Pierret, Thomas

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      The Role of the Mosque in the Syrian RevolutionCitation for published version:Pierret, T 2012, 'The Role of the Mosque in the Syrian Revolution' Near East Quarterly , no. 7.Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:Near East QuarterlyPublisher Rights Statement:© Pierret, T. (2012). The Role of the Mosque in the Syrian Revolution. Near East Quarterly , (7).General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 28. Apr. 20171Views on a new Near EastThe Role of the Mosque in the Syrian RevolutionNearEastQuarterly · Tuesday, March 20th, 2012By Thomas PierretThomas Pierret is a Lecturer in Contemporary Islam at the University of Edinburgh.A former post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University, he completed his PhD on themodern ulama in Syria at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Louvain. He is theauthor of “Baas et Islam en Syrie. La dynastie Assad face aux oulémas” (Paris: PUF,2011). Syrian mosques constituted the backbone of the Syrian insurgency of the early 1980s,as armed Islamist groups recruited much of their membership in mosque-based studycircles that had flourished among the urban middle-class during the previous decade.Islamic networks and, therefore, mosques, have been far less central to the currentuprising,  which  relies  on  a  broader,  humbler  and  less  urban  popular  base.Nevertheless, places of worship and men of religion have played a role that is notinsignificant.The mosque as a symbol and as a place of gathering has been crucial to ongoingevents. Many of the early demonstrations witnessed in March 2011 took place in andaround mosques after Friday prayer, which under Baathist rule has been one of thevery few opportunities for mass gatherings. In Deraa, the first seat of the uprising,protesters entrenched themselves in the grand mosque al-Umari for a week until itwas stormed by security forces. The Umayyad mosque in Damascus was also amongthe  first  venues  for  demonstration  in  the  capital,  as  thousands  shouted  “God isCopyright Near East Quarterly - 1 / 5 - 11.02.20142greatest!” and “Freedom!” after Friday prayer on March 18 and 25. However, themosque, located in the heart of the Old City, was rapidly ‘neutralised’ through variousrepressive measures including the creation of “mosque committees” – groups of thugsrecruited by the regime to pack prayer rooms and to break up demonstrations onFridays.Despite  repression,  other  Damascene  mosques  like  al-Rifa‘i  (Kafr  Souseh)  andal-Hasan  (Midan)  remained  major  hotbeds  of  unrest  for  several  months.  Hasanbecame such a prominent symbol of and for the opposition that its forecourt waschosen as the starting point of an anti-regime demonstration organised by – mostlysecular – artists and intellectuals in July 2011. Even in Aleppo, which had remainedcalmer  than  Damascus  until  early  2012,  the  Amina  mosque  in  the  middle-classneighbourhood of Sayf al-Dawla was one of the few places that witnessed severaldemonstrations.1Mosques  were  also  at  the  centre  of  several  episodes  of  state  repression  thatprofoundly shocked religious-minded Syrians and,  in the eyes of  many,  made thesecurity forces appear as an Alawite sectarian militia battling against the creed of theSunni  majority.  Not  only  did  the  army,  police  and  shabiha  (pro-regime  thugs)repeatedly penetrate mosques to beat demonstrators, thus violating the sacredness ofthe place, they sometimes committed gratuitous acts of sacrilege. For instance, onevideo posted on YouTube purportedly shows a group of Syrian soldiers sitting in amosque before mocking the Islamic prayer under the aegis of a smoking “imam”.2During the summer of 2011, soldiers deliberately targeted mosques in Homs and Deirez-Zour, in the east, with 23mm anti-aircraft guns. These attacks provoked such anoutrage that Bashar al-Assad himself felt compelled to deny the accusations during aRamadan banquet organised in honour of  the Muslim scholars –  a  blatant  lie  asdemonstrated by several video clips.3Syria’s religious Sunni leaders have been deeply divided by the current events. In theUmayyad  mosque  in  Damascus,  early  demonstrations  happened  in  spite  of  thepro-regime sermons delivered by the preacher Sa‘id Ramadan al-Buti, a scholar ofworld standing and an old ally of the Baathist regime. In