Muslim Brothers in Syria are insisting on repeating their mistakes in all crisis the country goes through. Thus, the movement has been breaking the regulations of the prophet Muhammad’s Hadith: “A true Muslim is not to be bitten twice by the same burrow”. However, the Syrian community rejected to be bitten by Muslim Brothers after he had suffered from their deadly mistakes in the 1980s. This article reveals a brief inventory of Muslim Brothers’ mistakes during the Syrian disaster as follows:
- Muslim Brothers provoke Syrian people;
- The mistakes made by the movement during the Syrian disaster;
- Muslim Brothers are a spectrometric factor of the Syrian society;
- Muslim Brothers are anti-democratic;
- Do Muslim Brothers represent the Sunni Muslims in Syria?
- Muslim Brothers tend to take power whatever cost is;
- Contribution of Muslim Brothers to Jihadi expansion;
- Muslim Brothers have regionally mortgaged the Syrian Crisis.
Introduction
A post on social Facebook written by one of the leaders of Muslim Brothers in Syria stimulated an unprecedent debate among Syrians and non-Syrians. The post, ridiculously unrecognized by the writer, has revealed the gap between the Islamic groups and the Syrian people on the one hand, and the aversion of the Syrian people towards Muslim Brothers, as people hold Brotherhood completely responsible for the horrible consequences Syria is currently undergoing.
Mulham Al Duroubi, a prominent leader representing Muslim Brothers in conferences and Syrian opposing platforms, that were formulated during the previous years, wrote on his Facebook Account in an ironic way: What did secularists offer to the Syrian Revolution.
The question was presented in an ironic way demeaning what secularists have offered. In a word, the post implies that secularists have offered nothing, whereas Muslim Brothers and other allying Islamic politicians and Jihadis have offered all sorts of support to the Syrian Revolution. The post induced a surge of criticism and denunciation not only by secularist parties in Syria, but also by the majority of Syrians who have found it out to be some kind of falsehood. The post implies a desperate endeavor to conceal big disasters Muslim Brothers have caused to the Syrian Revolution, starting with militarization it to throwing it as a tool under the control of regional powers mainly Turkey. Light will be shed on this matter in details later in this article.
However, the debate has revealed public congestion against political Islam and Muslim Brothers in Syria, as comments and replies flowed immediately after the post was published on Facebook, criticizing both the publisher and the allying parties and groups, and holding them responsible for what is going on in Syria. Some comments and replies stated that the end of political Islam will be witnessed, and the Syrian Revolution will be the terminal stage of Muslim Brothers, as the Syrian people had incurred a great deal of catastrophes in the 1980s, where the extremist militia, known as Combatant Vanguard, armed the uprising and raised sectarian mottos which helped the regime fine the pretext to wage a brutal campaign against the Syrian people. Thus, Assad’s regime had solidified its existence for two decades by suppression and intimidation. Bashar, inherited power and he is still ruling the country. Muslim Brotherhood emerged to repeat the exact mistakes that led to the burying of the Syrian uprising, whereas Bashar Assad is still in power with the support of his two allies; Iran and Russia.
So, what are the previous and ongoing mistakes of Muslim Brothers?
Being a multi-sectarian and ethnical entity, Muslim Brothers are a spectrometric factor of the Syrian society. It is more of a religious entity than of a political one attracting one sect or part of it to be mobilized against other sects and ethnic groups as a spectrometric factor. Thus, it is a party that is strengthening both sub-entities and vertical entities against both national and civil ones. This means that it is a push backward, and it is opposing historical development. They are also braking modernism, human rights and democracy.
Anti-democracy
Although they claim to be a pro-democracy party, Muslim Brothers are really anti-democratic movement because they are applying majority consensus democracy (it is a delusion that we are going to focus on hereafter) that helps the movement take power. This means that Muslim Brothers do not really believe in democracy. Instead, their belief is pragmatic to help the movement take power through fund ballots after militarization has failed to over throw Assad’s Regime. They accept/ democracy of the west, modernism, and refuses secularity, human rights, woman rights and other modern concepts. Their attitudes towards such issues scandalize their double polarity and bilateralism in this regard.
