In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [67]
To counter this trend, Habash advocated what he called “renewal Islam.” “Renewal believes that there is one way to God, but his names are many,” Habash said. “Spirituality is one, but religions are many. There should be no monopoly on salvation, paradise, religion, and the day of judgment.”
While this might have seemed all well and good to the regime, the strange thing is that Habash himself admitted that his interpretation had little following in society. “Only about 20 percent of Muslims in Syria are renewal,” Habash said. “The rest are conservative, and their numbers are growing.”
Although seemingly well fitted to the political situation, Habash had no time for the regime’s nemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood. “There is an upsurge of Islam in Syria, but that does not mean people support the Muslim Brotherhood,” Habash said. “They have no chance in Syria because there is a bloody memory from the 1980s. If they find a way back into Syria, they will have to change their name.”
Habash was also rather forthcoming about his ambitions to form a political party under the new parties law—whenever it would be issued of course. “This is my secret; why are you asking me?” Habash said. “I am looking to participate fully in political life. I am not looking for an Islamic party—this would not be beneficial for our country. We don’t need a theocracy, as we cannot achieve real development this way. At the same time, I am looking for some party with an Islamic affiliation. Like the [ruling] Justice and Development Party in Turkey.”
And what about Musa, the mystery guest at Habash’s office? When I listened to the interview tape later a couple of times, I still made no sense of his tale of waging jihad in Iraq (and will waste no time explaining it here). Much more interesting, however, were Musa’s surprisingly moderate views concerning a number of recent political issues—for a man that not long ago says he fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US Army Humvee.
“These Muslims were being stupid when they burned the Danish embassy,” Musa said of the February 4 attacks on the Danish, Swedish, and Chilean embassies in Damascus. He had a relaxed smile and a twinkle in his eye that could give any diplomat or foreign correspondent some glimmer of hope that the Islamic tide sweeping Syria was nothing to worry so much about as to intervene in an Arab country’s internal affairs. “I was among the demonstrators. It was peaceful, but a few people got out of control. The Prophet for Muslims is not the same for Christians. Denmark doesn’t understand that.”
At that moment, I realized it wasn’t déjà vu after all. During my years of working in Egypt in the 1990s, I had often interviewed a prominent researcher and professor at the American University in Cairo named Saad Eddin Ibrahim, then a confidant of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and now one of his most outspoken opponents. Ibrahim used to run a foreign-funded program rehabilitating Islamic “terrorists” captured by the state in upper Egypt and around major Western tourist sites. After swearing off violence, former combatants were released from prison and given seed money and soft loans to open small businesses such as cigarette kiosks and sandwich counters. Foreign journalists in search of the story of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt flocked to Ibrahim, who would boast about the program and arrange interviews with beneficiaries. A few days later, a story would appear in the Western press outlining how the Egyptian government and society recognized its “Islamist problem” and had matters under control.
After fifteen editions of Syria Today, and about a week after the riots, it finally