between 2006 and 2009, two wars took place between Israel and Arabs. On 25 June 2006, an Israeli soldier was abducted inside Israel by Hamas militants in a cross-border raid via underground tunnels near the Israeli border with Gaza. Israel retaliated brutally. On 12 July 2006, a Hezbollah ground contingent infiltrated the border into Israel and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers, injuring two, and capturing two soldiers. This was the beginning of a war that lasted for 33 daysand led to the killing of some 1000 Lebanese citizens, the displacing of tens of thousands (most of them to Syria) and the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure. The totally uncalled-for war between Hezbollah and Israel can be fairly described as a “war by proxy” between Israel and Syria. But even if this is not true, there is something else that for me seems very true: the 2006 war worked in Syria’s benefit rather than in Hezbollah’s. Although the latter gained many fans and supporters across the Arab and Islamic worlds, and saved itself from the heat of the Hariri assassination, one cannot but admit that it also lost a good number of its fighters, was forced to retreat from the borders with Israel, and turned from being a fighter against Israel into being a militia inside Lebanon. Syria’s Assad on the other hand managed to divert international attention from the Hariri case and the international tribunal to the issue of war and peace between Lebanon and Israel. The Syrian regime used the regional and international circumstances to increase the level ofthe crackdown against the Syrian opposition. In May 2006, severalhundred Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals signed a document titled "The Beirut-Damascus Declaration/Damascus-Beirut Declaration." The declaration depicted the deterioration in relations between the two countries in the past months, and set out measures that must be taken in order to rectify these relations "from the root." The Syrian authorities' hostile response to the declaration was manifested in scathing articles in the government daily newspapers critical of the declaration and of the intellectuals who signed it, as well as in a wave of arrests of some of these intellectuals. Twelve Syrian signatorieswere arrested and seventeen others were removed from their posts

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because they had signed the declaration. Simultaneously, leading human rights activist Anwar al Bunni was arrested for initiating a center for human rights training that was sponsored by the EU. In actual fact, 2006 witnessed the end of the tolerance which theregime had shown since 2000, but especially since the assassination of Hariri in 2005. Some Syrians believe that the July War between Hezbollah and Israel marked the beginning of theend for the American backed effort “to reform the region”, which ever since has been in retreat and on the defensive.

At that time, the Syrian MB’s political position ebbed and flowed. In October 2005, it joined the Damascus Declaration. But it took the group only a couple of months to surprise its allies in the DD. On the very last day of 2005, Syria’s former Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam broke with Assad, after serving theregime for decades. On March 17, 2006, the exiled MB leaders and Abdul Halim Khaddam, together with some liberal and former communist individuals, formed a united front to establish a transitional government to bring about "regime change" from President Bashar al-Assad to democracy.62 The National Salvation Front (NSF) was quite a surprise to the political parties which formed months before Damascus Declaration as an umbrella for the entire opposition. DD leaders were particularly disappointed because the MB leaders did not consult with them before merging with another group.

The new alliance was received with mixed feelings. The majority of the Syrian opposition parties were unsatisfied with the new alliance. The Damascus Declaration felt “puzzled,” and The DD’s old man, Riad at-Turk, lambasted Khaddam for his involvement in crimes committed by the Assad regime and warned that this alliance would cause internal disputes within the opposition.63 But Bayanouni brushed aside the complaints in a June 2006 interview, stressing that the MB was still a member of DD and of the new alliance alike:64

62 Reuters, March 17, 2006.63http://www.meforum.org/3198/syria-muslim-brotherhood#_ftnref22 64http://syriamonitor.typepad.com/news/2006/06/bayanouni_inter.html

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“We are members of the [Damascus] declaration and members ofthe NSF, and we asserted that membership in the NSF does notconflict with membership in other alliances or fronts… We are now in the midst of a peaceful opposition to bring aboutdemocratic change in the country, and we are willing to partner with all the national groups.”65

A cable that has been leaked on Wikileaks and was allegedly authored by the then-US Charge d’Affaires claimed that the NSF had received mixed reviews from civil society activists and otherSyrian politicians. Activists distanced themselves publicly from the NSF, but some of them “took a more nuanced position privately, maintaining that former VP Abdul Halim Khaddam, while not acceptable as the leader of the opposition, could play a useful role in weakening the regime.” Damascus Declaration signers expressed

“Varying degrees of concern about the extent to which Khaddam's effort would divide the opposition and pointed to differences between the Declaration's program and that of the NSF. Several also voiced puzzlement and disappointment over the motivations of the Muslim Brothers in signing on tothe NSF. One contact noted that Khaddam is serving a useful role in attracting anti-regime support from key Alawite figures who were pillars in the regime of Hafez al-Asad, while many contacts simply expressed puzzlement about what Khaddam is really up to.”66

A Syrian politician makes a compelling case that these events were primarily driven by regional politics and US foreign policy,rather than domestic factors. Mohammad Sayyed Rasas, an anti-Western/anti-Israeli communist leader, cites the US invasion of 65 Cited in: Talhamy, Yvette: The Muslim Brotherhood Reborn, available at: http://www.meforum.org/3198/syria-muslim-brotherhood

66Cable published in al Akhbar, and available at: http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/11326

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Iraq and subsequent democracy promotion, the US position in favorof “political change” in Syria, and communications between the Egyptian embassy and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as factors encouraging the Syrian Brotherhood’s efforts to moderate and establish a relationship with Washington.67

