Islamic State of Syria?

Syria, Damascus, February the 4th 2006, dozens of Muslim extremists set fire to the Danish embassy during a demonstration against the publishing of some cartoons portraying the profit Muhammad in an offensive way.
Syria, Hama, February the 2nd 1982, the Syrian army set a comprehensive operation against the Muslim extremist group “Muslim brotherhood” which was planning a coup to take over the power by force.

Twenty-four years and two days separate the two events, and despite the fact that Syria is still ruled by the same party, the way of dealing with the Islamic tide has fundamentally changed.

When the late Hafiz Alassad came to power in 1970 his priority was to achieve a sort of political stability, he believed it is the key factor for economic and social prosperity. A major threat for his strategy was the growing power of the extremist Islamic group “the Muslim brotherhood”. The group belives in Islamism, employs Islam into politics, and try to make use of it as a mean to get to power, democratically when possible, or by force.

The Muslim brotherhood posed a double threat to the assad policies since he was aiming to build a secular state, as well as, maintaining the political stability (i.e., keeping the bath party in power).

At first, it was the task of various interior intelligence agencies to besiege the islamists, but at one point a military action was needed since the group has developed a military wing which started to execute terrorist attacks against civilian, governmental, and military targets. The action was lead by the Syrian special force units. they hit hard but it was necessary to rescue the country from getting back to the dark ages where religion would govern every single detail of every individual’s life as well as the economic, social, and political issues of the state at large.

Through the 80s and the 90s of the last century, a domesticated form of Islam was developed and has been encouraged by the government. The idea was to distance the Islam as a religion from being used in politics or directed against the government. This form of Islam was to be named “the moderate Islam” (please note that we are talking about Syria in mid eighties when the U.S and the world were not been introduced yet to the Islamism and the Islamophopia).

Starting by early 2000, there have been many signs indicating to the re-growth of the Islamic influence within the community, even though it has taken a more of a social form/cover this time. Moreover, It was obvious that the government did not feel like doing anything about this. Actually, at some points it seemed as if the government is in favour of this growth of the Islamic influence at the social levels, to an extent, it helped some Islamic personals, and in many cases, allowed them to represent the government views on different issues.

For me the idea was very clear, Syria has an overwhelming majority of Muslims, high percentage of this majority are conservatives. Those will be happy with any step taken by the government to get closer to them. The government recently had lots of problems internationally, especially in the relations with the United States of America. The general opinion in Syria on the street levels opposes the American policies towards Syria and the middle east, and in favour of the government official position. Therefore, the meeting between the government and the people of Syria is genuine at the moment.

The government is trying to reinforcing the relation with the people by tolerating the observed growth of the Islamic influence in the daily life of the people, at the same time trying to maintain a balance so it can give signals to those who it may concern, that the situation in Syria is not as smooth as they may think.

What worries me though, is that the government may loose control at some point and we all pay the price for allowing the re-growth of Islamism.
In physics we learnt about the critical balance and the stable one..I’m sure u all remember the knife standing vertically while you holding it from underneath…!