Tues. 4 Oct. 2011
AL-JAZEERA
Ø A conversation with Grand Mufti Hassoun………………….1
WALL st. JOURNAL
Ø Assassinations Sow Discord in Syria………………………..4
BBC
Ø Is the Syria uprising heading towards civil war?...... 8
GUARDIAN
Ø Syria accused of torturing relatives of overseas activists…..11
TODAY’S ZAMAN
Ø Economic relations between Turkey and Syria…….………14
BLOOMBERG
Ø Tiny Qatar’s Big Plans May Change Mideast……...………17
DAILY CALLER
Ø Post-Assad Syria less likely to go Islamist than Egypt, say experts……………...………………………………………22
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A conversation with Grand Mufti Hassoun
Grand Mufti Hassoun, whose 22-year-old son was recently assassinated in Syria, is a supporter of Bashar al-Assad.
Nir Rosen,
Al Jazeera English,
03 Oct 2011,
As the Syrian uprising turns more violent, the latest victim in a spate of assassinations is Saria Hassoun, the 22-year-old son of Syria's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun. The shooting occurred outside Ibla University on the Idlib-Aleppo highway. Also killed with Saria Hassoun was Mohammad al-Omar, a professor of History at Aleppo University. Assassinations have become a near-daily occurrence, especially in the central province of Homs, where academics and officials are targeted in a tactic reminiscent those used by the Muslim Brotherhood in their armed uprising between 1976 and 1982.
According to Thomas Pierret, a lecturer in Contemporary Islam at the University of Edinburgh and author of a forthcoming book on the Baath party and Islam in Syria, the first cleric killed in that uprising was the son of then Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaru: "He was killed in 1979 in obscure circumstances, reportedly during an incident with tenants of one of his family's land properties. Nobody ever accused the Islamists of carrying out the assassination, and the Islamists themselves didn't claim responsibility for it (although they did it for other assassinated clerics). There is no doubt, however, that the Islamists killed Muhammad al-Shami, a prominent pro-regime cleric of Aleppo, in 1980. His son Suhayb (Hassoun's deadly foe) was appointed as director of the city's Religious Endowment in 1982, a position he occupied until 2005. Islamists also killed Rashid al-Khatib, the preacher of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, in 1981. And they seriously injured Salah 'Uqla, another Damascene pro-regime sheikh."
The Muslim clergy in Aleppo have a reputation for being the most corrupt in Syria, enriching themselves through embezzlement and the theft of public funds. Suhayb al-Shami was even more notorious for his corruption than Hassoun. Opposition activists in Aleppo frequently mention the expensive cars driven by the Mufti's sons and complain that the Mufti is very wealthy while his father was from a modest village.
Mufti Hassoun, who is based in the northern city of Aleppo, is widely reviled by the Syrian opposition for his open support of the regime and hostility to the protesters. This is in contrast to many other Sunni clerics throughout the country, who have expressed opposition to the regime, including the Mufti of Daraa, Sheikh Ahmad Abdulaziz Abazid, who was arrested during the uprising and whose house in Daraa's Karak neighbourhood is riddled with bullet-holes. In the daily demonstrations held in Syria, Mufti Hassoun is frequently mentioned in ire, as in one demonstration in Homs' Waer district, where hundreds of protesters chanted: "Listen, listen, Hassoun, take off your turban and put on horns!"
It is his moderate pro-regime position that has led to protesters in Syria mocking Mufti Hassoun in nearly every demonstration.
Meeting the Mufti
In August I met with Mufti Hassoun in Aleppo's Rawda mosque in the presence of three of his sons and his brother. Despite being majority Sunni, Aleppo, Syria's largest city, had not risen up like other parts of the country. I asked the Mufti why this was so. Aleppo was more educated and foreign influence was weaker in Aleppo, he said, echoing the regime's narrative that blamed a foreign conspiracy for the then six-month-old uprising. What was happening in other cities in Syria was foreign to Aleppo, he said, a result of ideas coming in from outside of Syria.
