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Understanding the Syrian conflict only in terms of sectarian politics amounts to dismissing a very modern effort at emancipation within the context of the country's populace fighting for its civil, political and economic rights, and in the process robs Syrians of their agency and diminishes their humanity. A closer look at events and political alignments in Syria reveals a more complex picture better understood through the lens of regimes' desire to counteract the dissident and reformist dynamics that emerged with the Arab Spring. And while this paper is most certainly not minimizing the fact that the sectarian discourse and animosity, once activated, acquired its own dynamic, it underlines that this is not a case of so-called ancient sectarian rivalries emerging unprompted and of their own accord. As a result, the Syrian crisis and the regional ramifications of it can be appreciated as not simply identity politics writ large, but as an example of the authoritarian resilience paradigm in action. In making these arguments, this paper examines the interplay of the domestic and regional policies of three actors involved directly in the Syrian conflict: the Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. (considered as a unitary actor within the context of the Syrian crisis), and Qatar.

Islamist militancy is not a new phenomenon in Syria; indeed, many of the groups active since the outbreak of the popular uprising in 2011 have existed since the early 2000s. The emergence of these Islamists and the Islamization of the Syrian conflict can primarily be traced to the earlier foreign policy of the regime of Bashar al-Asad, of which harboring and collaborating with Islamist militants was an integral part. The outcome of this policy was the rise of a radical and apocalyptic type of Islamist movement that the regime cannot effectively control and that is at odds with Syria's more ecumenical and intellectual Islamic tradition.

Contemporary studies on Syria assume that the country’s Ba’thist regime has been effective in subduing its Islamic opposition, placing Syria at odds with the Middle East’s larger trends of rising Islamic activism and the eclipse of secular ideologies as the primary source of political activism. Yet this assumption founders when confronted with the clear resurgence in Islamic militantism in the country since 2004. This book examines Syria’s current political reality as regards its Islamic movement, describing the country’s present day Islamic groups – particularly their social profile and ideology – and offering an explanation of their resurgence. The analysis focuses on: Who are today’s Syrian Islamic groups? Why and how are they re-emerging after 22 years of relative silence as an important socio-economic and political force? How is the Syrian state dealing with their re-emergence in light of Syria’s secularism and ideologically diverse society? Bridging area studies, Islamic studies, and political science, this book will be an important reference for those working within the fields of Comparative Politics, Political Economy, and Middle Eastern Studies. 1. Introduction to the Subject of Secularism and Islamic Revivalism in Syria Part 1: The Origins of the Conflict 2. The Rise of a Secular Party to Power 3. The Rise and Fall of Political Islam in Syria Part 2: Hafez al-Asad's Era and the Conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood: Muting of Ba'thist Secularism in Syria 4. Conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood 5. Resurgence of Neo-fundamentalism and Decline of Political Islam as a Model for Change (1982-2000) Part 3: Bashar al-Asad's Era: Fundamentalist and Islamist Revivalism 6. Bashar al-Asad Following in his Father’s Footsteps: the Promotion of Moderate Islam from Above in the Name of De-Radicalization 7. Islamization from Below: Islamic Revivalism as a Model for Social Change and the Erosion of Ba´thist Secularism 8. Re-emergence of Political Islam: Syria’s Islamist Groups 9. Islamic Activism and Secularism in Syria 10. Conclusion Line Khatib is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sharjah. She earned a PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University, MA in Political Science from University of Montreal and a BA in Political Science from McGill University. She is a senior research fellow at ICAMES (the Inter-University Consortium for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies), McGill University, and a fellow at the Center for Syrian Studies, University of St Andrews. She is the author of a number of works including \"Islamic Revivalism in Syria: the Rise and Fall of Ba´thist Secularism\" (Routledge, 2011), and \"Islamic Renewal and the Promotion of Moderate Islam from Above\" (the University of St Andrews, 2012). Her research and teaching interests lie within the fields of comparative politics, religion and politics, and authoritarianism and democratization in the Arab World, with a particular focus on Islamic groups as social and political movements. 'Line Khatib’s book is an excellent overview of the Syrian Ba’th regime’s relations with Islam and especially of Syria’s creeping Islamization under Bashar al-Asad’s first decade. She shows how the regime’s attempt to foster a moderate Islam to counter secularists and radical Islamists inadvertently undermined secularism, leading to the Islamization of the anti-regime opposition after the Syrian Uprising.' Raymond Hinnebusch, University of St Andrews, UK.　 'In this remarkably prescient book, Line Khatib examines the erosion of Ba’thist secularism in the decade prior to the current civil war. Under Bashar al-Asad, she argues, the regime had sought to stabilize its position by reaching an accommodation with Islamist groups—thereby creating the political space for their growth and proliferation. Her analysis accurately predicts both the fragility of the regime and the foundations for Islamic radicalization since 2011, and is unquestionably important reading for anyone interested in contemporary Syrian politics.' Rex Brynen, McGill University, Canada. 'Dr. Line Khatib has written a fascinating book, predicting and making clear in various ways what is going on in Syria today. Her in-depth study fills a (huge) gap in our knowledge of why Islam went through such a strong revival and became a potential political power threatening the regime of Bashar al-Asad. She convincingly explains how the regime itself gave a lot of space to the Islamic movements to the detriment of secularism.' Nikolaos van Dam, author of The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society in Syria and the Ba'th Party (Routledge).

