A Western correspondent asked me about my posts on progressive Islam at the time of Nasser:
"would you say the Syrian regime still promotes something that could be called progressive islam as in the time of nasser?" My answer: no, the Iraqi and Syrian Ba`th played games with Islam, sometimes (in 70s) promoting progressive Islam, and other times (late 80s and 90s) promoting their version of conservative Islam, and other times (Syrian regime after US invasion of Iraq) even promoting at time Jihadi Islam to use against the US but inconstantly. The Syrian and Iraqi regimes were quite inconsistent: Hafidh Al-Asad for example related on his secular agenda after protests in Hamah and other places in 1973 regarding the new Syrian constitution and the presidential oath which originally didn't intend to mention God. But the progressive religious agenda of the Ba`th in power was nothing like the consistent message of the Nasser regime, who even ridiculed clerics and even mocked those who want to veil their daughters. But what I just wrote does not apply to the regime of Salah Jadid, who was an argent secularist and who allowed regime media to promote anti-religious agenda and got in trouble once the magazine of Jaysh Ash-Sha`b published this: "God and capitalism and feudalism have become embalmed idols in the museum of history". Asad regime never went that far ever. Furthermore, if you take Al-Buti who was the example of the so-called progressive Islam of the regime: he was never progressive in the sense of Mahmud Shaltut and other progressive senior clerics at Al-Azhar during Nasser's times. Al-Buti is relatively progressive--in relation to the reactionary Islam of the various Qatari-supported or Saudi-supported or Turkish-supported Syrian rebels but he is by no means a progressive. His book Kubra Al-Yaqinat Al-Kawniyyah is a rather reactionary book which attacks seculars and progressives in the most silly and vulgar way, and the regime sponsored the book and reissued many times. (See about the non-progressive Buti the book by `Abdul-Razzaq `Id, Sadanat Hayakil Al-Wahm).
"would you say the Syrian regime still promotes something that could be called progressive islam as in the time of nasser?" My answer: no, the Iraqi and Syrian Ba`th played games with Islam, sometimes (in 70s) promoting progressive Islam, and other times (late 80s and 90s) promoting their version of conservative Islam, and other times (Syrian regime after US invasion of Iraq) even promoting at time Jihadi Islam to use against the US but inconstantly. The Syrian and Iraqi regimes were quite inconsistent: Hafidh Al-Asad for example related on his secular agenda after protests in Hamah and other places in 1973 regarding the new Syrian constitution and the presidential oath which originally didn't intend to mention God. But the progressive religious agenda of the Ba`th in power was nothing like the consistent message of the Nasser regime, who even ridiculed clerics and even mocked those who want to veil their daughters. But what I just wrote does not apply to the regime of Salah Jadid, who was an argent secularist and who allowed regime media to promote anti-religious agenda and got in trouble once the magazine of Jaysh Ash-Sha`b published this: "God and capitalism and feudalism have become embalmed idols in the museum of history". Asad regime never went that far ever. Furthermore, if you take Al-Buti who was the example of the so-called progressive Islam of the regime: he was never progressive in the sense of Mahmud Shaltut and other progressive senior clerics at Al-Azhar during Nasser's times. Al-Buti is relatively progressive--in relation to the reactionary Islam of the various Qatari-supported or Saudi-supported or Turkish-supported Syrian rebels but he is by no means a progressive. His book Kubra Al-Yaqinat Al-Kawniyyah is a rather reactionary book which attacks seculars and progressives in the most silly and vulgar way, and the regime sponsored the book and reissued many times. (See about the non-progressive Buti the book by `Abdul-Razzaq `Id, Sadanat Hayakil Al-Wahm).
