Syria: Islam, Arab Nationalism and the military

One of the Syrian Islamic movement's most obvious characteristics is its limited impact on a populace obsessed with defining its national destiny. More than any other Arab country, Syria has always debated its future, its ideal political system and its national identity with great earnestness. Ever since the emergence of modern Syria with its current Westernimposed boundaries, Syrians have searched for a more palatable alternative national existence. This search has taken the form of a philosophical quest as well as a practical one. Moreover, modern Syria's truncated geography, which suffered the loss of the Lebanese mountains, the Turkish territories and Southern Syria (Palestine and Jordan) resulted in a determined effort to overcome the limitations of the SykesPicot Agreement. This quest continued even after independence, when the SykesPicot and San Remo boundaries hardened into the map of the modern Syrian state. Syrians found themselves tom between a commitment to republicanism and the lure of unification with contiguous monarchic regimes such as the Hashemites of Jordan and Iraq. The quest for an alternative national map, hence, was never free of its own risks and always generated intense political and ideological rivalries.

From the beginning, the Islamist role in this quest was a limited and isolated effort. The general acceptance of the basic premise of the Islamist position was always there, but in practical terms the movement often lacked relevance, as well as strategic allies. Additionally, when compared to other rival ideologies such as those of the Baath party or the Arab nationalist movement, political Islam paled in the richness of its thought and its originality. A derivative of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Syrian Islamist thinking was often burdened with the legacy of that movement, particularly in its confrontation with Nasserism. Rather than draw some benefits from its association with the Arab world's most illustrious and oldest Islamist movement, Syrian Islamic organizations were tainted with the failure of their ideological forebears. Thus Syrian political Islam faced more challenges and organizational obstacles than similar movements in predominantly Muslim countries.

A relative latecomer to the pluralist political scene in Syria, the Islamist movement was not actively engaged against the French colonialists. Other ideological manisfestations preceded them on the Syrian scene, such as the People's party and the Nationalist party. Far from being mass political parties, these two coalesced around interest groups within the higher strata of society. But the two groups spearheaded the Syrians' rejection of the French- and British-imposed settlement of 1918. The Nationalist party, which was later led by Shukri al-Quwatli, advocated Arab unity through the efforts of the Arab League of States and was unwilling to sacrifice its republican system of government. The People's party, on the other hand, later led by Rushdi al-Kikhia, was willing to accept unions even with monarchic regimes.1

There were also mass parties capable of presenting the public with a coherent political program. The Syrian Social National party (SSNP) of Anton Saadah, for instance, first emerged in 1935, posing as a secular nationalist movement. The Baath party, both before and after its merger with Akram Hourani's Arab Socialist party, assumed the mantle of the early pan-Arabists while adding the dimension of Arab socialism to its ideology. Following its merger with Hourani's party in 1953, the latter's emphasis on the plight of the Syrian peasantry and the Baath commitment to socialism presented a powerful ideology.2

Emerging in the 1940s, the Baath, as well as the SSNP, emphasized the transitory nature of the Syrian state and the desirability of achieving larger territorial units. The Muslim Brotherhood, which also emerged in the 1940s, challenged the current territorial definition of Syrian nationalism. Thus the entire ideological spectrum from independence onwards was dominated by the debate over the principles of nationhood and nationalism. Competing ideas of the Baath, the SSNP and the Brotherhood, nevertheless, were distinguished by the clarity of their discourse and the symmetry of their philosophies. Whereas the SSNP championed the vision of regional nationalism, basing its logic on geography as the great definer of nationhood, the Baath anchored its ideology in the principles of language and history. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, raised the issue of religion as the most logical and enduring bond among people, proclaiming the ideal of the unity of the Muslim world as the desired shape of the future.3

In addition, Syrian pluralism during the post-independence period, as well as various superimposed one-party solutions, gave rise to a multiple array of political parties. There was, for instance, the Syrian Communist party, which emerged both in Syria and Lebanon in 1925 and drew its support primarily, but not exclusively, from non-Muslim minorities and intellectuals. Under the leadership of Kahled Bikdash since 1932, the Communist party was able to activate large Muslim sectors, such as the Syrian Kurds, and to draw closer to the Arab nationalist forces. Bikdash also enjoyed a wide popular base in the Damascus region, particularly following the 1954 parliamentary elections. However, Bikdash never enjoyed serious support outside the Syrian capital. Neither did the ideological basis of the party, namely internationalism, ever touch the psyche of the majority of Syrians. Under the Shishakli regime, a single official party known as Harakat al-Tahrir al-Arabi (The Arab Liberation Movement) attempted to fill the void created by Shishakli's disbanding of all political parties in 1952 but did not last beyond his termination.4