Syria witnesses religious awakening

[SOO MAAL]

Islam on the rise in Syria 25 years after revolt crushed

 

 

Syria witnesses religious awakening

 

 

Growing number of young Syrians attending weekly Muslim prayers, more women are wearing veil.

 

 

DAMASCUS - Nearly 25 years after a Muslim Brotherhood uprising was crushed, Syria is witnessing the return of Islam inspired by political triumphs such as that of Hamas by Islamists in several Arab states.

 

 

A growing number of young Syrians have been attending weekly Muslim prayers in mosques, and more and more women are taking private lessons to study the Koran and wearing the veil on the streets.

 

 

"Almost 30 percent of Syrian men are taking part in Friday prayers in the 9,000 mosques of Syria," said Islamist MP Mohammed Habash who heads the Islamic Studies Centre in Damascus.

 

 

"We are witnessing a religious awakening which will bring back Islamic values," he said.

 

 

Another sign of the moves toward Islam is that some restaurants on the banks of the Barada river, a leisure spot near the Syrian capital, have stopped serving alcohol.

 

 

And space has been reserved for families, in keeping with Islamic tradition to keep singles segregated. The same trend is being seen at Ain-el-Figeh, another popular resort.

 

 

Bookshops specialising in works on Islamic sharia law are growing in number, as are Islamic cultural or charity shows in conservative towns such as Aleppo, Idleb and Hama.

 

 

Tens of thousands of people were killed when the security forces put down an Islamist revolt in the northern city of Hama in 1982, but analysts say the political and social situation in the country is contributing to Islam's newfound popularity.

 

 

"The worsening economic and social situation, corruption and dictatorship all feed the Islamist trend and give it a wide audience," said a former communist activist.

 

 

Akram al-Bunni, a Marxist writer and political scientist, said that by blocking political reforms in a bid to impede religious movements, the state was "throwing young people into the arms" of Islamists.

 

 

"Since their defeat in Hama, the Islamists have adopted a strategy of infiltrating society from below, thanks to Saudi financial aid," said Rami, a student at the faculty of journalism in Damascus.

 

 

"Saudi Arabia has financed the construction of hundreds of mosques, especially in Christian and Druze regions," he said.

 

 

A moderate Islamic trend led by Salah Kaftaro and Mohammed Habash has also come to the fore, pressing for an "official Islam" which would counter fundamentalist tendencies.

 

 

Along the same lines, the state has authorised some 300 theological institutes to open their doors and give lessons in mainstream and conventional Islam while keeping watch for extremist elements.

 

 

Since 1980, active Muslim Brotherhood members can face the death penalty although hundreds of detained Islamists including its former leaders have been set free under amnesties.

 

 

Most of the movement's exiled members returned to Syria during the 1990s.

 

 

After having failed to overthrow the Baathist secular regime with the Hama revolt, the Muslim Brotherhood is looking to the ballot box as the path of power like in the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan.

[SOO MAAL]

Islamic revival spreads in Syria despite rule of secular Baath

 

 

 

DAMASCUS/ALEPPO: The three Mohammads are all sure of one thing. "I want to be the imam of a mosque," says 10-year-old Mohammad, on his way home from a lesson in Aleppo's Islamic school. "I want to be a preacher too," chimes his friend, also named after the Prophet, dressed in his finest black gelab.

 

"We like to study the Koran," explains the third Mohammad, also a resident of Syria's second city, "because it's our religion."

 

Syria is witnessing a revival of Islam in public and private life two decades after the secular government fought a bloody campaign to suppress an armed uprising against the state by Islamic extremists.

 

"The relationship between the government and the direction of Islam is now suitable," said Mohammad Habbash, the country's leading Islamist MP and head of the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus. "We can now speak about what role Islam can play in people's lives."

 

Habbash's recent invitation to lecture army cadets on religious morals - the first time the Syrian military has officially cooperated with Islamist figures since the Baath Party came to power in 1963 - is just one of a series of recent moves to allow Islam into public life.

