Syria hostile to Muslim Brothers
By Maher Chmaytelli
DAMASCUS (AFP): The Syrian regime has been repressing the Muslim Brothers for more than 20 years, but has given more slack to a moderate Islamist movement which supports inter-faith coexistence.
The spiritual leader of this movement is Syria's top cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Kaftaro, who was propelled into the international limelight at the age of 86 when he greeted Pope John Paul II at the Omayyad mosque in Damascus last May, in the first ever visit to a Muslim place of worship by the head of the Roman Catholic church.
"It is thanks to this movement of opening, represented by Sheikh Kaftaro, that the pope's visit to the mosque was made possible", says Mayassar Suheil, head of press relations for the Damascus-based Islamic university of Magamma Abinnur ("Abinnur complex"), founded by the mufti in 1971.
In this huge eight-storey complex which comprises a large mosque, the teaching includes lectures on the "reformist" movement of the mufti, which boldly wrongfoots the strictest interpretations of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia or by the fundamentalist Taliban militia which controls most of Afghanistan.
Mohammad al-Habash, one of the lecturers, says that the reformist movement does not make anything up but "does give new breath to Islamic thinking able to offer solutions appropriate to our time yet boycotted for political and social reasons."
In that vein, rules such as women wearing veils covering their entire body, corporal punishment and the application of "Jihad against impious people" should not be considered as absolutes, he says.
"The Taliban consider the full veil like a heaven-imposed duty, when there are other opinions, including that of Abu Hanifa (one of Islam's great jurists, 8th century AD) who does not see any taboo in women's faces and arms", Habash says.
"Some Muslim jurists ban war to force others to convert. For them, war is a question of self defense," adds Habash, the director of Damascus' Center for Islamic studies.
The reformists reject the dogmatic approach which consists in taking "a tough stance on all issues".
"There are Muslims who live in sky-scrapers, other in huts, some in the freezing cold, others in the desert, we should therefore seek interpretations which allow Muslims to live in harmony with their times", Habash goes on.
The reformists also plead for tolerance, an important topic in Syria, where the Sunni Muslim majority which accounts for 75 percent of the country's 17 million inhabitants coexists with Alawite, Druze, Christian and Jewish minorities.
"The school of thought we are promoting is that Islam recognizes others. We oppose the position of the Muslim Brothers, both on the ideological and political levels", Habash says.
The secular pan-Arab Baath party which has ruled Syria since 1963 exercised ruthless repression against the Muslim Brothers in the 1980s, following a string of deadly attacks across the country.
In stark contrast to the brotherhood, which is considered in Syria to be an illegal organization, Habash frequently publishes articles in the state-owned press.
Moderate Islamists have also recently been given the green light by the authorities to organize public debates, an authorization which was denied to the other opposition groups.