This study explores Islamic and Islamist revivalism in Ba´thist Syria. It addresses how the secular regime of both Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad paradoxically paved the way towards Syria's current Islamization. The study examines the following questions: Who are today's Syrian Islamic and Islamist groups? Why and how are they re-emerging after 22 years of relative silence as an important political and socio-economic force in Syria? How has the regime contributed to their re-emergence? Does Syria find Islamist groups to be a mechanism for wielding influence in the region, particularly in Iraq and Lebanon? If yes, how is this affecting the Syrian domestic scene? How successful are Syria's Islamic groups in recruiting followers within the authoritarian context of Syrian politics, and how is the Syrian regime dealing with their re-emergence in light of Syria's multi-sectarian society on the one hand, and its Pan-Arab foreign policy on the other hand? These questions are considered through a comparative examination of the shifts in the state's responses to, and relations with, the Islamic movement (independent variable) and the impact of these shifts on Islamic revivalism (dependent variable) in the Syria of Hafez al-Asad and Bashar al-Asad. This examination offers an explanation of the Populist Authoritarian regime's shift from muting secularism and co-opting the religious class under Hafez al-Asad to endorsing Islamic revivalism under Bashar. In this shift, the Ba´th regime stimulated the creation of a new relationship between the state and the Islamic groups, with the aim of retaining a considerable degree of control over the latter. However, the results of the regime's co-optation strategies have been the provision of an important organizational space for Islamic groups to grow and recruit members. The major conclusion of this study is that the mixture of the current formula predicts that Islamic revivalism is set to engulf the country, with or without the regime's blessing.

Islamic movement are examined. It is suggested that the president is facing similar challenges to those faced by his predecessor in the early stages of his command, namely an economic crisis exacerbated by strong demographic growth, Islamist activity at the domestic level and a new geo-political reality as a result of war in the region. But an important difference in the situation facing Bashar's government is that his response options are narrowing. This is because of the previous command's economic, social and regional policies discussed in the last chapter, which have led to an ongoing re-configuration of state-society relations such that these relations are no longer entirely under the current leadership's control. The new political command thus stands at a critical juncture, which is the natural outcome of the built-in structural limitations of the PA regime created by the Bath in 1963.2 Ultimately, the regime's survival strategies, while successful in postponing the need for larger structural adjustments during Hafez al-Asad's presidency, are no longer sufficient to tame the opposition or to secure the loyalty of strategic sectors. The reason for this is that economic development without political liberalization is \"bound to deepen civil society, and continuing social mobilization in this context will generate stronger, more autonomous social forces that cannot readily be controlled except through greater political liberalization.\"3 More specifically, Hafez al-Asad's regime succeeded in maintaining its control over the mobilized Islamic groups, but the regime of his son is no longer able to do so, for a number of intertwined reasons: in the nondemocratic setting of Syrian politics, the social engineering from above that is aimed at inhibiting the emergence of a viable political alternative to the regime, and thus at consolidating the latter's control, has constrained the set of options available to it. On one hand, the co-opted Islamic sector that was allowed to develop and recruit members under the previous presidency has today become a significant organizational force that, thanks to its outreach methods,4 is growing increasingly independent of the regime's control. On the other hand, the bourgeois class that Hafez al-Asad co-opted through selective economic liberalization has also become an important force, and is successfully pushing the state for further economic liberalization. The predicament, therefore, is that although selective economic liberalization addresses the desires of the powerful capitalist and arriviste elements linked to the regime, it also forces the state to abandon itssocial-welfare programmes and thus to widen the gap between the impoverished classes and the economic elite. A widened gap means that the state can no longer maintain its balancing act of satisfying its base of support - the middle and lower classes - and the new capitalistic class. In this sense, the strategic choices available to the leadership in Damascus have been altered, and generally narrowed. It is at this juncture that the link between the economic and the Islamic factors emerges: the impoverished class can no longer rely on the regime's populist policies for support, and feels abandoned. Thus its members are shifting their attention and allegiance towards the only sector that was allowed to prosper under the previous political command and that can help to fill their needs through its proficient welfare network, the Islamic sector. A critical examination of the current government's social, economic and regional policies will serve to validate the above arguments, and is presented in this first chapter of Part III. Chapter 6 will thus survey the ongoing deBathization and de-laïcization of the Syrian social system, the regime's renewed alliance with the Islamic sector, as well as the regime's economic policies, particularly its abandonment of a large part of Bathist populist reforms and its encouragement of private enterprise. Also surveyed are the regime's regional policies, which have focused on deepening patron-client relations with Islamist groups in neighbouring countries, a step believed to be aimed at maintaining Syria's political standing and influence in the region.5