the al-Rifa‘i and al-Hasanmosques, worshippers came from all over the capital to listen to outspoken clerics,respectively Usama al-Rifa‘i and Krayyim Rajih. Whereas the most vocally pro-regimesheikhs like al-Buti and the Grand Mufti Ahmad Hassun had been close to the Assadfamily  for  decades,  al-Rifa‘i  and  Rajih  had  only  recently  established  acceptablerelations with the regime after years of conflict: the former had spent 15 years of hislife in exile, and the latter was the spiritual heir of Hasan Habannaka, the leader ofthe religious opposition to the Baath in the 1960s.4 Consequently, they had much lessto lose by standing against the regime than their more compromised colleagues. Thecontent of their sermons was not overtly revolutionary, but nevertheless stood in totalcontradiction with the official discourse: whereas the latter depicted the protest as theresult of a foreign conspiracy, the rebellious scholars proclaimed the legitimacy ofdemocratic demands and held the regime responsible for the violence.Although cases like al-Rifa‘i and Rajih were rather exceptional in Damascus, the factthat both of them were highly respected figures made them a serious threat to theregime. In August the two rebellious clerics were joined by several of their seniorCopyright Near East Quarterly - 2 / 5 - 11.02.20143colleagues from Damascus in signing a statement condemning the military crackdownon the defiant cities of Hama and Deir ez-Zour. The move was all the more worryingfor Assad that a similar statement was released at the same moment by the Muslimscholars of Aleppo, who until then had remained almost totally silent.Combined with an upsurge in the number and frequency of demonstrations in andaround the capital, the clerics’ lack of discipline convinced the regime to break withthe hesitant approach it had adopted until then: outspoken preachers were dismissedfrom their Friday pulpit, and al-Rifa‘i was even assaulted by regime thugs during theNight of Power.5This  showdown revealed  both  the  determination  of  the  regime  and  the  clergy’sweaknesses.  Indeed,  the former’s  fears  of  popular  outrage,  which until  then hadprevented it  from cracking down on senior  Muslim scholars,  did not  materialise:although the assault on al-Rifa‘i  provoked large demonstrations in the suburbs ofDamascus, very little happened in the sheikh’s actual stronghold, that is, the middleand  upper-class  neighbourhoods  of  the  city  centre.  Moreover,  when  his  mosquereopened a few weeks later with al-Rifa‘i’s son Bilal as preacher, the attendees at theFriday sermon had dramatically decreased.This fall in mass support was deeply resented by close disciples of the sheikh, whoblamed the “cowardliness” of the Damascene bourgeoisie.6 Another way to look at thisepisode would be to say that it illustrates the class dimension of the Syrian uprising.Whereas the insurgency of the early 1980s was a predominantly urban middle-classmovement,  the  2011  revolution  found  the  overwhelming  majority  of  its  activepartisans in poorer towns and neighbourhoods. This does not mean that the upperclasses  look  favourably  at  the  regime,  but  that  after  a  decade  of  economicliberalisation, they have been reluctant to jeopardise their comfortable lifestyle infavour of a perilous revolutionary process.There  is  sometimes  more  than  the  fear  of  chaos  behind  the  quiescence  of  theprivileged classes, however. Over the last decades, it has been very hard to do seriousbusiness in Syria without buying off  one or more influential  intelligence officers.Corruption has thus created close relations between the economic elites and thesecurity apparatus. Since the Muslim scholars have always been closely tied to themerchants, the former were inevitably dragged into this unholy alliance. This trendwas reinforced by the fact that crony businessmen, who contrary to the old merchantfamilies had not traditionally funded religious activities, started to do so during thelast decade in order to buttress their electoral ambitions. It is striking, for instance,that when Sheikh al-Rifa‘i’s mosque was surrounded by regime thugs on the Night ofPower, Muhammad Hamshu, the front man and brother-in-law of Bashar al-Assad’sbrother Maher, apparently intervened, in vain, to negotiate the withdrawal of theassailants.7Apart from al-Rifa‘i and a handful of his colleagues, the Muslim scholars