The Muslim Brotherhood Read online

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  From Diplomacy to Arms and Back to Diplomacy

  The Evolution of the Syrian Ikhwan

  Of all the Brotherhood’s branches, the Syrian Ikhwan has perhaps the most controversial of histories. It is a history of extremes that has been characterised by violence and brutal oppression at the hands of the Syrian state and that has seen the movement go from being the most important Ikhwani branch after the Egyptians to little more than the shell of a leadership in exile. Plagued by internal division and bitter recriminations that have split the movement in two, the history of the Syrian Ikhwan is often written as the story of two competing wings – the Damascus wing known for its moderate outlook and the more militant action-oriented Aleppo wing. Whilst in reality the distinction between these two wings was never as clear-cut as is often made out, the factionalism and rivalry engendered by this division were enough to bring the movement almost to its knees. With so many challenges it is remarkable that the Syrian Ikhwan has been able to survive at all.

  The most controversial element of the Syrian Ikhwan has been its involvement in the bloody events of the early 1980s, culminating in the Hamah massacre of 1982 in which the security forces razed the city to the ground, killing thousands of residents. Although the Ikhwan’s leadership insist that they were not directly involved in or responsible for the violent uprising that prompted the massacre, the conflicting reports and testimonies of the leadership of this era indicate that they played a much more significant role than the official record would suggest. Whilst it is true that the leadership tried to distance themselves from the more extreme tactics used by some of the groups that operated around their margins, the moment it looked as though they were on the brink of a popular revolution, the Syrian brothers proved themselves to be just as impatient as all the other groups seeking to bring down the Ba’athist regime at the time. Interestingly this proved as true for the more moderate Damascus wing as it did for the Aleppo wing. For all the Brotherhood’s protestations that they have never sought to rule but only to instigate gradual change by educating society from below, it seems that once the temptation of power was in their reach they grasped at the chance with both hands.

  Of course this willingness to take up arms did not come out of nowhere. Rather it was the manifestation of a growing radicalisation that developed inside the Syrian Ikhwan during the 1960s and 1970s. This was in part a response to the enormous political and economic upheavals that were taking place within the country at the time, overturning existing social structures and threatening traditional values. Certainly such changes were not unique to Syria during this period, but what differentiated the Syrian case was the fact that the ruling Ba’athist regime that took over in 1963 came to be dominated by the Alawites whilst the majority of the population were Sunni, thereby adding a sectarian dimension to the struggle between ruler and ruled. It is no coincidence that the works of the Syrian medieval jurist Ibn Taymiyyah, whose uncompromising stance against the Alawites, had a particular resonance among the Syrian Ikhwan. Moreover, by the early 1980s the mood of the country was one of revolt with strikes and protests breaking out across the country. Therefore, the Syrian Ikhwan’s increasingly forthright bid to confront the regime was in line with the growing radicalisation of the wider political scene.

  The radicalisation of the Syrian Ikhwan was also in keeping with the emergence of more militant currents in other branches of the Brotherhood at the time, also inspired by the ideology of Sayyid Qutb and his ilk. The Egyptian Ikhwan also underwent a perceptible radicalisation during this period, with groups such as Organisation 65 coming on to the scene. Yet whilst the Egyptians succeeded in shedding many of their more extreme elements, who moved out of the Brotherhood to form their own organisations, the Syrians were never able to cut off ties with their own militants in the same way or to prevent a more wholesale radicalisation of the movement.

  This failing was primarily due to the weakness of the Syrian Ikhwan’s own leadership. From the mid-1960s the leadership had become so embroiled in their own internal battles and power struggles that whilst they busied themselves with these matters, the body of the movement took on a life of its own. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that for much of this period many of the movement’s leaders were absent from the country either by force or by choice. Although the leadership made some efforts to urge moderation and condemn the actions of the more extreme groups that were operating around the Ikhwan’s edges, they were ultimately unable to prevent this slide into militancy. By the time of the Hamah uprising events seem to have completely overtaken the leadership; once they realised what was happening, they could do nothing other than to join in the revolt for fear they would be left behind should the regime actually be brought down.