In its exploration of Islamic and Islamist revivalism in Syria, this study is animated by the following questions: Who are today's Syrian Islamic and Islamist groups? Why and how are they re-emerging as an important force in Syrian civil society and political circles after 22 years of relative silence? How has the state contributed to their re-emergence? Does Syria use Islamist groups as a mechanism for wielding influence in the region, particularly in Iraq and Lebanon? If yes, how is this affecting the Syrian domestic political scene? How successful are Syria's Islamic groups in recruiting followers within the authoritarian context of Syrian politics, and how is the Syrian state dealing with their re-emergence in light of Syria's multi-sectarian society and its secular model? In answering these questions, the present study has re-examined the ways in which the secular Bath dealt with the Islamic militant opposition from its rise in 1963 to the seeming demise of the Islamist movement in Syria at the beginning of the 1980s. This re-examination is structured as a comparative analysis of the shifts in the state's responses to, and relationship with, the Islamic movement (independent variable), and its impact on Islamic revivalism (dependent variable) in the Syria of Hafez al-Asad and that of Bashar al-Asad. It illustrates how the Syrian political command is re-deploying in the face of recent challenges (i.e. the Syrian economic crisis and the new regional reality in light of the chaos in Iraq), and how it is using various domestic economic and socio-political survival strategies in order to keep religious discontent from boiling over into militancy, to eradicate the militant religious opposition and to limit popular unrest while still maintaining the unity of the regime coalition. The study also offers an explanation for the Bath regime's shift from muting secularism and co-opting the religious class under Hafez al-Asad to promoting Islamic religiosity under the current command. In precipitating this shift, the state has employed an admixture of incentives and disincentives to consolidate its power and ensure its survival, in a manner typical of PA regimes. Thus it has concocted a new state-Islamic relationship and a new state-Islamic alliance, in an attempt to retain a considerable degree of control over society's resolute Islamic sector. In so doing, it has also produced significant changes in the nature of both the political system and society.

As a result of the general atmosphere of crisis surrounding the state, the Bath opted during its Extraordinary Seventh Regional Congress of December 1979 for \"continuity\" rather than a widening of the circle of power through an expansion of the National Progressive Front. At the same time, Rif 'at al-Asad, the Commander of the Defence Companies and the leader of the Bath Party hardliners, vowed that he was ready to do anything that was necessary to restore peace.4 It was to be less than six months later that Rif 'at's assertions became concrete actions. As explained earlier, the summer of 1979 was anything but uneventful. The Syrian Mukhabarat often ventured into the smaller alleyways of Syria's northern cities accompanied by an impressive military armada, and it faced a number of armed attacks in the three major cities, including in Damascus. An autumn 1979 attack on an office of the Mukhabarat in which 14 members were killed prompted the government to arrest the shaykh of the Grand Mosque, Zeyn al-Din Khayrallah, whose brother was none other than Husni Abo, the military Commander of the Muslim Brothers in the Aleppo region who had recently been executed.5 Later, following the attempt on Asad's life in July 1980, even Shadhili shaykhs were executed at the Palmyra prison.6 Yet the regime still felt that it needed to impose more state control over civil society. In particular, it targeted the professional syndicates, which it had failed to co-opt in the 1970s and which still enjoyed a large degree of independence compared to the rest of Syria's popular organizations. This targeting of the professional syndicates was due to their general defiance in Aleppo and Hama, and because of their calls for political reforms and their reporting of the regime's human rights abuses.7 Thus the Professional Executive Councils were dissolved on 14 April 1980, despite the Muslim Brotherhood's negotiations with the Asad state and the government's promise to leave them intact. The state also detained a still undetermined number of the associations' leaders, executing a few of themwithout trial, while others fled the country.8 Human rights activists from within the lawyers' syndicate were also detained without public trial, the closed incamera trials were conducted with no one in the public sure of who was being detained and for how long. This marked the end of an autonomous civil society in Syria under the Bath. The early 1980s also saw the state undertake a mass purging of religious associations, mosques and shari'a schools, eliminating these as training grounds for activism. Furthermore, a number of prominent Sufi zawiya shaykhs were found dead between 1980 and 1983 according to a number of people who witnessed the events first-hand (although no one was sure who was behind the assassinations).9 The state even subjected all remaining religious institutions to state control and policing, thus depriving the Brotherhood of its main sites of outreach and ideological framing. These serious efforts to uproot the threat posed by political Islam proved successful overall. Yet the traditional quarters' autonomous economic base and pervasive religious sensibility still proved resistant to state penetration.10 Faced with this situation, aware of how the Muslim Brotherhood had created a new political space in Syrian society and unwilling to entertain the idea of making real political concessions, the regime was forced to re-visit its domestic stance towards Islam and the bourgeois class. This is the subject of the following section.

