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219-630: Historical: The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region ( Arabic : حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي – قطر سوريا Ḥizb al-Ba'th al-'Arabī al-Ishtirākī – Quṭr Sūriyā ), officially the Syrian Regional Branch ( Syria being a "region" of the Arab nation in Ba'ath ideology), is a neo-Ba'athist organisation founded on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq , Salah al-Din al-Bitar and followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi . The party has ruled Syria continuously since

438-659: A military dictatorship operating in totalitarian lines; wherein all state agencies, party organisations, public institutions, civil entities, media and health infrastructure are tightly dominated by the army establishment and the Mukhabarat (intelligence services). The 1966 coup d'état by the radical left-wing faction of Salah Jadid and General Hafez al-Assad ousted the Old Guard of Ba'ath leadership consisting of Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bitar ; and dissolved

657-436: A Syrian dissident, "The Ba'ath is in complete disarray. ... It's like a dead body. It's no longer a party in any normal sense of the word." Hanna Batatu wrote, "Under Assad the character of the Ba'ath changed ... Whatever independence of opinion its members enjoyed in the past was now curtailed, a premium being placed on conformity and internal discipline. The party became in effect another instrument by which

876-580: A bill calling for a union with Egypt, a move that was very popular. The union between Egypt and Syria went ahead and the United Arab Republic (UAR) was created, and the Ba'ath Party was banned in the UAR because of Nasser's hostility to parties other than his own. The Ba'ath leadership dissolved the party in 1958, gambling that the legalisation against certain parties would hurt the SCP more than it would

1095-479: A brief period and wrote articles for the school's paper, including a piece on French philosopher Voltaire titled "Voltaire, the Man of Freedom". On 13 November 1935, Nasser led a student demonstration against British rule, protesting against a statement made four days prior by UK foreign minister Samuel Hoare that rejected prospects for the 1923 Constitution's restoration. Two protesters were killed and Nasser received

1314-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

1533-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

1752-656: A democratic framework led to internal divisions within the Military Organisation among the rank-and-file. Tension within the organisation increased, and became apparent when Muhammad Umran was dismissed from the Military Committee. Some rank-and-file members presented a petition to the Regional Congress which called for the democratisation of the Military Organisation. The National Command, represented by Munif al-Razzaz , did not realise

1971-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

2190-562: A dramatic turn in 1954 when the military government of Adib al-Shishakli was overthrown and the democratic system restored. The Ba'ath, now a large and popular organisation, won 22 out of 142 parliamentary seats in the Syrian election that year, becoming the second-largest party in parliament. The Ba'ath Party was supported by the intelligentsia because of their pro-Egyptian and anti-imperialist stance and their support for social reform. The assassination of Ba'athist colonel Adnan al-Malki by

2409-481: A graze to the head from a policeman's bullet. The incident garnered his first mention in the press: the nationalist newspaper Al Gihad reported that Nasser led the protest and was among the wounded. On 12 December, the new king, Farouk , issued a decree restoring the constitution. Nasser's involvement in political activity increased throughout his school years, such that he only attended 45 days of classes during his last year of secondary school. Despite it having

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2628-463: A heart attack and died. His funeral in Cairo drew five to six million mourners, and prompted an outpouring of grief across the Arab world. Nasser remains an iconic figure in the Arab world, particularly for his strides towards social justice and Arab unity, his modernization policies, and his anti-imperialist efforts. His presidency also encouraged and coincided with an Egyptian cultural boom, and

2847-436: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

3066-465: A loyal clerical network, and condemned anyone deviating from the state-promoted "Ba'thist version of Islam" as a threat to the society. The state-sponsored religious discourse during the rule of Hafez al-Assad promoted a left-wing nationalist worldview that sought to anathematize Islamists and re-inforce loyalty towards the Alawite president. The era of d'tente between the religious establishment and

3285-677: A member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in April 1955 allowed the Ba'ath Party and its allies to launch a crackdown, thus eliminating one rival. In 1957, the Ba'ath Party partnered with the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) to weaken the power of Syria's conservative parties. By the end of that year, the SCP weakened the Ba'ath Party to such an extent that in December the Ba'ath Party drafted

3504-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

3723-452: A new distinctive current in Syria which has been developed by him; it is a school of thought which has benefited from Nasserism , but has surpassed it, just as it has surpassed the traditional Ba'thist school, albeit that it does not contradict either of these schools of thought but has further developed them in line with contemporary needs." Assad personality cult is portrayed as integral to

3942-499: A patronage network closely intertwined with the bureaucracy, and soon became virtually indistinguishable from the state, while membership rules were liberalized. In 1987, the party had 50,000 members in Syria, with another 200,000 candidate members on probation. The party lost its independence from the state and was turned into a tool of the Assad government, which remained based essentially in the security forces. Other parties that accepted

4161-479: A principal theme of Egyptian foreign policy regarding the Cold War. Nasser was welcomed by large crowds of people lining the streets of Cairo on his return to Egypt on 2 May and was widely heralded in the press for his achievements and leadership in the conference. Consequently, Nasser's prestige was greatly boosted, as was his self-confidence and image. With his domestic position considerably strengthened, Nasser

4380-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

4599-626: A result. At the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in late April 1955, Nasser was treated as the leading representative of the Arab countries and was one of the most popular figures at the summit. He had paid earlier visits to Pakistan (9 April), India (14 April), Burma , and Afghanistan on the way to Bandung, and previously cemented a treaty of friendship with India in Cairo on 6 April, strengthening Egyptian–Indian relations on

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4818-552: A return to the pre-1952 order, the RCC decreed an end to restrictions on monarchy-era parties and the Free Officers' withdrawal from politics. The RCC succeeded in provoking the beneficiaries of the revolution, namely the workers, peasants, and petty bourgeois, to oppose the decrees, with one million transport workers launching a strike and thousands of peasants entering Cairo in protest in late March. Naguib sought to crack down on

5037-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

5256-615: A series of major socialist measures and modernization reforms in Egypt. Despite setbacks to his pan-Arabist cause, by 1963 Nasser's supporters gained power in several Arab countries, but he became embroiled in the North Yemen Civil War , and eventually the much larger Arab Cold War . He began his second presidential term in March 1965 after his political opponents were banned from running. Following Egypt's defeat by Israel in

5475-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

5694-473: A sizable group within the RCC, led by Khaled Mohieddin, demanded Naguib's release and return to the presidency. Nasser acquiesced, but delayed Naguib's reinstatement until 4 March, allowing him to promote Amer to Commander of the Armed Forces—a position formerly occupied by Naguib. On 5 March, Nasser's security coterie arrested thousands of participants in the uprising. As a ruse to rally opposition against

5913-418: A social institution that advanced "the values of feudalism and imperialism ". Neo-Ba'athism views religion as the "foremost symbol of reaction" preventing the birth of a modern socialist society, and advocate strict state supervision over religious activities for sustaining what its ideologues regard as a healthy, secularist society. During Salah Jadid 's reign in power, the Ba'ath postured itself as

6132-423: A specific type of national membership; it occasions the enforcement of obedience; it induces complicity by creating practices in which citizens are themselves "accomplices", upholding the norms constitutive of Asad's domination; it isolates Syrians from one another; and it clutters public space with monotonous slogans and empty gestures, which tire the minds and bodies of producers and consumers alike   ... Asad

6351-733: A speech in Alexandria announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company as a means to fund the Aswan Dam project in light of the British–American withdrawal. In the speech, he denounced British imperialism in Egypt and British control over the canal company's profits, and upheld that the Egyptian people had a right to sovereignty over the waterway, especially since "120,000 Egyptians had died building it". The motion

