The Muslim Brotherhood (10 page)

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.’
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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 its 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.’
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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.
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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.
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As such, the history of the Syrian Ikhwan from the late 1960s until the events of Hamah in the early 1980s was essentially that of
the Aleppo wing. This wing’s hold over the Ikhwan would radically alter the character of the movement that al-Sibai had established and it distinguished the Syrian Ikhwan as the only Brotherhood branch that dared to move from the
dawa
phase to the jihad phase in the struggle to create an Islamic state.

Whilst the Aleppo wing was the driving force for the militarisation of the Ikhwan’s struggle against the regime, it was not the starting point of violent activism. The push for a more militant approach came predominantly from those Ikhwani from Hamah who made up one component of the Aleppo wing. According to Hasnawi, the shift into support for a more violent approach came from the fact that ‘the Hamah branch, which was known historically for force and rigidity and toughness, joined them [the Aleppo wing] and also because of the presence of Said Hawa and Adnan Saad Eddine. They were from Hamah but part of the Aleppo wing.’
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Hamah already had a tradition of conservatism and militant Islamist activism, which had first emerged in the early 1960s. Much of this activism was focused around the Sultan mosque that was the base of the famous Hamah scholar Sheikh Mohamed al-Hamid. Known for his rigidity and uncompromising stance, he had left the Ikhwan on account of Mustafa al-Sibai’s moderate and flexible stance but remained close to the movement. As Syrian Ikhwan Said Hawa observed:

He educated his brothers to love Hassan al-Banna, to love the Muslim Brothers, and to love all the Muslims … He believed that in order to stop the apostasy the Muslims must join hands despite their many controversies. And although he was
a Hanafi Sufi, he had always declared his readiness to put his hand in the hand of the fiercest Salafi to stop this apostasy.
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Al-Hamid was an ardent anti-secularist and anti-nationalist and his ideas had a strong following among Hamah residents who had a reputation for being closed and introverted.

The citizens of Hamah were particularly agitated by the policies of the new Ba’athist regime. They reacted extremely negatively to the influx of newcomers from the countryside that flooded into urban centres during the 1960s. Furthermore, the fact that the new Ba’athist regime was Alawite created particular resentments. There had been a long-standing feud between a number of Alawite peasants who worked the land belonging to rich Hamah landowners who had been officers in the Ottoman army. The coming to power of the Alawites only served to exacerbate existing tensions in the area. Therefore it is not surprising that it was out of the Hamah branch of the Ikhwan that support for a more radical alternative emerged.

However, this more radical approach was not confined to Hamah. The 1960s and 1970s had seen a progressive radicalisation of the Syrian Ikhwan that was in line with the increased radicalism of other Ikhwani branches at the time, inspired by the Islamic revivalist current that was taking hold across the Arab world. It was also a reflection of the fact that some of the Ikhwani who had spent time in the Gulf came under the influence of a more inflexible interpretation of Islam that they then spread among their fellow Ikhwani upon their return to Syria.
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This radicalisation was also a response to the policies of the Ba’athist regime, which were upsetting traditional structures and patterns and threatening certain interest groups. Growing political and cultural disaffection within Syria during the 1960s and 1970s brought the Ikhwan increased popular support, as it sought to articulate the forces of conservative Islam and to represent those parts of society that were most affected by the regime’s policies of nationalisation and
centralisation. These included the professional classes and traders – the Ikhwan’s natural constituency – who were adversely affected by the rise of agricultural co-operatives in rural areas and consumer cooperatives in urban areas.
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The regime’s large-scale land reform and wealth redistribution projects were considered a threat to the very way of life of this class. Urban traders, well known for their conservatism and religiosity, were also perturbed by the flow of migrants coming into the cities from rural areas and upsetting the traditional social balance. Slogans such as ‘Aleppo for the Aleppans’ began to appear in the cities, reflecting this malaise. The Ikhwan was quick to capitalise on this disaffection: as one commentator has described, by the 1960s the Brotherhood had become ‘the most implacable opponents of the Ba’athis and the forward arm of the endangered urban traders’.
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As such it became the staunch defender of the urban middle class against the encroaching rural population. It is perhaps no surprise that many Ikhwani who went on to take up arms against the regime came from traditional conservative urban families.