In addition to the foreign conspiracy, the Mufti also blamed "internal shortcomings in services and political pluralism" for the "foreign inflammation" of Syria. He admitted that Syria had not had political pluralism in Syria for 40 years. But he warned against the pluralism of Egypt, Tunisia and Iraq. "Iraq has more than 100 parties," his son interrupted. The Mufti added that he was opposed to religious or ethnic parties.
I asked him about the role of Islam in the demonstrations, reminding him that demonstrations emerged from mosques. He denied this, claiming that demonstrators came from elsewhere to meet in front of mosques.
I reminded him that takbeer, or the call to shout "God is great", was one of the main slogans of the uprising. He blamed outside influences for this, specifically "Wahhabi satellite channels". It was a reference to Wesal, a Saudi channel that aired sermons by the exiled Syrian firebrand Sheikh Adnan al-Arur, who urged the opposition to shout the takbeer. The Mufti said takbeer should be limited for the call to prayer that echoed from mosques five times a day. It was not to be shouted at midnight, he said. "I warn America," he said, "If there is a religious state here, it will move to Europe and the US. This happened in the former Yugoslavia."
I told him that I had seen many clerics playing a role in the uprising. "There are sheikhs inciting the demonstrations," he said. "But they are not conscious to what is happening in the Arab region. There is destruction in the name of democratic change but democratic change cannot be achieved by violence against the government or opposition.
"The words 'Sunni' or 'Christian' should be smaller than the word 'citizen'," he said. I told him that the opposition accused the Syrian government of being an Alawite regime. "In Iraq, they said it was a Sunni government," he told me, "Now Shia say we miss Saddam because they lost their security. There is a Baath party here and it is 80 or 90 percent Sunni."
I asked him what he thought of the first dead demonstrator from Aleppo, Muhammad al-Iqta, who the opposition claims was killed by an electrical stun gun during a demonstration. The Mufti claimed al-Iqta died from a heart attack. "Demonstrators cursed and insulted those who did not come out to join them," he said. "Is that peaceful? No it is not. Two sides opened fire, some from the demonstrators and some from the state. In the first month more soldiers died than [members of the] opposition. Many groups are armed, some want an Islamic state and some want a secular state and they are together like in Tahrir Square in Egypt."
After we parted, his son, who had occasionally whispered advice to his father on answers, rushed after me. His father had not meant that takbeer was just for Wahhabis, he said. "It's for all Muslims," he said. "It is the word of truth, but it has its appropriate time."
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Assassinations Sow Discord in Syria
New String of Killings Marks Violent Turn as Opposition Divisions Erupt Over Perpetrators; U.N. to Vote on Sanctions
Nour Malas,
Wall Street Journal,
4 Oct. 2011,
A series of assassinations in Syria marks a new turn in the country's uprising, as antigovernment activists trying to maintain a peaceful movement say unpredictable violence is spiraling beyond their control.
Syria's opposition, though divided on whether the killings were carried out by rogue activists seeking revenge or a ploy by the regime to discredit the protesters and stoke sectarian flames, broadly blames President Bashar al-Assad's military and security forces for driving protesters to a breaking point.
On Monday, tensions built after the burial of Sariya Hassoun, the son of Syria's Grand Mufti, who state media said was shot a day earlier during an ambush.
Syria's government said an armed terrorist group shot the 22-year-old Mr. Hassoun in the back while he drove to his university between Aleppo and Idlib with a professor. Mr. Hassoun later died of his injuries, while the professor, Mohammad al-Omar, died on the spot, state media said.
Their deaths bring the number of what activists and the government say are targeted assassinations to at least six in the past week, mostly in the central city of Homs, Syria's third-largest city and a center of protests.
But Mr. Hassoun's death was one of the highest-profile casualties close to the regime since the protests began in March. It unleashed a wave of condemnation from government authorities, with state media mourning his loss and government supporters blaming the violence both on protesters and terrorists.
Reports of revenge and sectarian killings between Alawites—members of the same muslim sect as the president and the top leadership—and Sunnis have increased in recent months. A stalemate with Mr. Assad's forces has dragged on and opposition forces have gotten access to light weapons from a rising number of defecting soldiers. This new phase of violence has exacerbated a cycle in which government forces, citing terrorist operations, boost their operations, bringing out more protesters in turn.
A town just north of Homs, al-Rastan, has become a de facto base for defected soldiers, who activists say fight the state military and security daily.