 

In 1982, following a three-year armed campaign against the state by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, security officers ordered the shelling of the central city of Hama, which the Islamist group had declared an Islamic emirate. The offensive resulted in the deaths of an estimated 20,000 people.

 

Hamed Haji, 73, the muezzin whose call to prayer draws students - like the three young Mohammads - to Aleppo's Islamic school, remembers the violence.

 

"In the 1980s, bullets hit the minaret," he recalls, pointing up to the pock-marked circles of stone. "And beards were not allowed; but we have more freedoms now."

 

Indeed, the past few months have seen a number of moves aimed at institutionalizing Islam into Syria's old secular state. Mosques have been reopened between prayer times, the president has begun ending public speeches with invocations to God, and state auditoriums have been used for the country's first Koran reading competition.

 

In February, Syrian protesters burned and looted the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus in a display of anger against the publication of cartoons negatively depicting the Prophet Mohammad. At the time, security officials did little to quell the demonstrations, which were organized by Islamic study centers in the capital.

 

Among citizens, overt signs of religious devotion are becoming more frequent. An increasing number of young women are wearing headscarves, while green flags - representing Islam - adorned private shops on the Prophet's birthday in April.

 

Though three quarters of Syria's population are Sunni, the ruling party has long drawn its leaders from the minority Alawi sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, which - along with Druze and other Muslim sects - makes up just 16 percent of the national population. Pan-Arab and secular, the Baath Party has historically ruled on a domestic platform of protecting the rights of Syria's minorities.

 

For Habbash, the state's changing approach to Islam comes against a backdrop of regional upheaval since the launch of the US-led "war on terrorism," which has seen Islamist parties winning elections in Egypt, Iraq and the Palestinian territories and an increasingly influential role for long-time Syrian ally and theocratic republic Iran.

 

"The Syrian regime realized it has the same agenda as conservative Islamists," says Habbash. "They've formed an alliance to resist the current US administration's plan to change the region."

 

However, Aleppo's mufti, Ibrahim Salkeeni, warns that US intervention in the Middle East has also served to radicalize many young Syrians.

 

"American practices in Iraq and Palestine are pushing some young people in Aleppo to become like time bombs - and we don't know when these will explode," he says. "The more the pressure increases, the more explosions there will be."

 

Syria, however, still considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be an outlawed group. The Brotherhood's exiled leader, Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni, has united with former Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam to lead an opposition group calling for regime change in Damascus. Association with the group is punishable by death.

 

For Mohammad Akam, professor of Arabic-language studies at Aleppo University, the state's increasing acceptance of Islam's role in society is a welcome development.

 

But, he adds, the new strategy is no substitute for the reform of an outdated political system.

 

"The conflict between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood was actually a conflict of ideologies," he says. "We need a party without ideology. Between secularism and freedom, I prefer freedom. Secularism is a kind of ideology, but democracy is a way of including all."

 

 

This article is reprinted in The Daily Star with permission from the UN Integrated Regional

[allan]

man that sister in the black is H*O*T

[Dhubad.]

Surely Islam is coming back whether the West likes it or not.

[Viking]

"Almost 30 percent of Syrian men are taking part in Friday prayers in the 9,000 mosques of Syria," said Islamist MP Mohammed Habash who heads the Islamic Studies Centre in Damascus.

This is quite low for a Muslim country. It's more difficult living in a non-Muslim country as Friday is a working day.

 

9. O ye who believe! When the call is proclaimed to prayer on Friday (the Day of Assembly), hasten earnestly to the Remembrance of Allah, and leave off business (and traffic): That is best for you if ye but knew!

 

10. And when the Prayer is finished, then may ye disperse through the land, and seek of the Bounty of Allah. and celebrate the Praises of Allah often (and without stint): that ye may prosper Surah Al-Jumu'ah 62:9-10

[ElPunto]

Originally posted by Viking:

quote: "Almost 30 percent of Syrian men are taking part in Friday prayers in the 9,000 mosques of Syria," said Islamist MP Mohammed Habash who heads the Islamic Studies Centre in Damascus.

This is quite low for a Muslim country. It's more difficult living in a non-Muslim country as Friday is a working day.

 

It sure is - what a sad state.