Batatu, Hanna. "Syria's Muslim Brethren". Middle East Research and Information Project Reports, No.110 (1982): 12-20, 34, & 36.

Batatu, Hanna. "Syria's Muslim Brethren". Middle East Research and Information Project Reports, No.110 (1982): 12-20, 34, & 36.

• At the time of its inception in Syria the early 1930s, the Muslim Brotherhood did not have any positions on economic issues. During the late 1940s and 1950s, the Brotherhood adopted a vague Islamic socialism, but did not develop these concepts beyond slogans decrying poverty and disease, and the entire paradigm was abandoned by 1961 (12).
• After the massacre of its supporters in Hama, Palmyra, and Aleppo between 1979 and 1980, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria issued a new program with more developed social and political goals (12).
• The 1980 proclamation started by calling on the Alawi community to recognize that its domination of the Syrian government under the al-Assad government was illegitimate and that resulting tensions would ultimately leave to a civil war (13).
• The proclamation makes no mention of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, despite the Islamist goals of the Brotherhood. This is because the Brotherhood is wary of angering Iraq, on whom it depends for supplies and funding, and because Iran ignored the Brotherhood's request for assistance and instead backed the Syrian government and the Amal movement in Lebanon against the Brotherhood (13).
• In response to this antagonistic relationship to Iran, Said Hawwa, the chief ideologue of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, declared that the Muslim community only includes Sunnis. This provides an ideological underpinning to the tense relationship with Iran (13).
• The proclamation focuses on the immorality of martial law, arbitrary arrest, and torture. It calls for freedom for the Syrian people, with specific focus on freedom of assembly, speech, and organize trade unions and political parties. They also call for the separation of powers, especially an independent judiciary (13).
• None of these points are fundamentally Islamic nor are they described in Islamist terms. Instead they are mainly liberal demands justified in liberal terms. This adoption of liberal talking points allows the Brotherhood to incorporate support for basic liberties for their own platform (13).
• The Brotherhood also makes economic demands in its 1980 proclamation. They advocating giving farmers control of their land and speak of liberation from bureaucrats and the state. It both calls for worker ownership of factories and better working conditions as well as castigates workers for indolence and recommends private enterprise as the remedy (13-14).
• The author claims that this economic platform is consistent with the beliefs of the urban Sunni middle and lower-middle classes in manufacturing and retail (14).
• The violence in Syria between 1979 and 1982 should not be construed as a conflict between Sunnis and Alawis, although the Muslim Brotherhood has portrayed it along these lines. To the degree that the conflict is about religion, it is not that the Sunnis have been repressed, but that the Sunni middle and upper classes have been pushed out of their premier position in society and replaced with Alawis (13).
• The Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was initially made up mainly of young men with religious education, including some graduates of al-Azhar, from a lower-middle class family background. Some members had read Hasan al-Banna, while others were recruited during tours by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s (14).
• Imams and other religious functionaries are very poorly paid, especially those in more minor roles. Although they receive some special privileges from the state, most religious officials have to engage in minor trade or sell handicrafts on the side to make ends meet (14). Many members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are from these families of merchant-sheiks (15).
• Most members of the contemporary [early 1980s] Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are minor merchants or artisans. Its position is especially strong among the class of merchant-sheiks, from whom many of its leaders come. The integration of merchants, artisans, and imams -- and their similar economic lifestyles -- means that this community is deeply attached to the Muslim Brotherhood and lacks the resentment of imams that sometimes occurs elsewhere (15).
• The class composition of the Muslim Brotherhood is demonstrated in incidents of violence. During some of the first riots in Aleppo in 1980, mobs attacked consumers' cooperatives, who represented an economic threat to the small-scale mercantile class (16).
• The ranks of the actual militants who committed violent acts on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood were disproportionately filled by students and young professionals, especially engineers, teachers, and doctors (20).
• Imams and other religious functionaries are much more concentrated in urban areas than rural areas, with available statistics indicating that multiple villages in Syria were often served by the same imam (14).
• The Muslim Brotherhood in Aleppo is more radical than the Brothers in Damascus, likely because Damascus receives more government largess and because political movements in Aleppo tend to be more radical in general (15).
