|
Syria religious revival takes hold
A religious revival is sweeping Syria, challenging the secular, ruling Baath Party to allow more Muslim influence in government and worrying many Syrians schooled for decades to fear political Islam.Growing religious feeling can be seen across the landscape, from the proliferation of head scarves worn by young women in Damascus to an enormous privately funded mosque nearing completion in downtown Aleppo. Muslim clerics are growing increasingly bold in asking for democratic political reforms that could give them a larger role in government. Alarmed by the trend, some within Syria's secular intelligentsia and middle class have begun writing and organizing against it. Writer Nabil Fayyad accused the government in September of softening its stand against the increasingly popular Islamic movement amid U.S. pressure to reform. "It's a temporary cooperation," said Fayyad, 49, a Sunni Muslim who was arrested soon after his columns appeared in a Kuwaiti newspaper. "They have the same enemy: the United States. But once the U.S. soldiers leave Iraq, what happens to us?" he said... Sunni cleric Salah Kuftaro runs Syria's largest Islamic education and charitable foundation, and in the past three years, enrollment has jumped from 5,000 to 7,000 students. "The revival we are witnessing has nothing to do with September 11, but the total failure of secular Arab governments," said Kuftaro, 47. The profusion of head scarves in even the most upscale Damascus neighborhoods is a sign of piety and silent protest against the Alawites in power, those who wear them say. "When I see all of these symbols," said Ghada Dassouky, 53, a host of women-only meetings that offer eclectic interpretations of Islam, "... I feel terror, really, because we are worrying about whether or not a woman can show her toes and the Americans are researching deep space. How far away are we?" Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-01-30 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=55133 |