Mr. Hassoun's father, the country's highest Sunni cleric, leads the Muslim sect to which a majority of Syrians—and opposition members—belong, so his son's killing was a turn from the pattern of Alawite assassinations. The father is viewed as an Assad supporter.
During a sermon Monday at his son's funeral that was aired on state TV, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun accused the opposition of creating the climate for his son's killing and blamed anti-Assad Sunni clerics for allegedly issuing fatwas, or religious edicts, inciting against him.
"My brothers who were misguided and carried arms, you should have assassinated me because some clerics issued such fatwas," he said at the funeral, in Aleppo, according to the Associated Press. "Why did you kill a young man who did nothing and harmed no one?" The mufti added, "Those who send weapons and money will not succeed in silencing the voice of righteousness of Syria."
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is set to vote Tuesday on a European draft resolution that would threaten sanctions against the Syrian regime. A tougher earlier draft was withdrawn last month after opposition from Russia, which may also veto Tuesday's vote. Moscow is calling for talks between the government and opposition.
"We can't put this off forever when the situation continues to deteriorate," a Security Council diplomat said. "It's high time for Russia to decide whether it can continue to stand by while its long-standing ally Assad continues the repression, or finally to allow a different approach to be tried."
The Syrian government blamed an armed terrorist group for the Sunday killings, as it has done repeatedly for other unrest. There have been at least 2,700 deathssince the uprisings began, according to the United Nations.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based activist group, blamed Mr. Hassoun's death on "insurgents."
Mahmoud Akam, a leading Sunni cleric in Aleppo, saidin an interview that protesters in Syria had turned violent despite what appeared to be orders from their leadership to remain peaceful. "They have swapped the word with the weapon—the peaceful, democratic word for bullets," he said.
Addressing Mr. Hassoun's death, he said, "They killed him because his father, to the opposition, is with the government and is a symbol of the regime."
Some opposition activists suspected the perpetrators were rogue activists carrying out revenge killings on any sect. "The goal is…to pit people against each other," said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for activist network the Local Coordination Committees.
Of five other people killed in what activists described as the same organized, targeted method in the past week—in which the victims were shot by armed men in ambushes as they went mainly to or from work—three were Alawite, one was Shiite and one's affiliation was still unclear.
The victims were mainly professionals—a medical doctor, an engineer, professors and a student, echoing a wave of assassinations in Syria starting in 1979, before the government engaged in years of fighting with an Islamist insurgency led by the Muslim Brotherhood. Then, the government blamed its opponents for chaos in the country, while the opposition said the state was killing off dissent.
Mr. Idlibi said some of the Alawites killed had quietly sympathized with the protest movement, and that the government could be moving to eliminate influential dissenters while trying to pit protesters against one another and fan confusion.
"The regime has done it before and they would do it again: they'd kill their own to discredit their opponents," said Haitham Maleh, a veteran opposition leader.Mr. Maleh dismissed concerns that parts of the country could quickly slip into a civil war, the most-feared scenario for Syria's unprecedented uprising, but said that regular Syrians were arming themselves out of self defense. He cited Syrians inside the country who reported the black market price of guns having shot up ten fold. Mr. Akkam, the cleric from Aleppo, said arms were flowing into Syria from its neighbors—Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.
"If Syrians wanted a civil war, it would have happened a long time ago now, but people are thinking of self defense first," the 81-year old Mr. Maleh said in an interview.
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Is the Syria uprising heading towards civil war?
Owen Bennett-Jones
BBC News, on the Lebanon-Syria border
4 Oct. 2011,
Syrian refugees living in Lebanon say that anti-government protesters, trying to bring down President Bashar al-Assad, are resorting increasingly to the use of force.
"There will definitely be a civil war," said one middle-aged refugee.
He was sitting amidst a group of Syrians who had all walked to Lebanon. Like the others, he did not want to be photographed or give his name.
The men, Sunni Muslims, moved from the Syrian village of Hitt, just a kilometre (0.6 mile) from the border, over the last six months. Having crossed over, they are staying with friends and relatives.
The men said that the Syrian army presence in and around Hitt meant there were now only women and young children living there.