Resources on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood

I wanted to put in a link to Anthony Shadid’s informative recent interview with Syrian MB head Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni (also here).
Shadid wrote:

    “Syrian society today is destroyed,” [Bayanouni] said. “The primary aim right now is to transform society into a new era where political and democratic life will be rebuilt.”

About the MB’s political plans, Shadid wrote:

    “The organization is not going to be an alternative to this regime,” [Bayanouni] said. “The alternative will be a broad-based national government to which the Muslim Brotherhood will contribute, as does any other political force.”
    Among the various Syrian political factions — Islamic activists, Arab nationalists, Syrian nationalists, communists and other leftists — nearly every party has abandoned the revolutionary, generation-old notion that it alone can serve as the agent of change. The Baath Party has not; the constitution still declares it “the leading party of both the society and the state.” In Bayanouni’s words, and in a spate of declarations, the Brotherhood has forsworn that role, mirroring reforms of the group in other countries including Egypt and Jordan.
    In 2002, Bayanouni published a national charter that called for a democratic state and rejected violence. In 2004, the Brotherhood disavowed the idea that “we consider ourselves to be the movement that represents all Muslims.” In the same document, it endorsed women’s rights and said it would seek only the gradual introduction of Islamic law, leaving the actual legislation to elected representatives. (Requiring women to wear the veil, segregating education or banning alcohol “are not a priority at this point,” Bayanouni said in the interview.) A year later, in a National Call for Salvation, the Brotherhood disavowed revenge for past crimes and called for political parties and free elections.
    Last month, it joined secular and minority opposition groups in endorsing what was called the Damascus Declaration, a four-page manifesto hailed by a still-feeble Syrian opposition as a blueprint for an alternative to Assad’s government and a first for cooperation between secular and religious activists.
    “The Muslim Brotherhood,” Bayanouni said, “is ready to accept others and to deal with them. We believe that Syria is for all its people, regardless of sect, ethnicity or religion. No one has the right to exclude anyone else.”
    …
    At his home in London, Bayanouni talks about returning to the alleys of Jubaila, the quarter of Old Aleppo where he grew up. His father died while in prison in 1975, his mother after he went into exile in 1979. But, he said smiling, he will visit the rest of his family. “There are relatives I don’t even know,” he said.
    For some Islamic activists, years in the West radicalize them, reinforcing their alienation in a culture that’s 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.”
    And in that is perhaps one of the greatest ironies of Arab politics today. To a remarkable degree, albeit with different inflections and still untested, some secular and religious activists are speaking a common language of citizenship and individual rights in the face of authoritarian governments. Bayanouni … said he wanted to see “a civil state based on democratic institutions.”
    “The religion of the majority is Islam, and the ethnicity of the majority is Arab,” he said. “Those are facts on the ground, but citizenship is the base on which people should interact. Whatever is the result of the democratic process should be accepted.”

Here is the Wikipedia’s entry on the MB in Syria.
Here is a very informative mid-August interview with Bayanouni, on the Jamestown Foundation website. Nearly all the articles linked to at the top of that page are also informative.

8 thoughts on “Resources on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood”

  1. “…nearly every party has abandoned the revolutionary, generation-old notion that it alone can serve as the agent of change. The Baath Party has not”, you write.
    You’re going to think I’ve got something against you today Helena. I’m sorry about that, but I do find this statement extraordinary.
    All politics is about alliances, and especially all revolutionary politics. The literature from Machiavelli through Clausewitz, Marx, Engels, Lenin to the African and Asian revolutionaries of recent decades, is full of it.
    Are you telling us that Syria is an exception to all this? I can hardly believe it, and not at all without more backing.
    I’m afraid it sounds as if you are setting up the Ba’ath Party for exclusion, but in the name of combination.
    In South Africa the ANC has something like 70% of the vote, in Parliament and in the country. It is true that it is not written into the Constituion of the republic. But the basis of our massive support is the tripartite alliance of the ANC, the SACP, and the biggest trade union federation, COSATU. In which alliance the ANC is specifically termed the leading force.
    It’s not so different to the Ba’ath Party. In our case, it is precisely because of this leading role of the ANC that we are able to constitute the alliance in a stable form. The ANC-led alliance has successfully kept the peace since 1994.
    The Syrian government needs a united front to oppose the imperialists and maintain the peace of the country. A combination that excludes the governing party at this time is exactly the opposite to what the country needs. It’s playing with fire to even think of such a thing. It’s playing into the hands of the imperialists.