6570-528: A strongly anti-religious political entity; adhering to the Marxist–Leninist approach of top-down regimentation of the society through liquidation of what it regarded as " reactionary " classes such as the traditional ulema . The Grand Mufti 's official status was downgraded by the Ba'athist government and the conventional role of religious clergy in state functioning was curtailed. While state ministers, officials, educators, etc. regularly preached about

6789-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

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7008-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

7227-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

7446-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

7665-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

7884-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

8103-477: Is a strategy of domination based on compliance rather than legitimacy. The regime produces compliance through enforced participation in rituals of obeisance that are transparently phony both to those who orchestrate them and to those who consume them. Asad's cult operates as a disciplinary device, generating a politics of public dissimulation in which citizens act as if they revere their leader   ... It produces guidelines for acceptable; it defines and generalizes

8322-958: Is according to the Syrian Constitution has the power to nominate a candidate for president. While the constitution does not state that the Secretary of the Central Command is the President of Syria, the charter of the National Progressive Front (NPF), of which the Ba'ath Party is a member, states that the President and the Central Command Secretary is the NPF President, but this is not stated in any legal document. The 1st Extraordinary Regional Congress held in 1964 decided that

8541-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

8760-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

8979-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

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9198-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

9417-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

9636-424: Is powerful because his regime can compel people to say the ridiculous and to avow the absurd." Like Marxists , Syrian Ba'athist ideologues viewed religion as a tool used by traditional elites to oppress the weaker sections of the society and reinforce their conservative social order. Anti-religious propaganda has been a common ideological theme in the literature published by Syrian Ba'ath party. Militant secularism

9855-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

10074-476: Is the Ba'th party; which advocates class-struggle against the traditional Syrian economic elite classes; the big agriculturalists, industrialists, bourgeousie and feudal landlords. By the 1970s, 85% of agricultural lands were distributed to landless peasant populations and tenant farmers. Banks, oil companies, power production and 90% of large-scale industries were nationalised. The neo-Ba'athists led by Salah Jadid who came to power in 1966 concentrated on improving

10293-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

10512-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

10731-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

10950-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

11169-496: The 1963 Syrian coup d'état which brought the Ba'athists to power. It was first the regional branch of the original Ba'ath Party (1947–1966) before it changed its allegiance to the Syrian-dominated Ba'ath movement (1966–present) following the 1966 split within the original Ba'ath Party. Since their ascent to power in 1963, neo-Ba'athist officers proceeded by stamping out the traditional civilian elites to construct

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11388-654: The 1966 coup were advocates of militant revolution, calling for immediate socialist transformation of society. The Soviet Union began supporting the group for its leftist programme and denounced its rival Iraqi Ba'ath as "reactionary" and "right-wing". The early years of neo-Ba'ath power was marked by militarism along with increasing sectarianism in the army and party elites. State propaganda regularly attacked religion and belief in God and young students were given compulsory military training. Big businesses, banks and large agricultural lands were all nationalised. These policies brought

11607-786: The Abdeen Palace Incident , British soldiers and tanks surrounded King Farouk's palace to compel the King to dismiss Prime Minister Hussein Sirri Pasha in favour of Mostafa El-Nahas , whom the United Kingdom government felt would be more sympathetic to their war effort against the Axis. The British Ambassador, Miles Lampson , marched into the palace, and threatened the King with the bombardment of his palace, his removal as king, and his exile from Egypt unless he conceded to

11826-745: The Arab Socialist Party (ASP), led by Akram al-Hawrani , to establish the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Lebanon following Adib Shishakli 's rise to power. Most ASP members did not adhere to the merger and remained, according to George Alan, "passionately loyal to Hawrani's person." The merger was weak, and a lot of the ASP's original infrastructure remained intact. In 1955, the party decided to support Gamal Nasser and what they perceived as his pan-Arabic policies. Syrian politics took

12045-565: The Chinese economic reforms or the perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev . A brief period of political and cultural opening known as Damascus Spring was stamped out during 2001–2002, when numerous intellectuals, activists and dissidents, were arrested or exiled, under the guise of "national unity". Image of Assad as a moderniser also vanished; when economic measures resulted in the concentration of wealth under loyalist oligarchs, heightened systematic corruption and increased poverty levels amongst

12264-745: The Eastern Bloc and concluded a US$ 320,000,000 armaments agreement with Czechoslovakia on 27 September. Through the Czechoslovakian arms deal , the balance of power between Egypt and Israel was more or less equalized and Nasser's role as the Arab leader defying the West was enhanced. The arms deal led to increased unease in the United States, where Nasser was compared to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler , causing it to strengthen its relations with Israel and become more wary of Egypt as

12483-592: The National Command of the united Ba'ath party . The leftist faction of the Syrian Baath advanced a strictly socialist economic programme, pursued closer alliance with the Syrian communists , " progressive " Arab states and the Soviet Bloc and prioritised the spread of socialist revolution in the neighbouring " reactionary " Arab states over pan-Arab unity. The official ideology preached by

12702-508: The Qur'an , the sayings of Muhammad , the lives of the Sahaba (Muhammad's companions), the biographies of nationalist leaders Napoleon , Atatürk , Otto von Bismarck and Garibaldi , and the autobiography of Winston Churchill . Nasser was greatly influenced by Egyptian nationalism , as espoused by politician Mustafa Kamel , poet Ahmed Shawqi , and his anti-colonialist instructor at

12921-558: The Royal Military Academy , Aziz al-Masri , to whom Nasser expressed his gratitude in a 1961 newspaper interview. He was especially influenced by Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim 's novel Return of the Spirit , in which al-Hakim wrote that the Egyptian people were only in need of a "man in whom all their feelings and desires will be represented, and who will be for them a symbol of their objective". Nasser later credited

13140-437: The Six-Day War of 1967, Nasser resigned, but he returned to office after popular demonstrations called for his reinstatement. By 1968, Nasser had appointed himself prime minister, launched the War of Attrition to regain the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula , began a process of depoliticizing the military, and issued a set of political liberalization reforms. After the conclusion of the 1970 Arab League summit , Nasser suffered

13359-467: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

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13578-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

13797-445: The state presidency . Hafez's son Bashar al-Assad succeeded him in office as President of Syria and Regional Secretary of the Syrian Regional Branch on 17 July and 24 June respectively. State propaganda portrayed the new president as the symbol of "modernity, youth, and openness". At the beginning, Bashar al-Assad's rule was met with high expectations, with many foreign commentators believing he would introduce reforms reminiscent of

14016-412: The ulema and the Assad regime had sunk to its lowest level, with even staunch Assad-loyalists like the Grand Mufti Ramadan al-Bouti expressing public discontent. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war , regime's crackdown on religious dissidents have increased, particularly those of Sunni background over allegations of sympathies with Syrian opposition groups. In November 2021, Assad abolished

14235-429: The urban middle classes and villagers . Bashar al-Assad's rule was believed to be stable until the Arab Spring took place; the revolutions occurring in other parts of the Arab world acted as an inspiration for the Syrian opposition , leading to the 2011 Syrian revolution which escalated into a civil war . The Syrian Regional Branch has demonstrated absolute loyalty to Bashar al-Assad in its entirety throughout

14454-444: The vanguard of Syrian nation and has tightened its monopoly on youth organisations , student activism , trade unions , agricultural organisations and other civil society groups. The General Congress is supposed to be held every fourth year to elect members of the Central Command. Since 1980, its functions have been eclipsed by the Central Committee, which was empowered to elect the Central Command. By 1985's 8th Regional Congress,

14673-436: The "Arab notion of glory", since the name of Nasser's brother, Izz al-Arab, translates to "Glory of the Arabs". Nasser's family traveled frequently due to his father's work. In 1921, they moved to Asyut and, in 1923, to Khatatba , where Nasser's father ran a post office. Nasser attended a primary school for the children of railway employees until 1924, when he was sent to live with his paternal uncle in Cairo , and to attend

