Conclusion

In its exploration of Islamic and Islamist revivalism in Syria, this study is animated by the following questions: Who are today’s Syrian Islamic and Islamist groups? Why and how are they re-emerging as an important force in Syrian civil society and political circles after 22 years of relative silence? How has the state contributed to their re-emergence? Does Syria use Islamist groups as a mechanism for wielding influence in the region, particularly in Iraq and Lebanon? If yes, how is this affecting the Syrian domestic political scene? How successful are Syria’s Islamic groups in recruiting followers within the authoritarian context of Syrian politics, and how is the Syrian state dealing with their re-emergence in light of Syria’s multi-sectarian society and its secular model? In answering these questions, the present study has re-examined the ways in which the secular Bath dealt with the Islamic militant opposition from its rise in 1963 to the seeming demise of the Islamist movement in Syria at the beginning of the 1980s. This re-examination is structured as a comparative analysis of the shifts in the state’s responses to, and relationship with, the Islamic movement (independent variable), and its impact on Islamic revivalism (dependent variable) in the Syria of Hafez al-Asad and that of Bashar al-Asad. It illustrates how the Syrian political command is re-deploying in the face of recent challenges (i.e. the Syrian economic crisis and the new regional reality in light of the chaos in Iraq), and how it is using various domestic economic and socio-political survival strategies in order to keep religious discontent from boiling over into militancy, to eradicate the militant religious opposition and to limit popular unrest while still maintaining the unity of the regime coalition. The study also offers an explanation for the Bath regime’s shift from muting secularism and co-opting the religious class under Hafez al-Asad to promoting Islamic religiosity under the current command. In precipitating this shift, the state has employed an admixture of incentives and disincentives to consolidate its power and ensure its survival, in a manner typical of PA regimes. Thus it has concocted a new state-Islamic relationship and a new state-Islamic alliance, in an attempt to retain a considerable degree of control over society’s resolute Islamic sector. In so doing, it has also produced significant changes in the nature of both the political system and society.