Shaping Jihadism: How Syria Molded the Muslim Brotherhood

摘要

In February 1982, Syrian President Assad's military and security forces surrounded, assaulted, and leveled the fourth largest city in Syria, Hama, killing between 5,000-25,000 Syrians in less than three weeks. It was the culmination of an escalating five year revolutionary war between the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and President Hafez Assad's authoritarian rule. Through the use of overwhelming force and a government sponsored moderate Islamification process, the Muslim Brotherhood was transformed from a violent revolutionary opposition movement to a peace oriented social organization calling for a representative democratic government. Using Social Movement Theory (SMT) and Dr. McCormick's Mystic Diamond, this thesis demonstrates how extreme state violence affects opposition social movements. It analyzes why the Muslim Brotherhood's revolution failed, why the Assad regime succeeded, and how its overwhelming defeat transformed the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood from a violent revolutionary organization to a peaceful social movement. The Syrian counter- insurgency model provides a viable strategy that can be applied to existing and future insurgencies throughout the Middle East.