  This recklessness was to prove disastrous. The Ba’athist regime responded to the challenge by doing its utmost to crush the movement and ended up finishing it off inside the country. Those brothers who managed to escape death or arrest fled the country, leaving the Ikhwan to become nothing more than a movement in exile. Humbled by their experience, with no grass roots support base inside the country, over the past twenty years the Syrian brothers have focused their energies on trying to negotiate their return home. As part of this effort they have sought to reinvent themselves and to turn themselves back into the progressive and open movement that was originally established by their founder Mustafa al-Sibai. In many ways they have achieved this metamorphosis: the reformist platforms that they have put forward in recent years mark them out as perhaps the most progressive of all Ikhwani branches. Yet the Syrian Ikhwan is so tainted by its own past that it has struggled to be taken seriously. It has had to work harder than any other branch to try to prove both to the Syrians and to the rest of the world that it is once again a truly progressive and trustworthy organisation.

  The Early Years: al-Sibai and al-Attar

  Like many other Ikhwani branches, the Syrian Brotherhood emerged out of the ties between Syrian Islamists and members of the Egyptian Ikhwan. Mustafa al-Sibai, the first Syrian General Guide, came from a traditional religious family that had long supplied preachers to the Grand Mosque of Homs and was sent to Al-Azhar in Cairo aged eighteen to study Islamic law. Whilst in Cairo, he came into contact with Hassan al-Banna and became heavily involved with the Brotherhood. He returned to Syria in 1941 and set about trying to draw together the various Islamist groups that had sprung up there under the general banner of the Shabab Mohamed to replicate its counterpart in Egypt. These groups were composed mostly of intellectuals and students and focused their activities primarily on cultural, social and sporting events. Under al-Sibai’s stewardship these groups came together; after a meeting in Aleppo in 1944 they formally adopted the name of the Muslim Brotherhood, appointing al-Sibai as their General Guide. Despite the fact that this new group was the product of an existing indigenous Islamic activism, al-Sibai was more than willing to submit to the authority of Cairo and give baya to his great friend Hassan al-Banna.1

  Al-Sibai soon gained a reputation for his level-headed and enlightened approach, as well as for his openness to others. What he shared in particular with al-Banna was his strong sense of pragmatism. Although he was personally less interested in working in the political sphere, believing that the primary duty of the movement was dawa rather than politics, he was willing for the Ikhwan to contest the 1947 parliamentary elections, in which it won three seats to the parliament. More shockingly for some among the Ikhwan’s ranks, after al-Sibai failed in his efforts to make Islam the official religion of the state in 1949 he was willing to compromise and accept the secular constitution that had been agreed in parliament.

  As with the Ikhwan in Egypt, much of the movement’s appeal lay in its simple message, which held that Islam was a comprehensive ideology that permeated every aspect of life, and also in the fact that its members were viewed as the guardians of tradition in a changing world. Al-Sibai further developed a specifically Syrian agenda that called for an ‘en
d to dependence upon foreign powers, to feudalism and to the domination of the upper class elite’.2 As such the Ikhwan tapped directly into the struggle being played out between the new middle and lower middle classes against the semi-feudal upper class, which had extensive control over trade and was closely allied with the interests of the colonial powers.3 As a result, the movement in Syria drew much of its support base from the Sunni urban trading and artisan classes, who were generally religiously oriented, although it also attracted middle-class professionals. These groups found in the Ikhwan a way to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo and a means of challenging the authority of the established elites.

  Yet at no point did al-Sibai advocate taking up arms against the Syrian state; rather he sought change through social reform. However, his bid to bring about change was cut short in 1957 when a debilitating stroke left him largely incapacitated. He handed leadership of the Ikhwan to Issam al-Attar, who for the few short years of his stewardship of the movement represented perhaps the last voice of the old-style Syrian Ikhwan before it evolved into a more militant organisation.