If this argument is true, it explains the next surprising step which the Muslim Brothers made. During the Israeli war on Hamas ruled Gaza, in the winter of 2008-2009, the MB seemed to review its political position again. It announced that it would suspend its opposition activities against the Syrian regime, in the lightof the Syrian support for Hamas—the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. In April, the MB formally announced its withdrawal from the NSF, in response to what it described as “a campaign of fabrications and accusations,” which was launched against it by certain parties in the NSF after declaring the suspension of its opposition activities against the Syrian regime. This triggered a sharp reaction from the major MB partner, Khaddam, who said that the MB was “a burden” on the NSF and that the MB was “currently holding dialogue with the Syrian regime through a security committee set up especially for this purpose.”68

The MB’s surprising step to suspend its struggle against the regime was met with little enthusiasm by the Syrian opposition inside Syria. The Brothers’ withdrawal from the NSF was met with indifference. Many did not actually understand the real reason behind the break up. According to Joshua Landis, the alliance between Bayanouni and Khaddam was concluded for strategic reasons“that no longer make sense.” This is why it had to reach an end. “Bayanouni thought that Khaddam would be able to split the SyrianBaath Party and bring secular Syrians over to the side of the opposition . . . and bring the support of Saudi Arabia and the March 14 Coalition in Lebanon to the side of the Muslim 67Rasas, Mohammad Sayed, in an article in an Nahar Newspaper, cited by: http://orientelux.com/?p=3468Asharq al Awsat, April 6, 2009, available also on: http://vvanwilgenburg.blogspot.com/2009/04/asharq-al-awsat-syrian-muslim.html

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Brotherhood.”Khaddam, who failed in doing that, turned to be a “millstone around Bayanouni’s neck,” and Bayanouni decided that he should no longer continue his alliance with Khaddam.69

The MB’s step could have been a golden chance for the Syrian regime to make a historic reconciliation with its historical opponent. But the regime did not.

4.2 Good bye Bayanouni: good bye moderation?

President Bashar al Assad, who is well known for making more enemies than friends, did not take this opportunity. Law 49 continued to exist, MB cadre continued to be banned from returning to their homeland, and dealing with the MB remained taboo. The MB found itself in an awkward situation: it was losingrespect among the people and other opposition groups. It has to make a new shift. The MB decided to sacrifice the very person whochanged the group’s image and put it again on the political track: Ali Sadruddin al Bayanouni, the three-term superintendent,decided to step aside. In July 2010, the General Shura Council ofthe Syrian MB convened in Istanbul and elected a new superintendent. But this was not just any superintendent.

The Shura Council elected no one else but one of the military leaders of the 1980s, and seconded him with a deputy superintendent of the same background. The new Superintendent, Mohamad Riad Shakfeh, is an engineer who was born in Hama and wasone of the MB’s top leaders during the continuous fight between the city and the government in the 1980s. He fled the country to Iraq, where he lived until the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Ina quick comparison with al Bayanouni, one will notice that Shakfeh lacks the flexibility and pragmatism, and also the charisma, of Bayanouni. Seconded by a hard-liner, Farouk Tayfour,he was clearly to take the MB in a different direction that his predecessor had. In addition, while Bayanouni lived in England

69http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=2627

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and was exposed to the Western lifestyle and adopted the notion of ‘accepting the other,’ Shakfeh lived in Iraq for more than 30 years, and must have absorbed Saddam Hussein’s manners. A renowned opposition figure has recently described him as “a ferocious struggler in the Fighting Vanguard,” who led a “Hamwi coup within the MB against the Aleppines,” and refrained from attending the meeting of the MB Command under Bayanouni.70

The revolutionary change within the group was also criticized by a Liberal Islamist, whose father is an MB leading member. Najib Ghadban lamented that the Group might lose the “widespread acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood by other opposition forces.”71

Shakfeh, Ghadban adds, like the new Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood elected in January 2010, Mohammad al-Badii, was not apublic figure before being voted into office. This may reflect the narrowing political horizons in Egypt and Syria, and suggeststhat both organizations might prioritize educational and charitable tasks over political ones.72

Time did not test Shakfeh’s real intentions, as it was just months after his elections that the revolutions broke out in Tunisia and Egypt, and later the spar006Be moved to Libya, Yemen and Syria.

5. The Syrian Revolution of2011

5.1 Peaceful revolution

70Assafir, August 4, 2012, available in Arabic on: http://www.assafir.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=357&EditionId=2221&ChannelId=5326571Ghadbian, Najib: Syria's Muslim Brothers: Where to next?, The Daily Star, September 17, 2010, also available at: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/Sep/17/Syrias-Muslim-Brothers-Where-to-next.ashx#axzz1hCLqpx3J72Ibid.

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When the uprising broke out, the Syrian opposition was loitering in the background of the political scene. The Damascus Declaration was suffering several problems. Since 2008, twelve ofits leaders were taken to prison for 30 months. The nationalist (pan-Arab) and Marxist member-parties had suspended their membership and activities in the coalition. The government as well was taken by surprise. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2011, President Bashar al Assad said that the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen would not find their wayto his country, as his anti-American positions and confrontation with Israel had left him in better shape with the grassroots in his nation.

