Muslim Brotherhood

By: Cassandra Lee Facts about Syria Population: about 18 million people Area: 185, 180 square kilometers Sunnis are the largest religious group The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was established in 1945 and was actively involved in political roles until 1963 when their opposing party rose to power. The Baath Party, having a secular nationalist ideology, began to weaken Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and advocated for their activities to be banned. As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria reacted violently towards government officials and the Baath Party. The actions of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood were so extreme that Hafez al-Assad, the president at that time, created a law in which members of the Brotherhood were punished to death or exiled. Violence from the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria continued until the Hama Massacre in 1982 which caused the Brotherhood and others against the government to withdraw. In 1996, a newly elected chair for Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood...

Jordan population:  9,903,802 Capital: Amman   Current President: Jordan's King Abdullah II  History of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood The Muslim Brotherhood was established in Jordan in 1942. The Brotherhood was not only strongly influenced by the ideas of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but also members of the IKWAN in Egypt who were given security in Jordan after Gamal Abdel Nasser 's crackdown on the organization after a failed assassination attempt in 1952 (Luck, 2016). Like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood was created to work on societal and political issues through the prism of Islamic-based activism. Because of their extensive social activism, they gained popular support amongst Jordanians. Throughout the decades, the brotherhood in Jordan did what gave rise to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: they capitalized on the ability to connect with Jordanian civil society, and offer an extensive range of s...