• The merchants of Damascus also appear to have multiple alliances, supporting both the Muslim Brotherhood and the government to their own advantage. While still supporting the Brotherhood, these merchants benefitted greatly from liberalization in 1970 and maintain good relations with the al-Assad government's Chamber of Commerce (16).
• The class of urban small-scale traders and artisans, from which the Muslim Brotherhood draws most of its support, wishes to be protected from large industrialists and the government. The rise of the Baath party in 1963 led to the disruption of business as, mostly rural, bureaucrats were empowered and impede business either out of malice or ignorance of commerce. The previous system was also not ideal, however, and small merchants still seek protection from big business (15-16).
• This class consists of roughly 250,000 people, or 1/6 of Syria's population. This means that, unlike the few hundreds families that constituted the rural landlord class, it cannot be easily overthrown (16).
• The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was first founded in 1935 in Aleppo under the name 'The House of al-Arqam', after an early Meccan convert to Islam. The movement remained headquartered in Aleppo until 1944, when it moved to Aleppo in expectation of national independence (16).
• The Ottoman loss in WWI resulted in two significant changes that aggrieved Syrian Muslims. Their reduced economic position made them more susceptible to the anti-European and anti-Christian rhetoric of the Brotherhood.
• First, Syria was removed from Muslim Ottoman rule and placed under an infidel French administration. The new borders with Turkey and Iraq closed off access to the farmlands of the Çukurova plain, the main port of Iskenderun, and the Baghdad railroad. All of this initiated an economic depression well into the 1930s (16).
• Second, over 89,000 Armenian refugees resettled in Syria, mainly in Aleppo. The mercantile background of these refugees allowed them to quickly reacquire lost wealth and challenge local merchants for their market position. The rise of the Christian Armenian mercantile class was deeply troublesome to Muslim merchants (16).
• Following the move to Damascus in 1944, the movement changed its name to the 'Muslim Brethren' and elected Mustafa as-Sibai as its head. The Brotherhood struggled to attract more support from the merchant class during this period, as they were making significant gains from speculating on wartime shortages. The Brotherhood instead started recruiting low-ranking bureaucrats and school teachers (16).
• The creation of Israel in 1948 both shocked the Muslim world and had concrete economic effects in Damascus. The merchant community in Damascus was deeply connected to Palestinian markets, so Damascus merchants shared mutually reinforcing political and economic interests with the Palestinians (16).
• The rise of pan-Arabism under Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s was bad for the membership roles of the Brotherhood, since support for Arab nationalism came from the same small-scale mercantile and artisan classes upon which the Brotherhood depended. When Gamal Abdel Nasser created the United Arab Republic in 1958, Mustafa as-Sibai voluntarily dissolved the Brethren (18).
• Although the former leadership of the Brotherhood did not explicitly endorse Syrian separatism, the military government that dissolved union with Egypt in 1961 was led by Lt. Col. Abd ul-Karim an-Nahlawi, who came from a merchant-sheik family background, and depended on the reconstituted Brotherhood for much of its support (18).
• This was a period of relative strength for the Brotherhood and they captured roughly 20% of the vote in large cities -- partially from genuine supporters and partially from large landlords and industrialists terrified of the Communists. They still lacked support in rural areas, however, and got only 5% of votes nationally (18).
• After the Baath coup in 1963, the Muslim Brotherhood became the most visible advocate of urban Syrians and enemy of the Baath government. It encouraged Syrians to practice civil disobedience and used friendly mosques to organize resistance to the government (19). 
• The Arab loss to Israel in 1967 forced the Brotherhood to focus more on Israel and consider the weakness of the Syrian state. Against the wishes of the younger membership, the Brotherhood under Isam al-Attar voted to cease active opposition to the Baath government and support it against Israel (19).
• In reaction to al-Attar's decision to support the Syrian state, a group of young Brothers, mainly from Hama and Aleppo, led by Marwan Hadid, left the Brotherhood and traveled to Jordan to join Fatah, where they received paramilitary training (19).
• The author places Baath rule in Syria into three rough epochs: 
• The first period was from their takeover in 1963 to 1968 (18). It began with the military coup in 1963 and lasted during the period of general unity among the officers. It began to break down around 1965 over how to respond to the Muslim Brotherhood, polarizing between those who wanted to compromise, mainly Sunnis around General Amin al-Hafiz, and hardliners, mainly Alawis, Sunni Hauranis, and Druzes around Salah Jadid and Hamad Ubayd. Gen. Jadid was able to unseat Gen. al-Hafiz in 1966 and then his Druze and Haurani allies, securing Alawi domination of the Baath government by 1968 (19).