14892-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

15111-449: The "perils of religion"; party periodicals and magazines during the 1960s regularly made predictions about the "impending demise" of religion through the socialist revolution . In an article titled "The Path to Creation of the New Arab Man" published by the Syrian Arab Army magazine "People's Army" in 1967, party ideologue Ibrahim Khalas declared: "The New Man believes that God, religions, feudalism , capitalism , imperialism and all

15330-926: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Gamal Nasser President (1956–1970) Prime Minister (1954–(March)1954,(April)1954–1962,1967–1970) Deputy prime minister (1953–1954) [REDACTED] Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970)

15549-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

15768-506: The 1990s, the official ideological paradigm of the Ba'athist dogma in Syria has been described as foundering. Despite decades of one-party rule that has lasted longer than the period of independent Syria (1946–1963); Ba'athist ideology itself has not gained popular legitimacy. The role of the party has become supplanted with the cult of personality surrounding the Assad dynasty and a consolidation of communal-based allegiances. Assad's government

15987-519: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

16206-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

16425-528: The Arab "peoples" or the "Arab region". In January 1955, the RCC appointed him as their president, pending national elections. Nasser made secret contacts with Israel in 1954–55, but determined that peace with Israel would be impossible, considering it an "expansionist state that viewed the Arabs with disdain". On 28 February 1955, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip with

16644-535: The Ba'ath Party as a vanguard party , comparable to the Soviet Union's Communist Party , while Al-Assad saw it as a mass organisation. In 1970 he stated, "After this day the Ba'ath will not be the party of the elect, as some has envisaged ... Syria does not belong to the Ba'athists alone." Since 1970, membership of the Ba'ath Party in Syria expanded dramatically. In 1971, the party had 65,938 members; ten years later it stood at 374,332 and by mid-1992 it

16863-524: The Ba'ath. A military coup in Damascus in 1961 brought the UAR to an end. Sixteen prominent politicians, including al-Hawrani and Salah al-Din al-Bitar  – who later retracted his signature, signed a statement supporting the coup. The Ba'athists won several seats during the 1961 parliamentary election . The military group preparing for the overthrow of the separatist regime in February 1963

17082-521: The Ba'athists came to an end in 2008, when Bashar al-Assad appointed Muhammad al-Sayyid as Chief of the Ministry of Awqaf , which marked an era of harsh regulations in the religious landscape. Numerous private religious educational institutes, religious charities, independent preaching organisations, female religious centres, etc. were forcibly shut down as part of the revamped state -sponsored secularization drive. The state also tightened its grip over

17301-517: The Ba'thist religious policy advocated by the Assad government, effectively nationalising the private religious institutes. In 2009, Ba'ath party activists launched ideological campaigns against the Niqab (Islamic face veils) and alleged "extremist trends" in the society, which was complemented by the regime's revamped clampdown on religious activists, independent religious scholars and private schools . Popular display of religious symbols of all sects

17520-586: The Baath regime under Assad had consolidated into an anti-Sunni orientation. Official propaganda incited Alawite farmers against rich Sunni landowners and regularly disseminated stereotypes of Sunni merchants and industrialists, casting them as enemies of nationalisation and socialist revolution . Bitterness towards the Assadist regime and the Alawite elite in the Baath and armed forces became widespread amongst

17739-641: The British demands. Ultimately, the 22 year old King submitted, and appointed El-Nahas. Nasser saw the incident as a blatant violation of Egyptian sovereignty and wrote, "I am ashamed that our army has not reacted against this attack", and wished for "calamity" to overtake the British. Nasser was accepted into the General Staff College later that year. He began to form a group of young military officers with strong nationalist sentiments who supported some form of revolution. Nasser stayed in touch with

17958-710: The Brotherhood's influence over his cadres' activities without severing ties with the organization. Nasser was sent as a member of the Egyptian delegation to Rhodes in February 1949 to negotiate a formal armistice with Israel, and reportedly considered the terms to be humiliating, particularly because the Israelis were able to easily occupy the Eilat region while negotiating with the Arabs in March. Nasser's return to Egypt coincided with Husni al-Za'im 's Syrian coup d'état . Its success and evident popular support among

18177-586: The Cold War, recognition of communist China, and arms deal with the Eastern bloc alienated the United States. On 19 July 1956, the US and UK abruptly withdrew their offer to finance construction of the Aswan Dam, citing concerns that Egypt's economy would be overwhelmed by the project. Nasser was informed of the British–American withdrawal in a news statement while aboard a plane returning to Cairo from Belgrade , and took great offense. Although ideas for nationalizing

18396-763: The Command Secretary was empowered to elect the Central Committee. The 8th Regional Congress would be the last congress held under Hafez al-Assad's rule. The next Regional Congress was held in June 2000 and elected Bashar al-Assad as Command Secretary and elected him as a candidate for the next presidential election. Delegates to the General Congress are elected beforehand by the Central Command leadership. While all delegates come from

18615-575: The Desert Forces. Early in March it was decided the coup would be brought into action March ninth. But on March fifth several of the officers wanted to delay the coup in hope of staging a bloodless coup . It was presumed that the Nasserite were preparing a coup of their own which effectively canceled the delay. The coup began at night and by the morning of March eighth it was evident that a new political era had begun in Syria. The secession from

18834-569: The Egyptian delegation negotiating a British withdrawal from the Suez Canal. When Naguib began showing signs of independence from Nasser by distancing himself from the RCC's land reform decrees and drawing closer to Egypt's established political forces, namely the Wafd and the Brotherhood, Nasser resolved to depose him. In June, Nasser took control of the interior ministry post from Naguib loyalist Sulayman Hafez , and pressured Naguib to conclude

19053-548: The Free Officers expected to become the "guardians of the people's interests" against the monarchy and the pasha class while leaving the day-to-day tasks of government to civilians. They asked former prime minister Ali Maher to accept reappointment to his previous position, and to form an all-civilian cabinet. The Free Officers then governed as the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) with Naguib as chairman and Nasser as vice-chairman. Relations between

19272-442: The Free Officers to the forefront of Egyptian politics. By then, the organization had expanded to around ninety members. According to Khaled Mohieddin , "nobody knew all of them and where they belonged in the hierarchy except Nasser". Nasser felt that the Free Officers were not ready to move against the government and, for nearly two years, he did little beyond officer recruitment and underground news bulletins. On 11 October 1951,

19491-471: The Liberation Rally, which Nasser determined had failed in generating mass public participation. In the new movement, Nasser attempted to incorporate more citizens, approved by local-level party committees, in order to solidify popular backing for his government. The NU would select a nominee for the presidential election whose name would be provided for public approval. Nasser's nomination for

19710-415: The Liberation Rally, a loosely structured movement whose chief task was to organize pro-RCC rallies and lectures, with Nasser its secretary-general . Despite the dissolution order, Nasser was the only RCC member who still favored holding parliamentary elections, according to his fellow officer Abdel Latif Boghdadi . Although outvoted, he still advocated holding elections by 1956. In March 1953, Nasser led

19929-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

20148-478: The Middle East, and a mechanism to undermine the Arab League and "perpetuate [Arab] subservience to Zionism and [Western] imperialism". Nasser felt that if he was to maintain Egypt's regional leadership position he needed to acquire modern weaponry to arm his military. When it became apparent to him that Western countries would not supply Egypt under acceptable financial and military terms, Nasser turned to

20367-774: The Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian Communist Party, and the aristocracy. Nasser was unanimously elected chairman of the organization. In the 1950 parliamentary elections, the Wafd Party of el-Nahhas gained a victory—mostly due to the absence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which boycotted the elections—and was perceived as a threat by the Free Officers as the Wafd had campaigned on demands similar to their own. Accusations of corruption against Wafd politicians began to surface, however, breeding an atmosphere of rumor and suspicion that consequently brought