of Damascusand Aleppo remained relatively passive during the first year of the uprising. One of thefactors explaining this attitude, which is especially relevant in the case of Aleppo, isthe enduring sequels of repression of the early 1980s. In the country’s second largestcity, dozens of ulama were forced into exile at that time, thus further weakening aCopyright Near East Quarterly - 3 / 5 - 11.02.20144religious elite that had already suffered from the Baath’s centralist policies, sincethere was no institute or faculty for higher Islamic studies in Aleppo before 2006.Whereas in the biggest cities the men of religion were divided, in the strongholds ofthe revolution a large majority of them sided with the protesters. In Deraa, both theimam of  the Grand Mosque,  Ahmad Sayasne,  and the local  Mufti,  Rizq Abazayd,officially  announced their  defection.  Sayasne visited President  Bashar al-Assad inorder  to  negotiate  an  end  to  the  crisis,  but  the  continuation  of  state  violenceeventually  convinced him to  call  for  the  overthrow of  the  regime.  Following theoccupation of Deraa by the army in April  2011, both Sayasne and Abazayd werebullied  into  televised  revocations.  In  Banias,  on  the  coast,  the  very  firstdemonstrations were led by Anas Ayrut, a young cleric who eventually fled the cityand  became a  member  of  the  opposition  group,  the  Syrian  National  Council,  inIstanbul. In Homs, which gradually surfaced as the capital of the revolution, clericslike Anas Suwayd participated in the creation of  the local  Revolutionary Council.Although supportive of the armed struggle, they have repeatedly opposed sectariankillings.8After August 2011, mosques gradually lost their importance in the uprising for at leasttwo  reasons:  first,  as  mentioned  above,  in  Damascus  and  Aleppo,  repressionsucceeded in making demonstrations increasingly rare in rebellious places of worship;second, in the regions where the opposition was most powerful (governorates of Homs,Hama, Idlib, and Reef Damascus), it became increasingly militarised and took controlof several towns and neighbourhoods, thus reducing the importance of mosques as‘safe’ zones for demonstrations. Only a reinvigoration of the protests in Damascus andAleppo or in the regions being re-conquered by Assad’s forces can change radicallythe situation.    1 .  S e ewww.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Miv8DUvUI&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLC3AD44DECC3F9267,  July  1,  2011;  www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ0uF2zAcaA,July  16,  2011;  www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBQeOh4hsrc,  July  22,  2011;www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcQ4U4w5DFw,  January  27,  2012.2. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJiEBm8dvxM.3 .  F o r  B a s h a r  a l - A s s a d ’ s  d e n i a l :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWbUmG-javw&feature=endscreen;  for  thedestruction of a minaret in Deir ez-Zour in August 2011 (view from the armouredvehicle firing on the mosque):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFXuHG89TJA; inHoms, July 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n7A48II6Us&feature=relatedCopyright Near East Quarterly - 4 / 5 - 11.02.201454. For background information on the Syrian ulama, see Thomas Pierret, Baas et Islamen Syrie. La dynastie Assad face aux oulémas (Paris: PUF, 2011).5.  See  www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDaurYQpBjo,  August  27,  2011.  Pictures  ofal-Rifa‘i  on  his  hospital  bed  were  circulated  on  the  Internet.6. Thomas Pierret, “Syrie: L’islam dans la revolution,” Politiqueétrangère76 (4) (2011),888.7. “Tabyidsura Muhammad Hamshu,” (Whitewashing Muhammad Hamshu’s image),All4Syria, August 27, 2011, http://all4syria.info/web/archives/250088.  Friday  sermon by  Sheikh Mahmud al-Dalati,  November  4,  2011 (mp3);  phoneinterview with journalist Nir Rosen after his two months of research in Syria, January2012. This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 at 9:38 pm and is filed under SyriaYou can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments (RSS) feed. Bothcomments and pings are currently closed.Copyright Near East Quarterly - 5 / 5 - 11.02.2014

The Role of the Mosque in the Syrian Revolution

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