Eurasia Press & News
Ahmed Mouaffaq Zaidan, the newly appointed media adviser to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, has published an article on Al Jazeera Net urging the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to dissolve itself. This call cannot be dismissed as a personal opinion from a former Brotherhood-affiliated journalist. Coming just days after his official appointment, and on a platform long sympathetic to the movement, the statement reads less like private reflection and more like a public political message issued on behalf of the new regime.
Zaidan writes: “The Brotherhood in Syria had already dissolved itself when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser set conditions for union with Syria, one of which was the dissolution of political parties. The Syrian Brotherhood accepted, out of love and longing for unity, even as Nasser was crushing the Brotherhood in Egypt and hanging the founders of the international organization that led the Syrian branch.” At that moment, the group chose the unity project with Egypt over its own political ambitions, as former General Guide Issam al-Attar later recalled. But history showed that self-dissolution offered no protection from repression—neither under Nasser, nor under Syrian-Egyptian unity, nor later in Syria itself.
In his article, Zaidan deploys two distinct registers. The first is pragmatic, citing examples where Brotherhood branches dissolved and later reconstituted themselves successfully as political parties—in Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco. The second, however, carries the tone of command: “And is Abdel Nasser’s call more worthy of obedience than the need of President Ahmad al-Sharaa to consolidate a rule that cost one million martyrs and 14 million displaced?” Such words can hardly be taken as a slip of the tongue. They reveal a worldview in which those deaths and displacements are framed as the price of establishing Sunni rule—or of consolidating al-Sharaa’s authority. The phrasing trivializes the sacrifices of Syrians who rose up primarily for freedom from tyranny. It reduces their suffering to a bargaining chip: if the Brotherhood refuses to dissolve itself, it is portrayed as betraying the martyrs and the displaced. The objective, in Zaidan’s own words, is clear: “to consolidate al-Sharaa’s rule.” His message is less advice than admonition, almost scolding the Brotherhood for once dissolving itself for the sake of Arab socialist nationalism but refusing to do so today for the sake of a triumphant Islamist vision.
And in the spirit of the maxim, “He who advises you in public has exposed you,” Zaidan did not send his message privately but chose to publish it on Al Jazeera—the Brotherhood’s natural media home. This was no minor detail. To confront the movement in its own media house is to expose and embarrass it before its core constituency. It also suggests a lack of communication between al-Sharaa and the Brotherhood, a rupture that can no longer be explained as a difference of method. Once, al-Sharaa rejected constitutions altogether; today, the divergence is plainly over power—whether to share it or monopolize it.
Zaidan’s article therefore marks more than a personal opinion piece. It signals a watershed moment: the end of the Brotherhood’s political chapter in Syria, and perhaps in the wider region.
From Dominant Actor to Outsider
It is worth recalling that for 14 years of the Syrian revolution, the Brotherhood dominated the opposition’s political discourse, from the creation of the Syrian National Council in 2011 until the regime’s collapse. Today, it finds itself sidelined. While al-Sharaa appeased the Islamic Council by granting it the position of Grand Mufti and seats on the Council of Fatwa, the Brotherhood has been excluded entirely. The Council is treated as a religious authority; the Brotherhood is treated as a political rival with no role in the new order.
Since taking office, al-Sharaa has overseen a systematic elimination of political life: dissolving parties, opposition bodies, and revolutionary organizations. Nine months on, Syria still lacks a political parties law—and may never have one. The new state seems to view society not as a collection of ideological movements, but as individuals and notables—its future parliament to be constructed not from political constituencies but from sectarian and communal representation. Political and ideological affiliations are thus being erased, replaced by sectarian identities.
A Regional Pattern
Zaidan’s call also resonates with a broader regional trend against the Brotherhood. The movement has been outlawed in Egypt since 2013, enduring one of the harshest crackdowns in its history. In Jordan, its legal status was revoked in 2025 and its assets frozen. Saudi Arabia and the UAE designated it a terrorist organisation in 2014. Turkey and Qatar—once staunch allies—have scaled back their support under shifting regional balances. Even Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian offshoot, has been shaken: following the October 7, 2023 attack, it endured devastating blows in Gaza and growing isolation, with Arab states pushing to restore the Palestinian file to the PLO and Palestinian Authority, away from Islamist hands.
Seen in this light, Damascus’s new posture is not an anomaly but part of a regional realignment that treats political Islam as a threat. The Arab Spring produced two opposing camps: Riyadh–Abu Dhabi–Cairo, hostile to Islamism, and Doha–Ankara, its sponsors. Since the Gulf reconciliation of 2021 and the thaw between Ankara and Cairo, the former camp has clearly prevailed. Washington’s pressure on Doha after the Gaza war has only reinforced the trend. By joining this trajectory, post-Assad Syria strengthens the regional consensus: the exclusion of political Islam is now the rule, not the exception.
After the Brotherhood
Zaidan’s message thus reflects not only Syria’s domestic transition but a regional tide closing in on the Brotherhood. The key question is what comes next. Will the Brotherhood’s absence open the door to genuine pluralism and modern political systems? Or will it replicate the 1950s model of one man, one party, one voice? The signs point to the latter.
Zaidan himself concluded with striking candour: “All must chant the same tune, the same melody—support for this newborn state, to carry Syria into a stage of real and final stability, especially with so many challengers and conspirators at home and abroad.”
Although he began his article by insisting, “I am not writing today as the president’s adviser, but out of conviction built on years of study and experience,” he signed it not as a writer or analyst, but as “Media Adviser to the President of Syria.” And who better to transmit the vision of the principal than his adviser?
