Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (Arabic: الإخوان المسلمون في سوريا, romanized: al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn fī Sūrīya)[9] is a Syrian branch of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization. Its objective is the transformation of Syria into an Islamic state governed by Sharia law through a gradual legal and political process.[9]
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
الإخوان المسلمون في سوريا
الإخوان المسلمون في سوريا
The party strongly opposes Pan-Arabism, capitalism, communism, liberalism, and secularism in Syria. Founded at the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria was seen as one of several important political parties in the 1950s. When Syria unified with Egypt to form the United Arab Republic, the disbanding of the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party was a condition of union, one complicated by Gamal Abdel Nasser's conflict in Egypt with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was banned by the government of the Syrian Arab Republic starting after the 1963 coup by the secularist, pan-Arabist Ba'ath Party.[10] The Muslim Brotherhood played a major role in dissent against the secular Ba'ath Party during the period 1976–1982,[11] and membership in the Brotherhood in Syria became a capital offence in 1980.[12][6]
Following the Hama uprising of 1982 in the wake of the wider Islamist insurgency in Syria (1979–1982), when thousands of armed insurgents and civilians were killed by the military[13] the Brotherhood was effectively broken as an active political force inside Syria.
The Muslim Brotherhood in exile was among the 250 signatories of the Damascus Declaration of 2005, a statement of unity by Syrian opposition including the Arab nationalist National Democratic Rally, the Kurdish Democratic Alliance, the Committees of Civil Society, the Kurdish Democratic Front, and the Movement of the Future, and calling for "peaceful, gradual," reform "founded on accord, and based on dialogue and recognition of the other".[14]
The Muslim Brotherhood was considered the main opposition group in Syria to the government on the eve of the 2011 uprising, but failed to make a significant mark on the protests against the government.[4][15][16] The Syrian uprising's core population of protesters came from a younger generation which had come of age in a Syria without significant Muslim Brotherhood presence.[17] However, among the expatriated opposition, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has come to be seen by some as the "dominant group"[7] or "dominant force"[18] in the opposition during the Syrian civil war as of spring 2012.[7]