The logic advanced in this extract is that confronting established traditions by keeping religion strictly out of the state apparatus is a requirement for the Syrian nation to modernize and develop.8

These various initiatives took place within the context of the reappearance of a religious bourgeoisie as an important client to the authoritarian regime, a severe economic recession in the country, the US-led invasion of Iraq and the re-emergence of militant Islamist activity in the region, all of which have influenced the Syrian command to further compromise with domestic Islamic groups in order to consolidate its power. The compromises have involved promises of social acceptance, but more significantly, have included acquiescence to the idea of the creation of an Islamic political party within the Syrian Progressive National Front,10 something that would have been unthinkable less than ten years ago.11 When taken together, all of these developments demonstrate a clear willingness on the part of the Syrian state to open a new chapter in its relations with the country's Islamic groups. They also signal an official shift in the country's long-time secular stance, away from the previous understanding that religion was to remain outside the realm of politics and of the public sphere in general. Indeed, visitors to Syria today cannot but notice the increasing Islamization of public spaces, this in a society where public spaces have long been religiously neutral. It can be clearly seen in daily public conduct, styles of dress and speech, the charity work that is being done, the school system, summer camps, entertainment activities, financial institutions and even in architecture. And while secular governance still remains the guiding principle of the Syrian state, this movement of Islamic Renewal is also beginning to infiltrate the political sphere, challenging - although still indirectly - the secular state apparatus. The re-Islamization of the public sphere and the accommodating measures adopted by the state have not prevented the resurgence of militant Islamist activity in the country, as was made clear by the bloody attack of September 2008.12 The compromises have also recently given rise to a heated debate among Syria's secular intellectual and political leaders regarding what the next move should be to halt the spread of what some are calling \"de-secularizing interpretations and requests\" within the country's Islamic discourse. While these issues and events will be more closely examined in this work, one conclusion can already be drawn: that nearly 30 years after the Bathist regime's harsh victory over the Muslim Brotherhood at the city of Hama, notonly is Bathist secularism13 receding in Syria's political and social domains, but a new battle is underway between religious interests, secular interests, and the authoritarian state.14 Effectively, Islamic groups in the Syria of Bashar al-Asad are no longer under the control of the state,15 to the point that 2010 saw the Syrian Command directly announce the need to protect \"Syrian secularism.\"16

Political Islam in its pacifist and militant versions emerged at least partly in response to the perceived shortcomings of Islamic fundamentalism. Because of this, as well as the long-established link between fundamentalism and Islamic schools, Islamists developed an anti-clerical stance, with their lay movement usually existing outside the body of the 'ulama'. There are a number of reasons for this: first, Islamists insist that the 'ulama's' traditional education has left them ill-equipped to defend Islam against the new ideas that have swept in from the West and pushed aside the political ideal of the Islamic Khilafa (Caliphate).3 They also claim that fundamentalists have failed to interpret, portray and defend Islam in a way that would allow it to address the problems of modernity while still maintaining its authentic essence and message.4 This concern is not new and indeed has been voiced since the early twentieth century by Islamic ideologues all over the Islamicate world, including Syrian Salafis such as Sa'id al-Jabi and Sa'id Hawwa.5 In his explanation of the Islamists' intellectual inclinations, Sadowski writes,Islamists, with their cosmopolitan backgrounds, introduced various tools they had borrowed from the West into their organizational arsenal . . . they drew on anti-modernist philosophies that embodied Western dissatisfaction with the consequences of industrialization and positivism: Spengler, Althusser, and Feyerabend supplied some of their favourite texts.6