20586-500: The Nahhasin elementary school. Nasser exchanged letters with his mother and visited her on holidays. He stopped receiving messages at the end of April 1926. Upon returning to Khatatba, he learned that his mother had died after giving birth to his third brother, Shawki, and that his family had kept the news from him. Nasser later stated that "losing her this way was a shock so deep that time failed to remedy". He adored his mother and

20805-457: The Officer's Club—normally a ceremonial office—with the king's backing. Nasser was determined to establish the independence of the army from the monarchy, and with Amer as the intercessor, resolved to field a nominee for the Free Officers. They selected Mohamed Naguib , a popular general who had offered his resignation to Farouk in 1942 over British high-handedness and was wounded three times in

21024-598: The Palestine War. Naguib won overwhelmingly and the Free Officers, through their connection with a leading Egyptian daily, al-Misri , publicized his victory while praising the nationalistic spirit of the army. On 25 January 1952, at a time of growing fedayeen attacks on British forces occupying the Suez Canal Zone, some 7,000 British soldiers attacked the main police station in the Canal city Ismailia . In

21243-506: The President is addressed as the ' Eternal Leader ' who will guide his people to becoming the 'true' Arab nation . The recent slogan of ' Bashar, Allah, Suriyya wa-bas ' ( Bashar, God, and Syria – that's it ) possibly best epitomises how close the regime has come to creating a Syrian public religion in its own right. Whether the outward performance of 'regime rituals' was actually fully internalised or secretly mocked, it had to be practised and obeyed." According to Subhi Hadidi,

21462-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

21681-546: The RCC and Maher grew tense, however, as the latter viewed many of Nasser's schemes—agrarian reform, abolition of the monarchy, reorganization of political parties —as too radical, culminating in Maher's resignation on 7 September. Naguib assumed the additional role of prime minister, and Nasser that of deputy prime minister. In September, the Agrarian Reform Law was put into effect. In Nasser's eyes, this law gave

21900-520: The RCC its own identity and transformed the coup into a revolution. Preceding the reform law, in August 1952, communist-led riots broke out at textile factories in Kafr el-Dawwar , leading to a clash with the army that left nine people dead. While most of the RCC insisted on executing the riot's two ringleaders, Nasser opposed this. Nonetheless, the sentences were carried out. The Muslim Brotherhood supported

22119-497: The RCC's dissolution. While visiting the striking officers at Military Headquarters (GHQ) to call for the mutiny's end, Nasser was initially intimidated into accepting their demands. However, on 27 February, Nasser's supporters in the army launched a raid on the GHQ, ending the mutiny. Later that day, hundreds of thousands of protesters, mainly belonging to the Brotherhood, called for Naguib's return and Nasser's imprisonment. In response,

22338-419: The RCC, and after Naguib's assumption of power, demanded four ministerial portfolios in the new cabinet. Nasser turned down their demands and instead hoped to co-opt the Brotherhood by giving two of its members, who were willing to serve officially as independents, minor ministerial posts. In January 1953, Nasser overcame opposition from Naguib and banned all political parties, creating a one-party system under

22557-484: The Regional Congress, but from 1985 until Hafez al-Assad's death in 2000, no Regional Congress was held. The Military Bureau, which succeeded the Military Committee, oversees the Syrian armed forces . Shortly after the 8 March Revolution , the Military Committee became the supreme authority in military affairs. The party has a parallel structure within the Syrian armed forces. The military and civilian sectors only meet at

22776-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

22995-531: The Secretary of the Central Command would also be head of state. The Central Command is officially responsible to the General Congress. The Central Committee ( Arabic : Al-Lajna Al-Markaziyya ), established in January 1980, is subordinate to the Central Command. It was established as a conduit for communication between the Ba'ath Party leadership and local party organs. At the 8th Regional Congress held in 1985, membership size increased from 75 to 95. Other changes

23214-714: The Straits of Tiran and restricted the use of airspace over the Gulf of Aqaba by Israeli aircraft in early September. The Israelis re-militarized the al-Auja Demilitarized Zone on the Egyptian border on 21 September. Simultaneous with Israel's February raid, the Baghdad Pact was formed between some regional allies of the UK. Nasser considered the Baghdad Pact a threat to his efforts to eliminate British military influence in

23433-570: The Suez Canal Company were in the offing after the UK agreed to withdraw its military from Egypt in 1954 (the last British troops left on 13 June 1956), journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal asserts that Nasser made the final decision to nationalize the company that operated the waterway between 19 and 20 July. Nasser himself would later state that he decided on 23 July, after studying the issue and deliberating with some of his advisers from

23652-531: The Sunni majority, laying the beginnings of an Islamic resistance. Prominent leaders of Muslim Brotherhood like Issam al-Attar were imprisoned and exiled. A coalition of the traditional Syrian Sunni ulema , Muslim Brotherhood revolutionaries and Islamist activists formed the Syrian Islamic Front in 1980 with objective of overthrowing Assad through Jihad and establishing an Islamic state . In

23871-527: The Syrian Ba'ath is known as neo-Ba'athism , a school of Ba'athist thought that denounces Aflaq and Bitar and eulogizes Alawite philosopher Zaki al-Arsuzi as the leading theoretician. In another coup in 1970 , officially dubbed the "Corrective Movement", Hafez al-Assad would overthrow the Jadid faction and tone down the revolutionary measures. The new regime emphasized building socialism in Syria first and

24090-460: The Syrian Ba'athists into conflict with Arab nationalist ideologies like Nasserism , which was accused of betraying socialist ideals. Nasser , in turn, charged the Ba'ath with anti-religion and sectarianism . Neo-Ba'athism advocates the creation of a "vanguard" of leftist revolutionaries committed to build an egalitarian , socialist state in Syria and other Arab countries before making steps to achieve pan-Arab unity. The vanguard organisation

24309-485: The Syrian armed forces into Soviet standards. For his part, Hafez committed himself to socialist economic and foreign policies; and was one of the few autocrats to openly support the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan . The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union dealt a deep blow to Assad, who retained the nostalgia for the old order. Assad continued to rule Syria until his death in 2000, by centralizing powers in

24528-659: The Syrian constitution. In 1979, the Ba'ath Party's position was further strengthened when dual party membership became a criminal offence. The original Ba'ath headed by Michael Aflaq had viewed Islam as a unique religion that shaped Arab history and society, calling for the incorporation of pan-Arabism with Islamic religious values. On other hand; the younger Neo-Ba'athists who came from minority communities like Alawites were highly influenced by communist ideals and incorporated Marxist anti-religious, economic ideas and downplayed efforts for pan-Arab unity. The Neo-Ba'athist faction that took official control of Syria following

24747-566: The Syrian economy and exporting the doctrines of class-conflict and militant socialist revolution to the neighbouring countries. This view was challenged by General Hafez al-Assad and his neo-Ba'ath faction; who were proponents of a military-centric approach and focused on a strategy of strengthening the Syrian military to defend the socialist government against imperialist forces and their alleged internal collaborators. Assad favoured reconciliation of various leftist factions and pursued better relations with other Arab states. Although majority of

24966-435: The Syrian people encouraged Nasser's revolutionary pursuits. Soon after his return, he was summoned and interrogated by Prime Minister Ibrahim Abdel Hadi regarding suspicions that he was forming a secret group of dissenting officers. According to secondhand reports, Nasser convincingly denied the allegations. Abdel Hadi was also hesitant to take drastic measures against the army, especially in front of its chief of staff, who