The Ikhwan also tapped into growing feelings of resentment related to the Alawite nature of the Ba’athist regime. For many Sunnis, the fact that the new regime was dominated by Alawites who represented a minority in a country with a Sunni majority was too much to take. Even the moderate al-Attar commented when the Ba’athists came to power: ‘I saw the sectarian face of that movement’.
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The Ikhwan was therefore able to play on the sectarian dimension of the country’s political landscape to further discredit the regime and to justify taking a more militant stance against it.

Of course not all the Syrian Ikhwani subscribed to this more militant approach; those in the Damascus wing continued to advocate restraint. Yet their voices were increasingly ignored as the more radical current surged ahead and stamped its mark on the movement. As one Syrian Ikhwani noted, ‘This radical
jihadiya
in the Ikhwan wanted to assassinate the approach of al-Sibai. We were studying “Milestones on
the Road” at that time rather than “Preachers not Judges”.’
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The desire to ‘assassinate’ al-Sibai’s teachings was such that his book
Islamic Socialism
was banned within the movement in the 1960s as it was considered too liberal. At this time, young Ikhwani also began reading other radical thinkers including Abu Ala Maududi, Abu Hassan al-Nadwi and Ibn Taymiyyah. Clearly the movement had completely shifted in nature from the early days of al-Sibai to take on a new uncompromising rigidity. One indication of this is that whereas the Ikhwani scouts of the 1940s and 1950s used to play drums and sing songs, by the 1970s the brothers were writing books recommending that tambourines be banned for being un-Islamic.
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The Syrian Ikhwan also began to produce more militant scholars, the most important being Said Hawa, who was to become one of the most respected jihadist scholars of his generation. Hawa, who came from Hamah and joined the Brotherhood in the 1950s, came to advocate the idea that Muslims were once again in the time of
Riddah
(apostasy); they had abandoned Islam and this dangerous situation must be countered. His stance centred around the quest for purity in internal and public life and he taught his followers that they should distance themselves from the impure
kafir
(heathen) world and refrain from listening to the radio or watching television, going to the theatre, reading newspapers or magazines, or engaging in the study of any philosophy, literature or ethics.
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He also advocated jihad against those he considered to be impure: Shi’ites and Sufists, not to mention communists, nationalists, Nasserists, leftists and liberals. Hawa’s book
Soldiers of Allah: Culture and Manners
, which called for jihad against the regime, was distributed in its thousands in bookshops, street stalls and mosques and became a major point of discussion for all Syrian Ikhwanis.

Hawa was extremely frustrated by what he described as the reactionary stance of the Ikhwan’s traditional leadership. After he returned from a stint in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s he called upon the Syrian Ikhwan to restructure itself so that it could move away from
being a party of
dawa
to one of jihad. Hawa was a charismatic figure who, because of his scholarly achievements, had more influence than other leading figures within the Ikhwan. As such his call to turn the Brotherhood into a jihadist party that could lead a rebellion against the Ba’athist regime could not be ignored. His comments provoked a major internal debate within the Syrian Ikhwan and exacerbated the factionalism that was already present. Whilst the traditional leaders were calling on the Brotherhood to work behind the scenes and to focus their efforts on
dawa
, Hawa instigated his followers to prepare for military action. He allegedly involved his young followers in physical training including wrestling, boxing and street fighting, and he divided those who followed him into family units and fighting brigades.
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By this point, the traditional Ikhwani ideas of the Damascus wing were clearly completely out of tune not only with the Ikhwan in Hamah but with the movement more widely.

As this more radical mentality permeated the movement, some elements began to take matters into their own hands and to carry out targeted attacks and assassinations. The 1970s saw an escalation of violent incidents against the regime, which the authorities blamed on the Ikhwan. The most important group that became engaged in violent jihad at the time had its roots in the Ikhwan. This was the al-Tali’a al-Muqatila (Fighting Vanguard), established by the Hamah resident Marwan Hadid whose armed exploits against the regime dated back to the early 1960s. Hadid, who came from a relatively prosperous family of cotton farmers, had grown up in the circles of the Muslim Brotherhood, where he had come under the charge of Adnan Saad Eddine during his time at secondary school. As a young man, Hadid was awarded a small loan from the Brotherhood in Hamah to
complete his studies in agricultural engineering in Egypt and whilst he was there he befriended Sayyid Qutb. Hadid was so smitten with Qutb’s more militant approach that upon his return to Syria in the early 1960s he became one of the most prominent proponents of the Egyptian’s radical rejectionist ideology. As Adnan Saad Eddine explained, ‘When he looked at the Syrian regime he decided to divorce life and to go down the path of martyrdom and martyrs.’
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