The demonstrations opened a battle between the regime and the opposition. They started out peacefully, including people from across the social and cultural spectrum.73 The slogans were general, calling for freedom and political reform. Both government and demonstrators recognized that the battle was not on the ground only, but also in the media. The government expelled all foreign media from the country, and state media portrayed the demonstrators as sectarian thugs who wanted to create chaos and establish an Islamic state. Protesters reached out to the media, creating a new phenomenon, “tanseeqiat”74 – groupsof young activists who participate in demonstrations, document them via mobile phones, and reach out to the media. As the uprising moved from Daraa to most other Syrian cities and villages, tanseeqiat mushroomed and gained popularity among protesters. These small groups of activists, spread across the country, needed to coordinate their efforts, to exchange information, and improve their strategies in reaching the international media. This prompted the tanseeqiat to join and expandtheir efforts, forming a larger loosely structured group that called itself the Local Coordination Committees (LCC). The LCC

73Hassan Abbas, the Dynamics of the Uprising in Syria, the Arab Reform Initiative Website: http://www.arab-reform.net/spip.php?article508074The word tanseeqiah comes from the verb nassaq which means coordinate. For more details on the tanseeqiat and the LCC, please go back to my paper: “The Question of Non-violence in the Syrian Uprising 2011” MELSS 2011

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became a major player on the ground, organizing demonstrations, coordinating the efforts of the activists, exchanging informationthrough a newsroom set up on Skype, and then reaching out to the media with news, videos, and eye witnesses to narrate the unfolding events. But the LCC did not remain the only umbrella that united all the tanseeqiat. It was no longer than a few weeks after its birth that other umbrellas started to exist and claim that they represented the tanseeqiat. This happened because of serious differences in ideological background among the differentopposition groups, as for example between LCC and the General Commission for the Syrian Revolution, as well as personal conflicts. In addition to the tanseeqiat, new small political civilsociety organizations started to emerge. Some of them were genuinely grass-rooted; others were mere vocal experiences which lasted for months or weeks or even days, then faded away.75

As explained above, when the revolution broke out, the Muslim Brothers were suffering from many difficulties: they did not havemany supporters inside Syria, since Law 49 would sentence any member of the group to death. In addition, their image had been blemished, since they announced a truce with the Syrian regime in2008, in appreciation of the Syrian position regarding the Israeli war on Gaza at that time. Months before the uprising, theMB changed their leadership, and instead of a pragmatist, it chose a former fighter in the Group. However, the Syrian MBs werelucky because the Syrian revolution came months after the Egyptian revolution, and thus they learned from the mistakes of their Egyptian counterparts, who in the beginning of the revolution refrained from participation in the protests, and evencriticized the young men and women who died for their revolution--while, as Robert Fisk recalls, “the bearded gentlemenwho run this brave, hitherto sub-clandestine organisation were face-to-face with Omar Suleiman, a former vice-president for the ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, trying to negotiate a

75Sawah, Wael and Kawakibi, Salam: Activism in Syria: Between Non-Violence and Armed Resistance, a chapter in “Taking to the Street,” edited by Lina Khatib and Ellen Lust.

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seat in government.”76 Fisk blames the Egyptian MB of being “only 17 months late.”77 This may not be completely true, but what is true is that the Muslim Brothers led by Mohamad Badiih felt afraid of the revolution that would have ousted their position inthe Egyptian street. They joined the revolution only after it hadachieved its goals and after the regime collapsed. Their step came, as one of their leaders described, “a step behind.”78

A step behind is exactly where the brotherhood has been accused of being during the first two weeks of momentous upheaval in Egypt, two weeks in which the world's oldest Islamist organization found itself out on the sidelines as a new politicalreality unfolded before its eyes.79

The Syria MB had no role whatsoever to play in the beginning of the Syrian revolution, which started in two parallel axes: the secular youth and civil society activists in the cities, and the population of the city of Daraa whose children had been arrested and tortured by a maniacal security commander. The slogans which were raised in the beginning of the revolution prove that neitherthe MB nor any other Islamist group had a role. They called for the unity of the Syrian people, the dignity of all citizens, equality, and reform. Not a single Islamist slogan was raised. But it was thanks to the Syrian regime that the Islamists, including the Muslim Brothers, were not only involved in the revolution, but also on top of its leadership.

From day one, the regime spoke about Salafis who wanted to have Islamic emirates. It asked one of its favorite clerics to appear on televisions, a few days after the Intifada, and tell the Syrians that the President had agreed to fulfill the Syrians’ demands, namely “the re-employment of women wearing the niqab andthe engineers who were distanced from the provinces, the issuance

76 Fisk, Robert: Late for the revolution, Muslim Brotherhood take over Tahrir Square, the Independent, 23 June 2012. 77 Ibid.78Issam el Arian to Jack Shenker and Brian Whitaker, The Muslim Brotherhood uncovered: the Guardian. 8 February 201179 Ibid.

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of a decree to found the Sham Higher Institute for Religious Studies and the delivery of instructions to open religious satellite channels that would sponsor “’the real Islam that is neither inclined toward the east nor the west.’”80

The regime and its Islamist lackey undermined the uprising of honor that called for dignity and freedom to one of Islamist nature and demands. It fulfilled demands that no one had asked for in the early demonstrations. This attitude has helped the Islamists to benefit from the general atmosphere and step forward.

In this several factors helped them. First the MB is well organized and had an active political life in their exile. Second, they have adapted to changes on the political scene, whether in Syrian politics or on the regional level. Third, the Syrian MB is supported by its big sister, the Egyptian MB, and byother MB groups in the region: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine. Fourth, the Group was supported politically and financially by certain regional governments such as Turkey and Qatar.