• The regime was composed of army officers from rural areas, particularly Alawis from Latakia, Druzes from Jabal al-Arab, and Sunnis from Hauran and Deir ez-Zor. The Baath government applied its own version of socialism in a haphazard and careless manner, damaging the economic interests of the entire urban mercantile and manufacturing classes. They also expanded the authority of bureaucrats, mainly from a rural background (18). 
• Hauran was traditionally the granary of Damascus and most Hauranis were small farmers selling grain to merchants in Damascus. Most commerce in the villages of Hauran was also dominated by Damascenes, who held Haurani debt and traded on favorable terms (18).
• Commerce in Deir ez-Zoir and the Jazira was controlled by Aleppine merchants, who traded with farmers on similarly favorable terms. The situation in Deir ez-Zoir was further complicated by the fact that local political and economic power was held by the Albu Saraya, part of the Baggarah tribe. Most of the Baath officers from Deir ez-Zoir were from politically and economically disenfranchised tribes (18-19).
• The second phase was from the establishment of Alawi domination in 1968 to the split between the military and the party in 1970. This period was defined by tension between Gen. Jadid and Hafiz al-Assad over control of the government and Gen. Jadid's radical socialist line, which Gen. al-Assad believed would dangerously escalate the urban-rural divide. The military broadly supported Gen. al-Assad, while the civilian wing of the Baath party backed Gen. Jadid (19).
• The third phase was from the victory of Hafiz al-Assad in the leadership struggle in 1970 to the present [1982]. Gen. al-Assad stopped some of the policies most offensive to the urban mercantile classes and found common cause with Islamists by allying with Gamal Abdel Nasser and fighting Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He liberalized the economy, earning the affection of Damascene merchants (19).
• The economic situation deteriorated during the later 1970s as part of the aftershock of the oil crisis. Investment from the Gulf dried up at the same time that high inflation pushed up real prices for basic goods and housing. This period also saw major migration to urban areas, and these rural migrants both disrupted the traditional social fabric of cities and suffered the effects of the economic downturn (19).
• The Syrian government was incredibly corrupt at its highest echelons and the wealth of those with political influence increased popular discontent (19).
• The invention of the al-Assad government in Syria against the Palestinians was a massively unpopular move. The fact that Syrian forces had cooperated with Maronite militias and were significant in defeating Palestinian forces there alienated large swathes of the population from the government (20).
• Gen. al-Assad organized two parallel systems of governance: one formal government consisting of the legislature and the Baath party, and an informal structure based around the intelligence directives of the armed forces, the special forces, and a special paramilitary known as the Defence Companies (20).
• Many in Syria resent the al-Assad government for its preference for Alawis because, although the formal government has Sunni in prominent positions at all levels, the heads of all the intelligence directives and special armed units are Alawi, and all but Internal Security and the special forces are from Hafiz al-Assad's tribe, al-Matawirah. The head of the Defence Companies is Hafiz al-Assad's brother, Rifat (20).
• The Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Syria began in 1976, shortly before Syrian intervention in Lebanon against the Palestinians. They focused on singular murders of security officers or Alawi officials, hoping to provoke a disproportionate reaction from the al-Assad government (20).
• Brotherhood activities escalated in 1979, with attacks now targeting government offices, army bases, and Baath party buildings. They also orchestrated wide-spread strikes and work stoppages. This movement saw its triumph in the June 1979 attack on the Artillery Academy in Aleppo, which killed 83 Alawi army cadets (20).
• The government response to this insurrectionary activity was violent and destructive: to prevent an escape attempt by political prisoners in Palmyra in June 1980, security forces killed over 400 men; to suppress a Brotherhood uprising in Hama in February 1982, the Syrian army leveled most of the eastern and northern parts of the city with artillery and killed over 5,000 people (20).
• The Muslim Brotherhood's armed resistance in Syria has provoked massively violent responses from the al-Assad government that have alienated it from the population. The Brotherhood's actively anti-Alawi line has, however, frightened the Alawi community into supporting Hafiz al-Assad. The violence has also failed to topple the al-Assad government (20).