  Al-Attar, who is from Damascus, started his Islamic activism at the age of eleven when he was first introduced to the Shabab Mohamed. He came from what he describes as ‘one of the oldest religious scientific families’4 and his father was a civil and Sharia judge. When the Shabab Mohamed changed its name to the Muslim Brotherhood al-Attar continued to work with them, although he admits that his contact with them at that time was not especially strong because he was ‘open to all currents of thought in order to discover the true path’.5 However, in 1946 he became a member of the Ikhwan and soon gained a reputation for being extremely well read and intellectually gifted. He was clearly of a similar mould to al-Sibai and sought to take the movement down the same moderate path as its founder.

  However, al-Attar took over the Ikhwan at a time of change; the tolerance that the state had displayed towards the Brotherhood until that time was about to come to an end. In 1958 Syria and Egypt joined forces to form the United Arab Republic. As with the Ikhwan in Egypt, the Syrians initially welcomed Nasser, viewing him as a hero of Arab nationalism and anti-colonialism. Although al-Attar was personally troubled by Nasser’s secular stance, at the beginning of the union most of the Ikhwani leaders in Syria were pro-Nasser.6 However, it wasn’t long before the Syrian Ikhwan was facing the same uncompromising repression that Nasser had imposed upon the Egyptian Ikhwan. The Brotherhood was obliged to dissolve itself and the Syrian regime set up special militias tasked with rooting out members of the movement.7 By the time the ill-fated union dissolved in 1961 the Brotherhood had been greatly weakened.

  Surprisingly, the brutal oppression that the Ikhwan experienced at the hand of the state during the Egyptian-Syrian union did not herald a new radicalism within the movement. Instead, once the union was disbanded, the Brotherhood immediately sought to re-establish itself as a player on the country’s political stage and continued in its path of moderation. The Ikhwan contested the 1961 parliamentary elections, winning ten seats, one of which was taken by al-Attar himself. The Ikhwan was also given four ministries at this time. Therefore, the Syrian Ikhwan’s oft-repeated assertion that militancy within the movement has always been a response to repression – something it uses to explain the bloody events of the 1970s and 1980s – would appear to be somewhat misplaced. As this period demonstrates, there were clearly other factors at play that contributed to the later shift into armed violence.

  Leadership Crisis

  The coming to power of the Ba’athist regime in 1963 heralded the start of an even more difficult period for the Syrian Ikhwan and for Issam al-Attar in particular. Questions began to be asked of the leadership by members of the Ikhwan about how a movement as small and unknown as the Ba’athists had been able to attain power, whilst they were as far away from ruling as ever. As the late Mohamed Hasnawi, who until his death in 2007 had a leading role in the Syrian Ikhwan, explained, at this time ‘self-criticism started spreading as to how the Ba’athists had managed to take power whilst we the stronger group couldn’t manage it. All that criticism was channelled towards Issam al-Attar because he was the guide.’8 Al-Attar came under intense scrutiny and pressure from within the ranks of his organisation.

  However, the situation was to get even worse for both the Ikhwan and its leader. In 1964 al-Attar, who had gone on a trip to Saudi Arabia for the Haj and to attend a conference of the Arab Ikhwan, was prevented from returning to Syria by the authorities. The reason was that one part of the Ikhwan in Hamah, led by Marwan Hadid, had clashed with the authorities in a violent struggle that ended in the siege of the Sultan mosque (see below). As al-Attar said, ‘Marwan was considered to be Ikhwani by the regime at that time and because I was the leader of the Ikhwan they put my name on the list at every entry point.’9

  Al-Attar, who claims that he had no knowledge of Hadid’s actions and only learned about them through the media, found himself stuck in Lebanon where he spent two months in prison before being deported. Unwilling to compromise his independence, he was confused about where to go. ‘I didn’t want to be used by Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states. King Faisal was willing to welcome me but I didn’t want my current to be in the service of anyone else.’10 After a brief stay in Kuwait and several spells in Jordan, in 1967 al-Attar went to Geneva and then to Belgium, but was ultimately to settle in Aachen in Germany.