The approach which the Muslim Brothers have adopted through the Syrian Revolution reveals the sort of democracy they believe in. They have aborted all opposing entities and they joined in other ones like The National Council and National Coalition, because they tended to dominate, and they did not recognize other parties and entities. This approach reveals the sort of democracy it believes in, so all entities and most of the encompassed parties entirely failed, as they witnessed domination of the movement and its tendency to disseminate, and they realized that the movement had tended to exploit all parties as tools for their narrow purposes.
The same applies to the military field where the movement exploited the formation of the Free Syrian Army. It started to work under the motto of the F.S.A., forming related military factions to achieve domination. This revealed its agenda, and it played a crucial role in distorting Free Syrian Army in favor of Islamic factions. Furthermore, it tended to recruit those factions under the control of regional powers that consequently distorted armed act, because Free Syrian Army has been a concept most of the Syrian people encompassed, whereas Jihadis and Islamic factions were both a spectrometric and fragmenting factor. Thus, Muslim brothers contributed to both political and military demolition of the Revolution.
Do Muslim Brothers represent Sunnis in Syria?
Muslim Brothers assume that they represent the Sunni Muslims in Syria and the Arab world. This thesis is based on a hypothesis acclaiming that all Sunnis are Muslim brothers, but they have been encountered a bitter reality when they found out that most Sunnis are against them, and Sunnis do not accept thier extremism, so their efforts to fragment uprising failed. They thought that this fragmentation would push Sunnis to gather around their sect and to be attracted by the Muslim Brothers’ movement. But, instead, the effect of fragmentation was negatively reflected in favor of the regime which knew how to manage the sectarian plot whereas the movement completely failed.
They lust for power at any cost
The only purpose of M.B. is to take power. To them, religion, democracy and ideology are mere tools to take power, and that is proven by many evidences. Evidences are derived from their modern political history. Before the Arab Spring, the regional atmosphere was settled, and there were no indications of collapse of some tyrannies, so Muslim Brothers aspired maximumly to take part in power, and some talks were held with the regime through both local and regional mediators. Muslim Brothers announced their support to the regime during the Israeli war on Gaza in 2008, acclaiming that the regime was supporting Gaza. They also formed The National Salvation Front with Abdulhalim Khaddam and Rifaat Assad, provided that the two men were extremely savage against the staff of M.B. during the 1980s uprising. This implies that Muslim Brothers have been grasping only to take power whatever cost it is.
Contribution to Availing the Ground for Jihadists
As Muslim Brothers constitute a sectarian party on the one hand and a religious movement on the other, it is quite clear that they provide the required ground for Islamic Jihadi expansion. Thus, it was the first brick through which the Jihadis broke into the Syrian uprising. Muslim Brothers provided both ideological pretext and a gate for Jihadists as their ideology is deeply exclusionary and Jihadi despite their endeavors to promote themselves as a civil party.
Mortgaging of The Syrian crisis To regional powers
Muslim Brothers worked to subjugate the Revolution in favor of regional countries like Turkey and other smaller countries like Qatar. At the beginning of the Revolution, one of the leaders of Muslim Brothers announced that they didn’t consider the Turkish interference as an invasion. This means that they accept Turkish intervention. They disregard the Syrian national concerns to bind up to Erdogan’s Ottoman project. It is a part of the world organization of Muslim Brothers, and the Syrian nationalism means nothing to them, so it came up across early Syrian national figures who were seeking to establish a free democratic state, whereas, whereas they were seeking to achieve an Ottoman Caliphate headed by the new Sultan; Erdogan.
These mistakes and other countless faults have made Syrians repulsive to M.B. and all other movements of political Islam. This arouses the following questions:
Has the Islamic project come to its end?
Are Muslim Brothers uttering their last breath?