25185-695: The UAR was a time of crisis for the party; several groups, including Hawrani, left the Ba'ath Party. In 1962, Aflaq convened a congress which re-established the Syrian Regional Branch. The division in the original Ba'ath Party between the National Command led by Michel Aflaq and the "regionalists" in the Syrian Regional Branch stemmed from the break-up of the UAR. Aflaq had sought to control the regionalist elements – an incoherent grouping led by Fa'iz al-Jasim, Yusuf Zuayyin, Munir al-Abdallah and Ibrahim Makhus. Aflaq retained

25404-457: The Wafd government abrogated the unpopular Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 by which the United Kingdom had the right to maintain its military forces in the Suez Canal Zone. The popularity of this move, as well as that of government-sponsored guerrilla attacks against the British, put pressure on Nasser to act. According to Sadat, Nasser decided to wage "a large scale assassination campaign". In January 1952, he and Hassan Ibrahim attempted to kill

25623-405: The abolition of the monarchy. On 25 February 1954, Naguib announced his resignation after the RCC held an official meeting without his presence two days prior. On 26 February, Nasser accepted the resignation, put Naguib under house arrest, and the RCC proclaimed Nasser as both RCC chairman and prime minister. As Naguib intended, a mutiny immediately followed, demanding Naguib's reinstatement and

25842-405: The almost unanimous backing of Egypt's political forces, Nasser strongly objected to the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty because it stipulated the continued presence of British military bases in the country. Nonetheless, political unrest in Egypt declined significantly and Nasser resumed his studies at al-Nahda, where he received his leaving certificate later that year. Aburish asserts that Nasser

26061-427: The backwardness of the Arabs. Following popular revulsion at Jadid's blatant anti-religious policies, Hafez al-Assad began to tone down the secularisation programme during the 1970s, by co-opting some pro-government clerics like Ramadan al-Bouti to counter the Islamic opposition and granted them a degree of autonomy from the regime. Simultaneously, the regime began the " nationalization " of religious discourse through

26280-510: The basic orientation of the government were permitted to operate again. The National Progressive Front was established in 1972 as a coalition of these legal parties, which were only permitted to act as junior partners to the Ba'ath, with very little room for independent organisation. Despite its social and political subservience to Assadism , the Ba'ath party apparatus and its working establishments are crucial components in daily governance. The party facilitates Assad family 's tight control over

26499-439: The cabinet. After the three-year transition period ended with Nasser's official assumption of power, his domestic and independent foreign policies increasingly collided with the regional interests of the UK and France. The latter condemned his strong support for Algerian independence , and the UK's Eden government was agitated by Nasser's campaign against the Baghdad Pact. In addition, Nasser's adherence to neutralism regarding

26718-469: The ceding of Faluja to Israel. According to veteran journalist Eric Margolis , the defenders of Faluja, "including young army officer Gamal Abdel Nasser, became national heroes" for enduring Israeli bombardment while isolated from their command. Still stationed after the war in the Faluja enclave, Nasser agreed to an Israeli request to identify 67 killed soldiers of the "religious platoon" . The expedition

26937-480: The civil war, from organising counter-demonstrations to forming paramilitary units focused on violently crushing peaceful demonstrators of the Syrian Revolution. It is generally believed that the plays a minor role in the conflict, having been reduced to a mass organization , and real decision-making taking place either in the military, the al-Assad family or Bashar al-Assad's inner circle. Despite this,

27156-664: The civilian branch of the party that remained under Jadid's control. This duality of power persisted until the Corrective Revolution of November 1970, when al-Assad ousted and imprisoned Atassi and Jadid. He then set upon a project of rapid institution-building, reopened parliament and adopted a permanent constitution for the country, which had been ruled by military fiat and a provisional constitutional documents since 1963. Assad significantly modified his predecessor's radical socialist economic policies, encouraged several wealthy urban families to increase their activities in

27375-406: The congress, the party was "nationalist, populist, socialist, and revolutionary" and believed in the "unity and freedom of the Arab nation within its homeland." The party opposed the theory of class conflict, but supported the nationalisation of major industries, the unionisation of workers, land reform, and supported private inheritance and private property rights to some degree. The party merged with

27594-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

27813-727: The country and their desire to topple the monarchy. Sadat would later write that because of his "energy, clear-thinking, and balanced judgement", Nasser emerged as the group's natural leader. In 1941, Nasser was posted to Khartoum , Sudan, which was part of Egypt at the time. Nasser returned to Egypt in September 1942 after a brief stay in Sudan, then secured a position as an instructor in the Cairo Royal Military Academy in May 1943. In February 1942, in what became known as

28032-443: The cult surrounding Presidents Hafiz and Bashar al-Asad , whose pictures are displayed not only in public buildings and schools but taxis and shops, or ceremonies such as mass parades and/or the playing of the national anthem during official celebrations. Also, official rhetoric has become increasingly infused with transcendental and metaphysical elements, in particular with regard to the President's personality cult . For instance,

28251-429: The death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000, his successor Bashar al-Assad was depicted as a reformist and youthful hope. Hafez's inner circle elite was replaced by a far more restricted faction of elites closer to Bashar, often referred to as the "New Guard". Major posts in the armed forces were awarded to Alawite loyalists, family relatives and many non-Alawite elites that served under Hafez were expelled. Another important shift

28470-451: The dissolved RCC, namely Boghdadi and technical specialist Mahmoud Younis , beginning on 21 July. The rest of the RCC's former members were informed of the decision on 24 July, while the bulk of the cabinet was unaware of the nationalization scheme until hours before Nasser publicly announced it. According to Ramadan, Nasser's decision to nationalize the canal was a solitary decision, taken without consultation. On 26 July 1956, Nasser gave

28689-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

28908-571: The ensuing battle, which lasted two hours, 50 Egyptian policeman were killed, sparking outrage across Egypt, and the Cairo Fire riots which left 76 people dead. Afterwards, Nasser published a simple six-point program in Rose al-Yūsuf to dismantle feudalism and British influence in Egypt. In May, Nasser received word that Farouk knew the names of the Free Officers and intended to arrest them; he immediately entrusted Free Officer Zakaria Mohieddin with

29127-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

29346-597: The expense of other parties in the NPF. Internally, the party is strictly monitored by the High Command and regional Ba'athist leaders suspected of insufficient loyalty are expelled as "grey members" ( al-Ramadiyyin ). Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

29565-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

29784-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

30003-652: The group's members primarily through Amer, who continued to seek out interested officers within the Egyptian Armed Force's various branches and presented Nasser with a complete file on each of them. Nasser's first battlefield experience was in Palestine during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . He initially volunteered to serve with the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) led by Mohammad Amin al-Husayni . Nasser met with and impressed al-Husayni, but

30222-545: The importance of this petition before Salah Jadid suppressed it. The Military Committee decided to reform, and the Regional Congress passed a resolution which made the Military Organisation responsible to the Military Bureau of the Central Command, which was only responsible for military affairs. Ali Diab is the current head of the Ba'ath Party's Central Party School. The party has 19 branches in Syria: one in each of

30441-538: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

30660-535: The increased tendency of opportunism among party members. Between 1980 and 1984, 133,850 supporter-members and 3,242 full members were expelled from the party. The increase in members has led official propaganda, and leading members of the party and state, to say that the people and the party are inseparable. Michel Kilo , a Syrian Christian dissident and human rights activist , said, "The Ba'ath does not recognize society. It consider itself [to be] society." This idea led to Ba'athist slogans and tenets being included in

30879-624: The independence of Tunisia , Algeria , and Morocco from French rule , support for the Palestinian right of return , and the implementation of UN resolutions regarding the Arab–Israeli conflict . He succeeded in lobbying the attendees to pass resolutions on each of these issues, notably securing the strong support of China and India. Following Bandung, Nasser officially adopted the "positive neutralism" of Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as

31098-419: The injury of her death deepened when his father remarried before the year's end. In 1928, Nasser went to Alexandria to live with his maternal grandfather and attend the city's Attarin elementary school. He left in 1929 for a private boarding school in Helwan , and later returned to Alexandria to enter the Ras el-Tin secondary school and to join his father, who was working for the city's postal service. It

