November 14, 2012 | Quote
Preacher Takes Opposition Lead
Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of Syria’s newly formed umbrella opposition group, is a Sunni Muslim preacher with long experience of persecution by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime – and a record of opposing sectarianism.
Once the imam of the renowned Umayyad Mosque in Damascus’ old city, Mr Khatib was jailed several times before fleeing the country this summer.
As he seeks international support for the new coalition, Mr Khatib will need to draw on all his revolutionary credibility and broad base of allies to unify the fractious anti-regime alliance in the country’s 20-month-old conflict.
“He’s definitely a moderate, he’s genuinely open-minded, he has very good relations with secular opponents,” said Thomas Pierret, an expert on Syrian Islam at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh. “The last time he was in prison in spring, I think he was arrested maybe three times since the start of the revolution.”
Born in Damascus in 1960, Mr Khatib is the son of a preacher and the sibling of several other Muslim scholars, according to a biography circulated by Mulham al-Jundi, an opposition activist. He studied geophysics and worked as a petrophysicist for almost six years for the al-Furat Oil Company.
Activists say his cosmopolitan worldview is an important asset in a country of multiple faiths, where the brutal government crackdown on protests dominated by members of the Sunni majority has triggered a slide into sectarianism. Sunni Jihadist groups are increasingly active and have claimed responsibility for a series of deadly car bombs, while the notorious pro-regime shabiha militias drawn mainly from the president’s Alawite group have been implicated in several massacres.
“We demand freedom for every Sunni, Alawi, Ismaili, Christian, Druze, Assyrian . . . and rights for all parts of the harmonious Syrian people,” Mr Khatib told reporters at the meeting in Doha, Qatar’s capital, where the new opposition group was born.
Forced to flee Syria five months ago by the tightening government crackdown, Mr Khatib has since been based in Cairo, where he suffers from back problems sustained in an explosion at a secret police compound where he was held during one of his periods in detention.
Those sceptical about his chances of reinvigorating and bringing together Syria’s opposition are doubtful less about the man himself than the possibility of anyone pulling off the task he has taken on.
“[He is] a figure who has long managed to bridge . . . communications between secular and Islamist groups on the ground,” wrote Ammar Abdulhamid, a US-based anti-regime activist, on his blog. “As such, he is a potentially unifying figure, and his touch will be needed in the days and months, if not years ahead.”