5.2 En route to the biggest role

Until August 2011, the Muslim Brothers’ role did not exceed that of any other political group. In fact, the entire old political establishment had a little role to play in the Syrian Revolution.The major players were groups of activists who joined their efforts in new opposition movements and organizations that started to work on the ground, both on the political and the civil levels, in order to fill the vacuum that was created by thelingering old opposition.81 The traditional opposition was spending most of its time praising the “revolution youth82,” and

80 http://cdn1.aljaml.com/node/69535 81 For more details, see Sawah, Wael: Syria New Political Player, available at: http://www.iemed.org/observatori-en/arees-danalisi/arxius-adjunts/copy_of_focus-en/67-sawah.pdf82 The opposition oldman Riad al Turk has always repeated that the political parties role now is to support the revolution youth.

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trying to find a place for itself in the new Syria. However, after August 2011, the weight started to move from the demonstrators and their political expressions to the political parties, again, or to the fighting militias. This was a result oftwo factors. The first factor was the escalation which the regimeshowed in attacking the city of Hama, despite all the warnings which regional and international leaders had addressed to President Assad not to do that.83 The second was the pressure exerted by the international community on the opposition to uniteunder one umbrella, in order to facilitate dealing with it.

The marathon of the Syrian opposition to get united is complicated and filled with distrust. Despite all the effort madeby the political parties and by regional and international forces, the opposition is now more divided than it has even been.All the efforts that have been exerted and the conferences that have been held have led to no concrete result. But what is remarkable is that in all these efforts the Muslim Brothers have had a role to play. Starting with the Antalya Conference in April2011 and ending with the Arab League-sponsored opposition meetingin Cairo in June 2012, the Muslim Brothers had representatives and certain power to influence the course of the discussions.

Inspired by the Libyan example, where the Transitional National council played a vital role in mobilizing the international community against the former Libyan dictator, Syrian political activists worked hard to create a similar umbrella. Between August and October 2011 there was a busy movement by different activists to achieve such a goal. In mid-September, a Syrian businessman in exile announced through some activists in Istanbulthe formation of the “Transitional National council” of 94 members, truly representing all political trends. But it appearedthe following day that he had not consulted them before the formation of the body, and most of them announced that they had

83 When Assad was preparing to attack the city of Hama, Turkish PM RecepErdogan announced that he will not allow another Hama massacre to take place. The Syrians now recall this with a smirk. On how Syrians look at Erdogan’s political position see: http://www.todayszaman.com/mobile_detailn.action?newsId=290378

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no connection with the announced council. The Transitional council did not live longer than the time needed to announce it. But it gave a great push to the negotiations that took place in Cairo, Istanbul, Paris, and Doha. During all these negotiation rounds, the Syrian secular parties were trying to reach out for the Muslim Brothers to build up the alliance. The MB in return was trying to use the pragmatic prospect of the group during the al Bayanouni office. All parties were calling for a civil, democratic state, an expression that has been broadly used in theSyrian political literature, to refer to a non-religious state. The Muslim brothers, whether through their mainstream organization or through the offshoot, liberal Islamic movement represented by academics such as Najib al Ghadban and Obayda Nahas, did well in convincing other parties of their good intentions. The current hard-liner MB leader, Riad al Shakfeh, ata certain time looked as if he concurred with the former, more pragmatic leader, Ali Bayanouni, sharing these views. In an interview with Asharq al Awsat, Shakfeh pointed out that the Muslim Brothers are “impressed” by the Turkish experience, and they are more inclined to adopt the Turkish experience than the Iranian experience.84

Bayanouni, as one can imagine, was clearer and more straightforward. In one of his early comments made weeks after the revolution, he confirmed that the protesters called for “nothing more than the recapture of the people's collective senseof dignity, citizenship and freedom.”85 Months later, he recalled the “period [in which] the Muslim Brotherhood fought its battles in a democratic political manner. Its leadership had allies from all strata, including Faris al-Khoury, a Christian it supported as prime minister because he was a capable man and stood above religious and sectarian divides.”86

84Asharq al Awsat, 5/11/2011.85Bayanouni, Ali Sadruddin: “No one owns Syria,” the Guardian April 16, 201186Bayanouni, Ali Sadruddin: “Assad’s myth needs busting,” the Guardian August 3, 2011

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But he was even clearer and more open in his views, when he depicted the Syria to which the MB aspired as “a civil state thatis sovereign and in which the individual enjoys all the fundamental rights guaranteed in international laws and conventions of human rights, without any discrimination on the basis of religion, sect, ethnicity or social background. We seek to build a state founded on a civil constitution with separation of powers, and where all citizens, men and women, will participate in its governance through the ballot box in a free and fair manner that allows the election of the most capable to every office.”87

In an article in the UK Guardian, he reminds his readers that

“The future of democracy in Syria is the subject of manyconcerns: people are worried about the treatment of minorities and women, possible acts of revenge, and the likelihood of transitional justice. Some ask about universal human rights. Others exaggerate fears of religious tyranny. But ultimately all these anxieties – intentionally or unintentionally – only serve the interests of the rapists and child killers of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

We believe the position to take on Assad and his cabal is essentially a moral one. It is no longer a matter of political debate. Syrians must put their case to the court of global public opinion in the following direct manner: Assad, are you prepared to accept thousands of documented crimes, the torture of children and the rape of women by the state apparatus that should protect them?”88

With such a discourse, only far extremists will refuse to talk toand work with the Muslim Brothers. Still, not all the MB’s allieshave full confidence in them. Some are still hesitant. They

87Bayanouni, Ali Sadruddin, The Muslim Brotherhood wants a future for all Syrians, The Guardian, 6 August 201288 Ibid.