31317-452: The international policy and economic development fronts. Nasser mediated discussions between the pro-Western, pro-Soviet, and neutralist conference factions over the composition of the "Final Communique" addressing colonialism in Africa and Asia and the fostering of global peace amid the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union . At Bandung, Nasser sought a proclamation for the avoidance of international defense alliances, support for

31536-558: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

31755-443: The largest political crackdowns in the modern history of Egypt, with the arrests of thousands of dissenters, mostly members of the Brotherhood, but also communists, and the dismissal of 140 officers loyal to Naguib. Eight Brotherhood leaders were sentenced to death, although the sentence of its chief ideologue, Sayyid Qutb , was commuted to a 15-year imprisonment. Naguib was removed from the presidency and put under house arrest, but

31974-550: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

32193-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

32412-438: The launching of large industrial projects, including the Aswan Dam , and Helwan city. Nasser's detractors criticize his authoritarianism, his human rights violations , his antisemitism , and the dominance of the military over civil institutions that characterised his tenure, establishing a pattern of military and dictatorial rule in Egypt which has persisted, nearly uninterrupted, to the present day. Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein

32631-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

32850-473: The members of the Military Committee. The Nasserist and Muslim Brotherhood opposition joined forces to raise the spectre of communist takeover of Syria during the 1960s. They attacked the Baath party as being anti-Sunni and condemned the state secularism of the regime as being anti-religious and atheist . Nasser himself proscribed the Syrian Baath for its militant secularism and the radical Marxist proposals of its leaders. The first period of Ba'ath rule

33069-624: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

33288-519: The novel as his inspiration to launch the coup d'état that began the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 . In 1937, Nasser applied to the Royal Military Academy for army officer training, but his police record of anti-government protest initially blocked his entry. Disappointed, he enrolled in the law school at King Fuad University , but quit after one semester to reapply to the Military Academy. From his readings, Nasser, who frequently spoke of "dignity, glory, and freedom" in his youth, became enchanted with

33507-467: The office of Grand Mufti of Syria . Describing Assadism as a quasi-religion fostered by the Ba'athist state for mobilising the fealty and adulation of Syrian citizens , Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Bonn International Centre Dr. Esther Meininghaus wrote: "by drawing on religion, the Assad regime successfully sought to promote a value system ultimately rooted in the Baʿthist vision for Syrian society   .... To this, we can indeed add

33726-450: The official religious institutions and dissident Islamic voices were imprisoned, leading to open rift with the ulema . Private religious institutes were allowed donations only after official permission from the Ministry of Awqaf , which also controlled the expenditures. The state was also entrusted with a broad range of powers including the hiring and firing of its instructors as well as the standardisation of their religious curriculum with

33945-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

34164-408: The organisation to officers who were not members in order to strengthen the Military Committee's hold on the military. In June 1964, it was decided that no new members would be admitted to the organisation. The Military Committee was built on a democratic framework, and a Military Organization Congress was held to elect the members of the Military Committee. Only one congress was ever held. The lack of

34383-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

34602-401: The party members favoured Salah, Hafez was able to gain the upperhand following the events of the 1970 coup dubbed the "Corrective Movement" in official Syrian Ba'ath history. Assad's victory also marked the supersedure of the military over the Ba'ath party structures; making the armed forces a central centre of political power. Since the end of the Cold War and fall of the Soviet Bloc in

34821-447: The party remained loyal to the government almost in its entirety throughout the civil war, probably out of concerns that the overthrow of the al-Assad family's rule would result in its own demise as well. Several militias were formed by Ba'ath Party volunteers to fight against insurgents, with the most notable being the Ba'ath Brigades . The civil war also resulted in a referendum on a new constitution on 26 February 2012. The constitution

35040-444: The party to prevent "sedition". Both Umm Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez , the leading Arab singers of the era, performed songs praising Nasser's nationalism. Others produced plays denigrating his political opponents. According to his associates, Nasser orchestrated the campaign himself. Arab nationalist terms such "Arab homeland" and "Arab nation" frequently began appearing in his speeches in 1954–55, whereas prior he would refer to

35259-399: The party's local organisation, they are forced to elect members presented by the leadership. However, some criticism is allowed. At the 8th Regional Congress, several delegates openly criticised the growing political corruption and the economic stagnation in Syria. They could also discuss important problems to the Central Command, which in turn could deal with them. The Central Command

35478-402: The post and the new constitution were put to public referendum on 23 June and each was approved by an overwhelming majority. A 350-member National Assembly was established, elections for which were held in July 1957. Nasser had ultimate approval over all the candidates. The constitution granted women's suffrage , prohibited discrimination by sex, and entailed special protection for women in

35697-415: The private sector, and allowed limited foreign investment from Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region States. Hafez Al-Assad's reign was marked by the virtual abandonment of Pan-Arab ideology; replacing it with the doctrine of socialist transformation and giving overriding priority in constructing socialist society within Syria. Political participation was limited to the National Progressive Front ,

35916-469: The prosperity and security of the nation; with Hafez al-Assad being depicted as the father figure of the Syrian nation. Ceremonies and slogans of loyalty, praise and adulation of Assads are a daily part of schools, party centres, government offices, public spaces and the military. Official state propaganda attributes Assad with supernatural abilities combined by repetitive usage of symbolism that discouraged wider society from arenas for political activism. Upon

36135-585: The protesters, but his requests were rebuffed by the heads of the security forces. On 29 March, Nasser announced the decrees' revocation in response to the "impulse of the street". Between April and June, hundreds of Naguib's supporters in the military were either arrested or dismissed, and Mohieddin was informally exiled to Switzerland to represent the RCC abroad. King Saud of Saudi Arabia attempted to mend relations between Nasser and Naguib, but to no avail. On 26 October 1954, Muslim Brotherhood member Mahmoud Abdel-Latif attempted to assassinate Nasser while he

36354-421: The regime sought to control the community at large or to rally it behind its policies. The party's cadres turned more and more into bureaucrats and careerists, and were no longer vibrantly alive ideologically as in the 1950s and 1960s, unconditional fidelity to Assad having ultimately overridden fidelity to old beliefs." According to Volker Perthes , the Ba'ath Party was transformed under Assad; Perthes wrote, "It

36573-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

36792-446: The regional level, as the military sector is represented in the Central Command and sends delegates to general congresses. The military sector is divided into branches, which operate at the battalion level. The head of a military party branch is called a tawjihi , or guide. In 1963, the Military Committee established the Military Organisation, which consisted of 12 branches resembling their civilian counterparts. The Military Organisation

37011-424: The resilience it displayed. He started writing his book Philosophy of the Revolution during the siege. After the war, Nasser returned to his role as an instructor at the Royal Military Academy. He sent emissaries to forge an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in October 1948, but soon concluded that the religious agenda of the Brotherhood was not compatible with his nationalism. From then on, Nasser prevented

37230-415: The revolution, Nasser had notified the American and British governments of his intentions, and both had agreed not to aid Farouk. Under pressure from the Americans, Nasser had agreed to exile the deposed king with an honorary ceremony. On 18 June 1953, the monarchy was abolished and the Republic of Egypt declared, with Naguib as its first president . According to Aburish, after assuming power, Nasser and

37449-409: The royalist general Hussein Sirri Amer by firing their submachine guns at his car as he drove through the streets of Cairo. Instead of killing the general, the attackers wounded an innocent female passerby. Nasser recalled that her wails "haunted" him and firmly dissuaded him from undertaking similar actions in the future. Sirri Amer was close to King Farouk, and was nominated for the presidency of