  Al-Attar’s absence at such a crucial time came as a real blow to the Ikhwani. Whilst they blamed the regime for not allowing him back into the country, they were also frustrated at al-Attar himself for going to Saudi Arabia in the first place. According to Hasnawi, there was much disappointment that al-Attar had travelled outside of Syria without seeking proper permission from the rest of the group and that he had left them without a leader who could guide them as they readjusted to the realities of the new regime. There was a strong feeling that he had left them in the lurch, something that was only compounded when he was prohibited from returning.

  Al-Attar was all too well aware of the problem of trying to lead a movement from exile. ‘When they stopped me from returning to Syria I suggested I should give up the role of Syrian Guide but I was forced to continue. The Syrians insisted that I stay as their General Guide. When I came to Europe I raised the issue of resignation again. The issue of my still being General Guide became so pressing when I came to Europe.’11 Al-Attar’s being forced into exile at such a critical moment in Syria’s political history would have far-reaching implications. His banishment marked the beginning of a long period of absentee leadership that would have disastrous consequences for the movement as a whole.

  The immediate impact of al-Attar’s banishment was to create a vacuum inside the movement that not only led to a leadership crisis but also enabled more militant elements within the group to flourish. As he explained, ‘At that time in Syria there were new currents that had emerged. There were people with different views from me and I was far from the country and I was ill.’12 Other figures inside the Ikhwan inevitably came to play a bigger role and in the absence of a strong leadership the divisions that were already present between the Aleppo and Damascus wings came to the fore.

  Broadly speaking, the Damascus group that was led by al-Attar was quite small and consisted mostly of those from the capital and included figures such as Muwafaq Da’bul, Dr Mohamed al-Hawari (who now resides in Germany) and Dr Hassan al-Huwaidi. It also had some followers from outside of the city. The Aleppo wing on the other hand comprised not only those Ikhwani from the ancient city of Aleppo itself, but also those from other northern cities including Hamah and Homs. It was led by Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuddah and also included Sheikh Said Hawa and Adnan Saad Eddine. The Aleppo wing was always bigger than al-Attar’s Damascus group, largely because there were other Islamist groups active in the capital such as the Sufists and Salafists that competed with the Ikhwan there. Moreover, Aleppo was always a conservative city with a strong religious tradition, making i
ts inhabitants more perceptible to the ideology of the Brotherhood.

  However, this split was not just geographical, it was also ideological. The Aleppo wing, who had a reputation for being tougher and more inclined to action than their brothers in the capital, began to advocate the idea of fighting jihad against the Ba’athist regime. This was rejected by the Damascus wing, who opposed the use of violence on the grounds that it would only bring retribution and destroy the movement. Of course these distinctions were not as clear-cut as is often suggested. As Mohamed Hasnawi explained, ‘Generally speaking the Aleppo wing was more into armed struggle but there was interaction and it was mixed too.’13 Moreover, it is true that much of the rivalry between the two wings concerned administrative issues and turf battles as much as ideological principles. However, it is fair to say that it was out of the Aleppo wing that the push for violence first emerged.

  As tensions with the Ba’athist regime grew, the Aleppo wing became increasingly frustrated at the more moderate and passive stance of the Damascus wing. By the end of the 1960s they were using al-Attar’s exile as an excuse to demand a change of leadership and a change of strategy. At a meeting in 1969 the Aleppo wing, aware of its numerical superiority, demanded al-Attar’s replacement. However, feelings were running so high on both sides that the two wings could not come to an agreement. In 1970 the Murshid in Cairo was forced to step in and set up a special committee to organise an election for a new shura council. Al-Attar’s faction boycotted the elections, refusing to accept anyone other than al-Attar as the General Guide.14 Although the question of who should be the next General Guide was not resolved until 1975 when Adnan Saad Eddine took over, the election marked the formal domination of the Aleppo wing, which had been accepted by the Guidance Office in Cairo. This was to mark the real demise of al-Attar and his Damascus wing that became increasingly marginalised. Al-Attar himself became so disillusioned that he turned his back on the Brotherhood, establishing his own organisation in Europe called al-Talia (the Vanguard). He engaged in this project after a fraught meeting in Lebanon with a delegation from the Egyptian Ikhwan led by Ahmed al-Malat, a known hardliner and member of the Nizam al-Khass.15