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believe that the Muslim Brothers are playing tricks on their partners in the opposition, until the regime falls, at which point they will do as the MB did in Egypt. These skeptical opponents believe that the Muslim Brothers dominate the Syrian National Council (SNC,) but that it tries to play down its growing influence. They circulate footage where Bayanouni himselftalks to his supporters explaining why the MB has decided to givethe SNC leadership to a secular person (Burhan Ghalioun and laterAbdul Baset Seida). In the footage, Bayanouni says: "We nominatedGhalioun as a front for national action. We are not moving now asMuslim Brotherhood but as part of a front that includes all currents.”

This suspicious position is not limited to the secularists. A stubborn liberal Islamist, Fawaz Tello, who spent years in prisonfor his activities during the Damascus Spring, believes that the Muslim Brothers have gained control of the SNC's aid division andthe military bureau, its only important components. He understands the game, which he summarizes as follows: "We bicker while the Brotherhood works. But they still have to work more do to get support on the inside. Lots of clerics, activists and rebels do not want to be linked to them."89

Tello, however, acknowledged that the Brotherhood has clawed backinfluence inside Syria, especially in the cities of Homs and Hamaand the rural province of Idleb on the border with Turkey, hotbeds of the revolt against Assad.90

In addition to the within-the-national-council concerns and thoseof the other opposition groups, there are the concerns that come from the international community. The international community is particularity worried about the future of the Syrian non-Sunni 89 Fawaz Tello to Reuters, available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/us-syria-brotherhood-idUSBRE84504R20120506 90 Reuters: -Syria's Muslim Brotherhood rise from the ashes, May 6, 2012; available at: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-06/business/sns-rt-syria-brotherhoodfeaturel5e8g37c5-20120506_1_brotherhood-leader-rule-of-hafez-al-assad-president-bashar

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communities in the country. Although the National Council has on several occasions reassured the country's minorities about the consequences of a possible fall of the Assad regime, and repeatedthat “their rights would be protected,” there is little confidence from the Syrian minorities and the international community about this. SNC President Abdul Basset Seida has recently said that a “future Syria will be pluralist, middle-class and democratic,” stressing that his group wants to reassure“all people,” but also “to please the international community. Wesee this as a national necessity.” Still, concerns have not fadedaway. This is partly because of the escalating sectarian strife that has become clear in the political discourse of many fightingmilitias on the internet, but also because of their on-the-groundpractices.

Mindful of international fears of Islamists taking power, and of the worries of Syria's ethnic and religious minorities, the Syrian Brotherhood added another effort to its repertoire, when it published yet another new charter in March 2012. The new ‘Charter and Pledge’ calls for a “civil state” and professes its commitment to democracy and equality, among other things. It pledges to "endorse a civil constitution that protects the rightsof individuals and groups". It is seeking to establish a republicwith a parliamentary system ahead of a democratic state. It also calls on the state to guarantee equality between men and women, as well as to protect human rights such as "dignity, equality, freedom of speech and religion, political participation and social justice". The group pledges "to abolish segregation and torture, and [to] protect individual freedoms in both the privateand the public spheres".

It further underlines its commitment to fight terrorism and says that pro-regime and opposition fighters arrested in the unfoldingconflict have a right to "just trials under an independent and transparent judiciary system" once the uprising draws to a close.91

91 ‘Charter and Pledge’, issued by the MB Group on March 25, 2012. See the text in Arabic on the MB official website

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The new charter has been well received by many opposition supporters, who view it as a sign that the Brotherhood—which is the largest component of the SNC—is a moderate organization. However, concerns have not been completely assuaged, as some worry not about what is within the charter, but about what is left out. Other non-MB leaders in the SNC also hailed the Charter, stressing that it comes at a time when many are raising skepticism about the future of Syria with regard to minority rights, reconciliation or retaliation, rule of civil law versus religious law, and so forth.

Still, even secular civil society activists felt relieved readingthe charter. Maan Abdul Salam, a civil society activist, explainswhy the charter did not mention separation between religion and the state. He says that the Muslim Brotherhood “did not envisage an Islamic state and stressed that it mentioned secularism in a similar charter as far back as 2001.”92

5.3 The Muslim Brothers get armed: anew?

On August 3, the UK Daily Telegraph blew up a surprise when it published an article claiming that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has established its own militia inside Syria as the country's rebels fracture between radical Islamists and their rivals. The paper said that the new militia is called “Armed Men of the Muslim Brotherhood” and exists in Damascus as well as in opposition hot spots like Homs and Idleb.93

The story spread like wildfire, but it could have faded away, as the source of the story was an unknown cadre in the group. Two things kept the story alive. First, it was not denied by a high level MB source. Instead, it was denied by a low level cadre, Mohamad Sarmini, who told the Anadolu News Agency that the MuslimBrothers support the unity of the Syrian Free Army, and cannot

http://www.ikhwansyria.com/92http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=380937 93 The Daily Telegraph, August 3, 2012

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therefore form their own militias.94 Second, an active young leader of the MB, Mulham Droubi, confirmed the story to the London-based Asharq al Awsat. Droubi told the paper that battalions were created three months ago and are deployed across Syria, but “especially in areas with intense fighting.” But Droubi, who refused to reveal who was arming the forces, was quick to stress that his militias operated under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, which functions as a regular army but is composed of semi-independent units.95

As Elhanan Miller describes this, it was “the first public acknowledgment of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood taking part in fighting on the ground.”96 The precise number of combatants in thebattalions is unknown. Coming from Droubi himself, this was also significant, as the man is known to have close relations with theSFA.

