Islamic Struggle in Syria

by Umar F. Abd-Allah, Hamid Algar

Syria has always played a pivotal role in Middle Eastern affairs, but most Westerners have never had a very clear understanding of the prevailing conditions there. The Islamic Struggle in Syria is a pioneering work that seeks to illuminate some important aspects on contemporary Syrian reality. It focuses on the bitter struggle between the Syrian Islamic Front and the repressive Ba'thist regime of Late Hafiz Asad. Dr. Abd-Allah provides valuable information on the leaders, ideology, and program of the Syrian Islamic Front as well as a history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and sketches of some its leaders, including Mustafa as-Sibai, Isam al-Attar, and Marwan Hadid. At the same time, he touches on a number of important the continuing nature of superpower intrigue and intervention in the Middle East, the importance of the sectarian factor in Syrina politics, the origins and antecedents of the Ba'thist regime, the ambiguous role played by Hafiz Asad vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinian cause, the role Syrian has played in Lebanese affairs, and Syria's relations with other countries in the region.

300 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Wymann-Landgraf) is an American Muslim, born in 1948 to a Protestant family in Columbus, Nebraska. He grew up in Athens, Georgia, where both parents taught at the University of Georgia. His father taught Veterinary Medicine and Organic Chemistry, while his mother’s field was English. In 1964, his parents took positions at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where his grandfather had been a professor emeritus of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Abd-Allah did his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri with dual majors in History and English Literature. He made the Dean’s list all semesters and was nominated to the Phi Beta Kappa Honorary Society. In 1969, he won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and entrance to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to pursue a Ph.D. program in English literature. Shortly after coming to Cornell, Dr. Abd-Allah read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which inspired him to embrace Islam in early 1970. In 1972, he altered his field of study and transferred to the University of Chicago, where he studied Arabic and Islamic Studies under Dr. Fazlur Rahman. Dr. Abd-Allah received his doctorate with honors in 1978 for a dissertation on the origins of Islamic Law, Malik’s Concept of ‘Amal in the Light of Maliki Legal Theory. From 1977 until 1982, he taught at the Universities of Windsor (Ontario), Temple, and Michigan. In 1982, he left America to teach Arabic in Spain. Two years later, he was appointed to the Department of Islamic Studies at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, where he taught (in Arabic) Islamic studies and comparative religions until 2000.

During his years abroad, Dr. Abd-Allah had the privilege of studying with a number of traditional Islamic scholars. He returned to Chicago in August 2000 to work as chair and scholar-in-residence of the newly founded Nawawi Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation. In conjunction with this position, he is now teaching and lecturing in and around Chicago and various parts of the United States and Canada, while conducting research and writing in Islamic studies and related fields. He recently completed a biography of Mohammed Webb (d. 1916), who was one of the most significant early American converts to Islam. The book is scheduled for release Spring/Summer 2006 under the title A Muslim in Victorian America: The Story of Alexander Russell Webb (Oxford University Press). Dr. Abd-Allah is presently completing a second work entitled Roots of Islam in America: A Survey of Muslim Presence in the New World from Earliest Evidence until 1965 and is also updating his dissertation for publication.

Reviews

[Irfan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it ages ago. His views on the Nusayri sect are quite jaundiced.

[Muhammad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Survived with sunnah, without arguing with enemy. Just delivered shalawat all over the world. Syria are free and always beautiful in Islam.

[N · Rating 1 out of 5]

Muslim brotherhood bs propaganda

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 1 out of 5]

A curious and insipid little piece of scrapple from the mid-1980s. Unabashedly the most politically motivated, by its own admission, work of history I have ever turned my eye to. While the few chapters on Mustafa Siba'i and the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria are one of the rare instances of at least the former being scrutinized as seriously as he should be, the rest of the book is a zany apologetic for the Syrian Islamic Front in the wake of the Hama massacres of 1982. Much of the text is taken up with describing how awesome it would be to form an Islamic government in Syria and destroy Hafiz al-Asad's regime. Whatever. An introductory section on Syria's population stresses that Alawis are people, too, and will be treated nicely. There then follows a brash and insulting expose on their "cult" religion. Why not just mention the sodomy and blood-drinking, too? Oh wait, he does mention the sodomy. A terrible book now winging its way on to Amazon.com.