Issam al-Attar

Issam al-Attar ( Arabic عصام العطار, * 1927 in Damascus ) is a Syrian Islamist . He was the formal head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria from 1957 to 1975 . He has lived in Germany since the late 1960s . His sister Najah al-Attar has been Vice President of Syria since 2006.

Life

Issam al-Attar was born in Damascus into a family of Islamic scholars; his father was a lawyer . At the age of eleven, Al-Attar was a member of the youth of Mohammed , which was founded by Mustafā as-Sibāʿī , who later became the first leader of the Brotherhood in Syria . Al-Attar studied Islamic law in Damascus and in 1947 formally joined the brotherhood founded by as-Sibāʿī the previous year. Al-Attar, who had made a name for himself as an intellectual within the movement, was appointed head of the Syrian branch in 1957.

He was a vehement opponent of the United Arab Republic as he feared police state repression against the Islamists. Al-Attar was arrested several times during the existence of the Union.

After Syria regained independence, al-Attar took part in the elections that followed in 1961 and was elected to parliament along with nine other Muslim Brotherhoods. After the coup of the Ba'ath party in 1963, this political freedom ended again and al-Attar was refused entry into the country after a stay in Mecca in 1964. From exile in Lebanon , he initially agitated for violent resistance against the regime. In 1966, under pressure from the Syrian government, he left Lebanon for Europe and found a job in West Berlin in an Islamic center.

Within the Syrian Brotherhood, al-Attar remained politically and militarily insignificant in relation to the Baath regime . He came under massive criticism and parts of the organization in Syria pushed for his removal. Al-Attar left the organization in 1975 and founded his own organization in Germany with at-Talia (The Vanguard) . This is centered around the Bilal mosque he helped build in Aachen . During the uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria from 1979 to 1981, al-Attar turned to the fellow believers who remained in Syria with the demand for non-violence. However, the Syrian government secretly accused him of providing logistical support to the uprising. His wife was murdered in March 1981 by alleged Syrian intelligence agents in Aachen. In 1992, the Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad al-Attar made an offer to return to Syria, which he refused.

See also

• Islamic Center Aachen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Alison Pargeter: The Muslim Brotherhood - From Opposition to Power , 2nd edition, London, 2013, pp. 71–73
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Sami Moubayed: Steel and Silk - Men and Women who shaped Syria 1900-2000 , Seattle, 2006, pp. 180f
3. ↑ Guido Steinberg: The Muslim Brotherhood in Germany , in Barry Rubin (ed.): The Muslim Brotherhood - The Organization and Politics of a Global Islamist Movement , New York, 2010, p. 151