5.4 Where is the international player?

An activist blogger wrote on Facebook: “I have three wishes: thatthe Syrian Free Army be free; the Syrian National council be national; and the Syrian revolution be Syrian.” This blog explainhow the nature of the Syrian revolution has changed over the pastmonths. It also reflects the Syrian activists’ frustration at thenegative role which regional and international forces are playingin the revolution.

President Assad refused to give up power, no matter what the cost, but he has not been able to ensure his regime’s survival without foreign aid. This has pushed him to seek international and regional support, namely from Russia, China, Iran, and Iraq. In response, certain regional powers such as Turkey, Qatar and

94http://www.aa.com.tr/ar/world/70386 95Asharq al Awsat, August 5, 2012.96Elhanan Miller, Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood Confirms it has Battalions Fighting Assad, THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, August 5, 2012, http://www.timesofisrael.com/syrian-muslim-brotherhood-forms-fighting-battalions-movement-spokesman-acknowledges/.

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Saudi Arabia in cooperation with the United States and European states have formed the other camp. This has changed the nature ofthe struggle in Syria from a revolution against Assad and the Baath regime into a regional conflict. The revolution that started peacefully turned violent, and the nonviolence movement that dominated the first phase of the uprising retreated to the background. The Syrian uprising came as Sunni-Shiite strife was peaking, after the war in Iraq and the rise of Shiism in the region. Both Iran and the al Maliki-led Iraqi government found ita good opportunity to rally a broader alliance against the Sunni camp led by Saudi and Jordan.

The international community has been divided. The UN Security Council has failed several times to address the right message to the Syrian regime. Moreover, the anti-Assad camp proved to lack planning. As a western diplomat has put it in, the West not only did not have a plan B, but also did not have plan A. In addition,the West did not have a coherent policy nor did it have a harmonyamong its states. Apparently, Lars Schall puts it in, the United States “can no longer afford financially some certain types of adventures and has reached the limits of its influence, while theRussians and the Chinese don’t want to be told what to do in the Middle East”97The Syrian revolution took everybody by surprise, including the Western countries, which had not expected that the Arab spring could reach Syria.98 When the first protests started in Damascus and Daraa, little reaction was made by high ranking Western officials. The first reactions made later were ambiguous and did not have a long-term vision. In the beginning, they condemned the “unacceptable" crackdown against peaceful protests in Syria that has resulted in deaths, injuries and arbitrary detentions.” (Reuters, March 22, 2011). But the events in Syria developed faster than the Western governments expected, and, therefore, there was some haste, and unstudied positions that either went further than the political demands of the demonstrators, or lagged behind them. These positions were influenced by the position of the Syrian opposition in exile and 97http://www.larsschall.com/2012/09/21/on-syria-and-way-beyond 98 A European high level diplomat to the author, June, 2011

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the influential regional powers that wanted to use the Syrian revolution to settle accounts with Bashar al Assad.99Western discourses collated from criticizing President Assad to calling on him to lead the reforms, and then to denouncing Assad’s regimeas “illegitimate,” and finally to calling on Assad to step aside.On August 18, 2011, President Obama said, "We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside."100

During this time, the Western countries imposed sanctions on the Syrian regime, recalled their ambassadors, closed their embassies, and escalated their discourse against Assad. This created a deep conviction among the Syrian opposition, demonstration leaders, and ordinary people that the internationalcommunity could accept that Assad’s regime would survive and prevail over the rebelling people.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, too, repeatedly said he “would not allow another Hama disaster,” and promised that he would make Assad pay for the massacres his army had committed during the revolution.101

However, this boom did not last long. The Syrian regime committeda series of massacres, which no one even tried to prevent. As Mark LeVine recently eloquently explains, the US and Europe have let it be known that they will not intervene on behalf of the Syrian people as they did in Libya. We do not know what promises the Gulf states that are the main military backers of the armed opposition have given to the Free Syrian Army or other armed factions, but it's clear they are either not interested in toppling the government at this point, or are being pressured by 99Syria's ties with the Gulf nations have been strained in the past – Assad once called Saudi King Abdullah and other Arab leaders "half men" for being critical of Hezbollah over the 34-day war between the LebaneseShia militant group and Israel in 2006.100http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/18/sources-us-call-for-assad-departure-imminent101See: http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=286543

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the US (and perhaps Israel) not to provide more direct support. Otherwise they would have provided the FSA and other armed groupswith anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles that would have changed the balance of forces between the two sides towards the rebels' favor.102

The international position has been currently welcomed with sarcastic comments from the Syrian activists. Politicians, civil society leaders, bloggers, and activists have repeatedly been quoted as saying that the Syrian people have been left alone in their battle and that they should not rely on any promises from the world to intervene to protect them. Fouad Ajami publicly accuses President Obama of leaving the Syrian people alone.103

A Syrian writer and activist makes a case against the West when he explains how the west has betrayed even the principles it had set for itself. One of these principles is the Responsibility to Protect. The “current Syrian crisis is a perfect case study of how the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) could beused to justify international intervention.104