37668-410: The ruling coalition of Syrian Baath and Marxist–Leninist parties; entrenching itself firmly within the Soviet Bloc . The Party also began building a personality cult around Assad and brought the elite of the armed forces under Assad's grip and the officer corps were installed with Alawite loyalists; further alienating the Sunni majority from the party. By the late 1970s, the state apparatus of

37887-500: The sake of your freedom and honor. Let them kill me; it does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor, and freedom in you. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser ... Gamal Abdel Nasser is of you and from you and he is willing to sacrifice his life for the nation. The crowd roared in approval and Arab audiences were electrified. The assassination attempt backfired, quickly playing into Nasser's hands. Upon returning to Cairo, he ordered one of

38106-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

38325-472: The same year, Hafez officially supported Iran in its war with Iraq and controversially began importing Iranian fighters and terror groups into Lebanon and Syria. This led to rising social tensions within the country which eventually became a full-fledged rebellion in 1982; led by the Islamic Front. The regime responded by slaughtering the Sunni inhabitants in Hama and Aleppo and bombarding numerous mosques, killing around 20,000–40,000 civilians. The uprising

38544-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

38763-477: The sole member to safeguard Assad in the UN Security Council . In September 2015; Vladimir Putin ordered a direct Russian military operation in Syria on behalf of Assad; providing the regime with training, volunteers, supplies and weaponry; and has since engaged in extensive aerial bombardment campaigns throughout the country targeting anti-Assad rebels . Since 2018, the government has launched an extensive Ba'athification campaign in its territories, amalgamating

38982-498: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

39201-519: The state, serves to organize supporters and mobilize mass-rallies for social legitimacy. Despite affirmation of multiple parties in the 2012 constitution; no real opposition is allowed to operate in practice. All candidates to the People's Assembly and local councils are from the National Progressive Front (NPF), a Ba'athist-led alliance firmly committed to the government. After 2018, the Ba'ath party expanded its political dominance and fielded more candidates in regional and national electoral processes, at

39420-561: The state-party nexus and further entrenched its one-party rule . During the 2018 local elections and 2020 parliamentary elections , more hardline Ba'athist loyalists were appointed to commanding roles; and other satellite parties in the National Progressive Front have been curtailed. Ba'athist candidates are fielded uncontested in many regions. The party itself was structurally overhauled, re-invigorating neo-Ba'athist ideology in organizational levels, and cadres accused of lacking ideological dedication were purged. The party portrays itself as

39639-409: The stated aim of suppressing Palestinian fedayeen raids. Nasser did not feel that the Egyptian Army was ready for a confrontation and did not retaliate militarily. His failure to respond to Israeli military action demonstrated the ineffectiveness of his armed forces and constituted a blow to his growing popularity. Nasser subsequently ordered the tightening of the blockade on Israeli shipping through

39858-458: The stories of national liberators and heroic conquerors; a military career became his chief priority. Convinced that he needed a wasta , or an influential intermediary to promote his application above the others, Nasser managed to secure a meeting with Under-Secretary of War Ibrahim Khairy Pasha, the person responsible for the academy's selection board, and requested his help. Khairy Pasha agreed and sponsored Nasser's second application, which

40077-418: The support of the majority of the non-Syrian National Command members (13 at the time). Following the success of the February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq, led by the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi Regional Branch , the Military Committee hastily convened to plan a coup against Nazim al-Kudsi 's presidency. The coup – dubbed the 8 March Revolution  – was successful and a Ba'athist government

40296-449: The task of planning the government takeover by army units loyal to the association. The Free Officers' intention was not to install themselves in government, but to re-establish a parliamentary democracy. Nasser did not believe that a low-ranking officer like himself (a lieutenant colonel ) would be accepted by the Egyptian people, and so selected General Naguib to be his "boss" and lead the coup in name. The revolution they had long sought

40515-423: The thirteen provinces, one in Damascus, one in Aleppo and one at each of the country's four universities. In most cases the governor of a province, police chief, mayor and other local dignitaries comprise the Branch Command. The Branch Command Secretary and other executive positions are filled by full-time party employees. Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar , the two principal fathers of Ba'athist thought, saw

40734-444: The time of peace comes. The Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum hosted a public celebration for the officers' return despite reservations from the royal government, which had been pressured by the British to prevent the reception. The apparent difference in attitude between the government and the general public increased Nasser's determination to topple the monarchy. Nasser had also felt bitter that his brigade had not been relieved despite

40953-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

41172-406: The values that govern the ancient society are mummies that are just worth being put away in the museum of History   .... We don't need a man who prays and kneels, who bows his head with baseness and begs God for pity and mercy. The New Man is a socialist , a revolutionary ." During the rule of Salah Jadid, neo-Ba'athist ideologues openly denounced religion as a source of what they considered as

41391-421: The workplace. Coinciding with the new constitution and Nasser's presidency, the RCC dissolved itself and its members resigned their military commissions as part of the transition to civilian rule. During the deliberations surrounding the establishment of a new government, Nasser began a process of sidelining his rivals among the original Free Officers, while elevating his closest allies to high-ranking positions in

41610-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

41829-446: Was formally elected president in June 1956. Nasser's popularity in Egypt and the Arab world skyrocketed after his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company and his political victory in the subsequent Suez Crisis , known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression . Calls for pan-Arab unity under his leadership increased, culminating with the formation of the United Arab Republic with Syria from 1958 to 1961. In 1962, Nasser began

42048-420: Was 1,008,243. By mid-1992, over 14 percent of Syrians aged over 14 were members of the party. In 2003, the party membership stood at 1.8 million people, which is 18 percent of the population. The increase in membership was not smooth. In 1985 a party organisational report stated that thousand of members had been expelled before the 7th Regional Congress held in 1980 because of indiscipline. The report also mentioned

42267-455: Was a personalist system and his wisdom was portrayed as "beyond the comprehension of the average citizen". Assad deepened the Alawitization of the party and the military; reduced the role of the civilian wing of party and based his state governance structure on loyalty to the leader's family. State biography of Hafiz al-Assad describes this philosophy as " Asadiyah (Assadism)" defining it as: "the New Ba'th led by Hafiz al‑Asad, representing

42486-419: Was able to secure primacy over his RCC colleagues and gained relatively unchallenged decision-making authority, particularly over foreign policy. In January 1956, the new Constitution of Egypt was drafted, entailing the establishment of a single-party system under the National Union (NU), a movement Nasser described as the "cadre through which we will realize our revolution". The NU was a reconfiguration of

42705-516: Was accepted in late 1937. Nasser focused on his military career from then on, and had little contact with his family. At the academy, he met Abdel Hakim Amer and Anwar Sadat , both of whom became important aides during his presidency. After graduating from the academy in July 1938, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry, and posted to Mankabad . It was here that Nasser and his closest comrades, including Sadat and Amer, first discussed their dissatisfaction at widespread corruption in

42924-429: Was an Egyptian military officer and politician who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-reaching land reforms the following year. Following a 1954 attempt on his life by a Muslim Brotherhood member, he cracked down on the organization, put President Mohamed Naguib under house arrest and assumed executive office. He

43143-423: Was approved by the populace, and the article stating that Ba'ath Party was "the leading party of society and state" was removed and the constitution was ratified on 27 February. Another aspect of Assad's tenure was the restoration of close alliance with Russia , the successor state of former Soviet Union. As protests erupted in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring and later proiliferated into a Civil War ; Russia became

43362-519: Was arrested and detained for a night before his father bailed him out. Nasser joined the paramilitary wing of the group, known as the Green Shirts , for a brief period in 1934. His association with the group and active role in student demonstrations during this period "imbued him with a fierce Egyptian nationalism", according to the historian James Jankowski. When his father was transferred to Cairo in 1933, Nasser joined him and attended al-Nahda al-Masria school. He took up acting in school plays for