  2. “…nearly every party has abandoned the revolutionary, generation-old notion that it alone can serve as the agent of change. The Baath Party has not”, you write.
    Dominic– that wasn’t me– that was Shadid!!!
    I am so sorry if the formating I used there did not make that clear??
    I read with great open-ness and sympathy what you wrote on the last post and (the rest of) what you wrote here. These aren’t easy questions, and I’ve wrestled with them. We should discuss this a lot more.
    I should, actually, write a lot more about the way I view Syrian politics than I’ve had a chance to recently.
    But at least, I hope you and everyone else is clear about which judgments are attributable to me and which are expressed by Anthony Shadid…
    Here, btw, is a longish piece I wrote on the topic in early 2003.

  3. I beg your pardon, Helena. I see my mistake and that I was hasty. I hope you and the readers of JWN will forgive me.
    No, it’s quite clear which is quote an which is you.
    What is still not clear to me is what this interview signifies. I think it did need more introduction, because it is weird. For example, the line about this Muslim Brother learning to accept “the other”. “The other” is pure post-modernism and the mixture of Muslim Brotherhood and Po-Mo is just too ridiculous.
    It makes me suspect, or more than suspect, that this al-Bayanouni is an ingratiating creep and the interviewer Shadid is conniving with him to put out a bit of PR for the Muslim Brothers along the lines that they are now “moderates” acceptable to “the West” as against the hard-line Ba’athists who are incorrigible and therefore probably deserve the white phosphorus “shake and bake” treatment.
    It’s too trite. I do wish you would write a bit more about it. I don’t know enough about Syria, but I do know that there are plenty of articulate people there with a high degree of learning and sophistication.

  4. Ba’athists who are incorrigible and therefore probably deserve the white phosphorus “shake and bake” treatment.
    Dominic, do you promote war against Syria?
    The Ba’ath party or ideology rewarded by the west when Aflaq start his theory and now you asked the west to “shake&Bake” is it ridicules behaviour from the west?

  5. Salah, why don’t you read that whole paragraph again, slowly. It is only one sentence.
    Let me explain a little more. I am saying, first, that the intervieww looks like it is a sweetheart affair between the interviewer Shadid and the Muslim Brother Bayanouni.
    Second, I am saying that their intent is to present the Muslim Brothers as suddenly “moderate” and acceptable to “the West” (the crusaders).
    Thirdly, I am saying that by the same argument and in the same moment they are defining the Ba’ath Party as hard line and intractable.
    Fourthly I am saying that the reason for doing all this would be to justify violent regime change.
    Fifthly, violent regime change where the US are concerned can include the use of “shake and bake” white phosphorus and napalm as well as 500-pound bombs on residential property as well as torture and confinement in secret prisons around the world. I don’t approve of any of those things, as you should know by now.
    Sixthly, for all these reasons it is necessary to be very careful with material that is going into the media. In the case of this interview, which was placed here with very little caveat, I think there could have been more comment, and we do need much more understanding of Syria, which is not behind an “iron curtain”, but rather just ignored.
    Is that clear?

  8. “The idea of the group taking power in Syria has generated considerable unease among Western observers, with some citing recent reports that Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members in Europe have been linked to al-Qaeda and the global jihad.”
    What Role for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria’s Future?
    By Michael Jacobson
    March 11, 2005

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