In contrast with these fluctuating political positions regarding the Syrian people and the Syrian regime, the Muslim Brothers receive constant support (financially and otherwise) from regional powers, including but not limited to Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, in addition to wealthy conservative Syrian businessmen in the Gulf and other parts of the world. As a result, while the international position is another factor weakening most of the opposition, it is a factor strengthening ofthe Muslim Brothers. In this light, one will not be surprised when one reads Yezid Sayegh’s piece on the Carnegie website, stressing that it is the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood that is most likely to channel the financial and humanitarian assistance 102LeVine, Mark Should the Syrian revolutionaries have taken up arms?, AlJazeeranet, October87, 2012, available at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210718135394526.html103http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/opinion/commentary-obama-has- left-the-syrian-people-on-the/nRM3K104Haid, Haid: The International Community and the Syrian Revolution, available at: http://www.lb.boell.org/web/52-875.html

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pledged by the Friends of Syria to those in need in the country—and consequently to reap the political benefits. The Brotherhood has the most extensive support network inside Syria and, for thatreason, runs the SNC’s relief and development projects bureau, which receives outside aid.105

6. Will the Muslim Brothers prevail?

After all, will the Muslim Brothers have the upper hand in the future Syria? This question of course implies that Assad’s regimewill definitely fall, and that a transitional period will follow this fall. Well, first of all this might not be the case. When the protests began in Syria, many believed that the Assad regime couldn’t survive long. This included Syrian protesters, opposition, and international powers. Eighteen months later, theyproved to be wrong. The regime proved that it is not as fragile as the Tunisian regime, as wise as the Egyptian, or as clever as the Yemeni. It was as stubborn and cruel as the Libyan, but Syriadoes not have oil or other attractions that would encourage the super powers to tell Assad “Now, means now!”106 With the persistence of the West in its policy of arming the Syrian rebelsbut not going further in making a historic decision to put an endto the crisis of the Syrians, and with the determination of Russia to continue supporting the regime, the status quo can go for moths and maybe years. The regime can rely on the “excellently trained and best-equipped Republican Guards and the 4th Armored Division – elite troops.”107 And there might come a time, when the people decide that they cannot go further, and theregime will prevail: over ruins? Maybe! If this happens, Syria’s future will be darker than anyone can imagine. The infrastructureis destroyed, the social fabric is torn, and no regional or international power will be willing to help rebuild the country.

105Sayegh, Yezid: The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Holds the Exile Key, available at: http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/04/19/coming-tests-of-syrian-opposition/acqs#

106 During the Egyptian revolution, President Obama was quoted as tellingMubarak that "the time for change had come, adding that "Now means now.”107http://www.larsschall.com/2012/09/21/on-syria-and-way-beyond

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This is possible but – so far – not inevitable. There are other possibilities. One of them is of course that the Syrian people win the game, if the international community decides that there is no time for the luxury of waiting and leads a historic positive intervention that will overthrow the regime before it istoo late for the components of Syrian society to form a new future for the country. Until now, there is still hope that history will go in this direction. And then the question above, ‘will the Muslim Brothers prevail?’ needs to be addressed.

To answer the question we need to consider several facts:

1. Syrian society is, as it is widely known, a combination of ethnicities, religions, sects, and factions. Although Arabs form the ethnic majority and Sunnis form the religious majority, neither is an overwhelming majority that can dominate the entire scene.

2. Sunnis form roughly 65% of the entire population. Alawis are 12%; other Shiite groups’ followers are 3-4%; Christians are 8%; others 1-2%.

3. The ethnic groups are divided between an Arab majority with a good percentage of Kurds (more than 10%) and Assyrians/Syriacs, Armenians, Circassians, and Syrian Turkmen.

4. Sunnis do not follow one school. They are divided among secularists and the observants; Sufis and Salafis; liberals and conservatives. Then each group is divided into sub-schools. The major division among Sufis, between Naqshbandis and Rifaiishas created two huge institutes (Abul Nour and al Fatah) that do not have good feelings towards each other.

5. Politically, the Muslim Brothers are not the only political expression of the Muslims in Syria. Other Islamist groups have existed or appeared in Syria, including militant Salafis and the Islamic Party of Liberation (Hizb al-Tahrir).Founded in 1953, theIslamic Party of Liberation (IPL) is a pan-Islamic political organization, which is commonly associated with the goal of all Muslim countries unifying as an Islamic state or caliphate ruled

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by Islamic law and with a caliph head of state elected by Muslims. The fighting Salafi groups which emerged during the revolution are getting more momentum every day. On the other hand, the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD) in Syria is a new Islamic movement that was founded in 2006 in London, UnitedKingdom. It adopts a liberal discourse and describes itself as "committed to peaceful, democratic change in Syria, and the creation of a modern state which respects human rights and promotes economic and social development."108As Yezid Sayegh explains, the Brotherhood has been at pains to reassure foreign audiences and Syria’s minorities that it represents “the moderateIslamic trend” and that it “is present in all Syrian governorates.”109

6. Historically, Syrian Muslims did not tend to be extremists. Actually, an expression that is used in Arabic, al Islam al Shami, which means the Syrian Islam, is usually used to refer to moderate Islam. Although some Islamic extremists, such as Ibn Taymiyah, lived and taught in Damascus, the inclination over the centuries was towards a more liberal Islam.

If we take the above given data, one can rightfully conclude thatif a democratic process starts today in Syria, Islamists may get the highest score, but they may not be able to achieve a comfortable majority that enables them to change the face of the country. It is not only “arithmetic”, but also geometry, psychology, and history. What looks now like an Islamist hegemonymay prove to be a facade of the revolution after its shift towards violence. The Islamists who appear strong and in control are in fact divided and at odds in many aspects. Still, the Muslim Brothers form the biggest Islamic party among the Islamistforces. There is no doubt that they will benefit from the regional atmosphere: Turkish and Qatari support and the success of the MB in Tunisia and Egypt. But there is no guarantee that this will automatically make them enjoy a majority in a possible 108 For more information about the MJD, see “What we stand for,” an introductory article on MJD website: http://www.forsyria.org/What_westandfor.asp109Sayegh.