43581-406: Was banned in 2010 and officials close to the ulema were suspended, under the pretext of preserving the "secular character" of the country. The regime also implemented nation-wide ban on the Niqab (face-covering) and imposed restrictions on female Islamic organisations like the Al-Qubaisiat , which ignited a region-wide controversy. By the onset of Arab Spring in late 2010, relationship between

43800-487: Was born in Bakos , Alexandria , Egypt on 15 January 1918, a year before the tumultuous events of the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 . Nasser's father was a postal worker born in Beni Mur in Upper Egypt , and raised in Alexandria, and his mother's family came from Mallawi , el-Minya . His parents had married in 1917. Nasser had two brothers, Izz al-Arab and al-Leithi. Nasser's biographers Robert Stephens and Said Aburish wrote that Nasser's family believed strongly in

44019-410: Was brutally crushed and Assad regarded the Muslim Brethren as demolished. Syria under Hafez al-Assad was a staunch Soviet ally and firmly aligned itself with Soviet Bloc during the height of the Cold War . Soviet Union saw Syria as the lynchpin of its Middle-East strategy and signed the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation in 1980; directly committing itself to Syria's defense and incorporating

44238-475: Was composed of independent Nasserite and other unionist, including Ba'thi officers. The re-emergence of the Ba'tha's a majority political force aided in the coup; without a political majority the coup would have remained a military take over . Ziyad al-Hariri controlled the sizable forces stationed at the Israeli Front, not far from Damascus, Muhammad as-Sufi commanded the key brigade stationes in Homs, and Ghassan Haddad, one of Hariri's independent partners, commanded

44457-474: Was delivering a speech in Alexandria, broadcast to the Arab world by radio, to celebrate the British military withdrawal. The gunman was 25 feet (7.6 m) away from him and fired eight shots, but all missed Nasser. Panic broke out in the mass audience, but Nasser maintained his posture and raised his voice to appeal for calm. With great emotion he exclaimed the following: My countrymen, my blood spills for you and for Egypt. I will live for your sake and die for

44676-433: Was deputy commander of the Egyptian forces that secured the Faluja pocket (commanded by Said Taha Bey nicknamed the "Sudanese tiger" by the Israelis ). On 12 July, he was lightly wounded in the fighting. By August, his brigade was surrounded by the Israeli Army . Appeals for help from Transjordan 's Arab Legion went unheeded, but the brigade refused to surrender. Negotiations between Israel and Egypt finally resulted in

44895-566: Was emphasized in the "Declaration of Principles" manifesto published by the Ba'ath party in 1960; which declared that the party's "educational policy" was to build a "new generation of Arabs that believes in the unity of the nation and the eternity of its mission". The manifesto also stated that this envisaged Ba'athist generation would be "committed to scientific thought freed from the shackles of superstition and backward customs" and replace religion with Arab nationalism as their belief system. Syrian Ba'athist documents regularly depicted religion as

45114-412: Was further inflated such as to neutralise those who had supported the overthrown leftist leadership, it was de-ideologised; and it was restructured so as to fit into the authoritarian format of Assad's system, lose its avant-garde character and became an instrument for generating mass support and political control. It was also to become the regime's main patronage network." The Ba'ath Party was turned into

45333-428: Was in Alexandria that Nasser became involved in political activism. After witnessing clashes between protesters and police in Manshia Square, he joined the demonstration without being aware of its purpose. The protest, organized by the ultranationalist Young Egypt Society , called for the end of colonialism in Egypt in the wake of the 1923 Egyptian constitution 's annulment by Prime Minister Isma'il Sidqi . Nasser

45552-404: Was installed in Syria. The plotters' first order was to establish the National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), which consisted entirely of Ba'athists and Nasserists, and was controlled by military personnel rather than civilians. However, in its first years in power, the Syrian Regional Branch experienced an internal power struggle between traditional Ba'athists, radical socialists and

45771-435: Was launched on 22 July and was declared a success the next day. The Free Officers seized control of all government buildings, radio stations, and police stations, as well as army headquarters in Cairo. While many of the rebel officers were leading their units, Nasser donned civilian clothing to avoid detection by royalists and moved around Cairo monitoring the situation. In a move to stave off foreign intervention two days before

45990-407: Was led by Rabbi Shlomo Goren and Nasser personally accompanied him, ordering the Egyptian soldiers to stand at attention. They spoke briefly, and according to Goren, after learning what the square phylacteries found with the soldiers were, Nasser told him that he "now understands their courageous stand". During an interview on Israeli TV in 1971, Rabbi Goren claimed the two agreed to meet again when

46209-464: Was led by a Central Committee, which represented the Military Committee. These new institutions were established to stop the civilian faction meddling in the affairs of the Military Committee. The Military Organisation met with the other branches through the Military Committee, which was represented at the Regional and National Congresses and Commands. The Military Organisation was a very secretive body. Members were sworn not to divulge any information about

46428-451: Was never tried or sentenced, and no one in the army rose to defend him. With his rivals neutralized, Nasser became the undisputed leader of Egypt. Nasser's street following was still too small to sustain his plans for reform and to secure him in office. To promote himself and the Liberation Rally, he gave speeches in a cross-country tour, and imposed controls over the country's press by decreeing that all publications had to be approved by

46647-410: Was not distressed by his frequent relocations, which broadened his horizons and showed him Egyptian society's class divisions . His own social status was well below the wealthy Egyptian elite, and his discontent with those born into wealth and power grew throughout his lifetime. Nasser spent most of his spare time reading, particularly in 1933, when he lived near the National Library of Egypt . He read

46866-420: Was open to alliances with the neighbouring countries. Since this period, the party has adopted Assadism as its official ideology; promoting a personality cult centred around the Assad dynasty . The Ba'ath Party, and indirectly the Syrian Regional Branch, was established on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq (a Christian), Salah al-Din al-Bitar (a Sunni Muslim ) and Zaki al-Arsuzi (an Alawite ). According to

47085-492: Was present during the interrogation, and subsequently released Nasser. The interrogation pushed Nasser to speed up his group's activities. After 1949, the group adopted the name " Association of Free Officers " and advocated "little else but freedom and the restoration of their country's dignity". Nasser organized the Free Officers' founding committee, which eventually comprised fourteen men from different social and political backgrounds, including representation from Young Egypt,

47304-479: Was put to an end with the 1966 Syrian coup d'état , which overthrew the traditional Ba'athists led by Aflaq and Bitar and brought Salah Jadid , the head of the Military Committee, to power (though not formally). After the 1967 Six-Day War , tensions between Jadid and Hafez al-Assad increased, and al-Assad and his associates were strengthened by their hold on the military. In late 1968, they began dismantling Jadid's support network, facing ineffectual resistance from

47523-453: Was that its powers were enhanced; in theory, the Central Command became responsible to the Central Committee, the hitch was that the Central Command Secretary elected the members of the Central Committee. Another change was that the Central Committee was given the responsibilities of the Regional Congress when the congress was not in session. As with the Central Command, the Central Committee is in theory supposed to be elected every fourth year by

47742-499: Was the end of the Ba'th party's practical significance; with it being reduced to a formal structure for affirming fealty to Bashar and support for his revamped crackdowns on the newly established independent civil society groups, political activists and reformist voices that arose during the Damascus Spring in the 2000s. Describing the nature of Assadist ideological propaganda in her work Ambiguities of Domination , Professor of political science Lisa Wedeen writes: " Asad's cult

47961-409: Was ultimately refused entry to the AHC's forces by the Egyptian government for reasons that were unclear. In May 1948, following the British withdrawal, King Farouk sent the Egyptian army into Israel, with Nasser serving as a staff officer of the 6th Infantry Battalion. During the war, he wrote of the Egyptian army's unpreparedness, saying "our soldiers were dashed against fortifications". Nasser

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