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coming election. Being a political expression that is limited to the Sunnis in Syria will consequently deprive them of almost all the non-Sunni votes. Kurds, who have their separate agenda, are not expected to support the MB, even though they are mostly Sunnis themselves. Other Sunni political expressions will competewith the MB for a share of the Sunni cake. And liberal and secular Sunnis will certainly lend their support to other political entities than the MB. Finally, the MB itself is not a solid bloc, and internal differences may affect their performancebefore and during the democratic process.

7. Conclusion

In a way, a good part of the Syrian history relates to the conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Baath Party and their competition on the Syrian middle class. Although both groups parted from their original ideological and social backgrounds, the conflict only increased. The Baath shifted from representing mainly the lower rural middle class to be the façadeof the new oligarchy that has ruled the country in the past two decades. The Muslim Brotherhood also transformed several times. The first transformation of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was that from a movement that participated in parliamentary politics and democratic processes into a movement that became notorious for its violence, terror, and sectarianism. This partly resulted from the political exclusion and repression. The second was afterBashar al Assad came to power in 2000. As Filor Nigoghosian explains much of the literature on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood focuses on the period of violent rebellion without bridging the gap between the phase where the Brotherhood participated peacefully within the system and the phase of violent rebellion against the system. While this literature is quite accurate, onecannot just ignore the repeated pledges the MB has made in the past decade. Still, the recent position of the MB during the revolution is confusing. While it continues reassuring non-Sunnisand the liberal partners in the SNC, it does not spare one effort

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to demonstrate its influence inside the SNC and the political scene.

On the other hand, the MB looks a moderate Islamic power in comparison with other Salafi groups, such as the Islamic Party ofLiberation (IPL) and the para-al Qaeda terrorist groups. IPL seesthat the Syrian revolution is “distinctly Islamic” and Syrian regime is certainly going to fall, but only to be succeeded by Islamic Caliphate. It looks at the opposition as an agent of the West, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Other groups, such as the Jabhat al-Nusra li-Ahl al-Sham (Support Front for the Syrian People,) are not just concerned with the end of the Assad regime. Rather, they aim to enforce a militant Salafi agenda. It also has been blamed for suicide attacks in the predominantly civilian areas. The regime is helping empower the most radical jihadists through its media and through the pressure it exerts on traditional Salafism, most of whom shifted to Jihadi Salafism in their detention centers. Conversely, some Islamic groups that existed after Bashar al Assad assumption of power, such as the Justice and Reconstruction Movement and the Democratic Islamic Current, have decayed and split to smaller groups and lost the already little influence they have.

Based on that, this paper claims that the Muslim brotherhood is the strongest representative of the moderate political Islam. It therefore suggests that the MB needs to stick to its charter which it issued last March, and to go one step further in accepting laws adopted through democratic procedures, even thoughif they violate the Sharia. In return, liberal and secular forcesneed to acknowledge that the MB is a part of the political scene in Syria and that it represents a wide spectrum of the Syrian Muslim people. Both the liberal and the MB need to work together to overthrow the regime and replace it with a democratic government on the one hand and to stop the direct threat that radical, Jihadi Islam is imposing on Syria and the region.

In return, the liberal forces need to understand that involving certain Islamic elements in the political process will foster

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their very liberal principles, while eschewing these Islamic groups will push them towards adopting more violence as their only hope. It is imperative to take in consideration, as a Carnegie Endowment paper has recently concluded, the tension between the “open-minded, often younger generation members who think the situation requires new tactics and the old guard” wherethe outcome “will determine the future of political reform.” In fact, as Larry Diamond says, there is little hope for democratization in the Arab world without some measure “of accommodation at least some substantial segments of political Islam.”

The paper also suggests that the Syrian revolution has put an endto the historic competition between the MB and the Baath party over the middle class. As a matter of fact, the Baath Party itself has finished as a political entity. The revolution proved that, unlike the 1980s where the Baathis played an essential rolein combating the Muslim Brothers, the Baath this time proved thatit is no more than a banner for the new Syrian oligarchy that rues the country since the mid 1990s. If this is the case, it isfair to assume that the competition era has ended, and that the MB needs now to go beyond its historic social background and to expand its constituency both vertically and horizontally.

This paper argues that one aspect of the concept post Islamism iscorrect. Post Islamism refers to the era where Taliban diminishesits acts from bombing the two Buddhist statues to shooting (and not even killing) Malala Yousafzai, a 14 year old school girl whochallenged and sacred the Movement and al Qaeda degrades its operations from hitting the Trade Center to trivial operations inYemen and, maybe Syria. Ben Laden was taken out; Saeed al Shihri was removed; and al Zawahri is hidden somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan contemplating his diminishing influence. The Muslim Brothers in the Arab region, who accomplished victory in the elections, understand that it was the liberal revolutions that enabled them to achieve that. They understand that it is dangerous for them to change now the game rules.

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Finally, only a new broader political understanding that does not shun the MB but insist on pushing it into deeper democratization, a political understanding in which the MB acknowledges the equal rights for all the Syrian based on the principle of citizenry, and regardless of the gender, religion and ethnicity, could rescue the future of this country from two dark scenarios: the victory of the regime, or a long chaos that would fuel the most extremist terrorist Islamic groups.

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