SYRIAN WOMEN FLOCKING TO MUSLIM MOVEMENT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DAMASCUS 002066

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

PARIS FOR ZEYA, LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/25/2016
TAGS: SOCI PGOV KISL SY
SUBJECT: SYRIAN WOMEN FLOCKING TO MUSLIM MOVEMENT


Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Stephen A. Seche for reasons 1.4 b/d


1. (C) Summary: A Syrian Muslim women's movement, the
Qubaisis, is attracting attention for its apparently
increasing social and political influence. The movement,
which reportedly has 75,000 members in Syria with branches
regionally and in the United States, promotes traditional
Islamic values in loosely organized study groups and schools.
In Syria, members are recruited from influential Sunni
families and include the wives of businessmen and high-placed
politicians, according to our contacts. Ameera Jibril, who
is the sister of PFLP-GC head Ahmed Jibril, is in the
leadership of the movement, one source said. Founded by
Syrian woman Munira Qubaisi, the movement is reportedly
heavily influenced by a strain of Sufism that promotes
withdrawal from worldly affairs, according to our sources.
Even so, Syrian authorities have long monitored Munira
Qubaisi and have sought to control her movement, which seems
to provide women an opening to organize in a socially and
religiously-sanctioned, albeit very conservative way. End
Summary.


2. (C) WHAT IS IT: The Qubaisi movement was founded by a
Syrian woman, Munira Qubaisi, and includes up to 75,000
followers in Syria, with branches in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt,
Australia and the United States, according to Damascus-based
Al-Hayat correspondent Ibrahim Hamidi, who has followed the
development of the movement over the past year. The
organization's female followers meet regularly in private
homes in loosely-organized groups, to study the Koran and
other religious works and to emphasize the importance of good
morals, said Hamidi who unsuccessfully sought a meeting with
the extremely reclusive Qubaisi herself.


3. (C) Women's rights activist Daad Mousa said that the
group teaches housewives about traditional issues such as
child-rearing and basic religious education and assists
younger women in obtaining good jobs and marriages. The
Qubaisi movement is also involved in running private
elementary and middle schools, which are very affordable and
renowned for teaching good morals, including the al-Bawader
(pioneers) school in Damascus, Hamidi said. According to
Islamist MP and Islamic Studies Center head Mohammed Habash,
the Qubaisis have at least a hundred schools in the Damascus
area.


4. (C) HOW IS IT ORGANIZED: In Syria, some members are
recruited from influential Sunni families and include the
wives of businessmen and senior politicians, according to our
contacts. Mousa stated that the Qubaisi movement was
particularly strong in Aleppo, which is generally considered
more religiously conservative than Damascus. Potential young
recruits are showered with attention, for example, seated
next to the leader of their study group, and some hold fancy
parties to celebrate initiates' donning of the hijab,
according to contacts and a handful of media reports. The
movement is highly hierarchical, with members rising through
the ranks based on their age and seniority, according to
several contacts. Members' attire reflects their status,
according to contacts, who repeated unconfirmed anecdotes of
new recruits garbed in navy blue hijabs and the most senior
members clothed in black.


5. (C) Qubaisi has several "lieutenants," including Nuhaida
Trakji, Khaireiyah Jiha and Ameera Jibril, who is the sister
of PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril, according to Sheikh Salah
Kuftaro, whose father, the grand mufti of Syria until his
death in 2004, provided support and guidance to Munira
Qubaisi in her youth, as did his father before him.
(Comment: It is unclear to what extent Kuftaro's Abu Noor
Islamic Institute or other established Islamic organizations
in Syria exercise any influence on Qubaisi or her legion of
followers. End Comment.) Qubaisi and many of her
lieutenants are unmarried, Hamidi said. Despite the
movement's hierarchical nature, Munira Qubaisi cannot
transmit instructions directly to members of Qubaisi study
groups because they operate independently from one another,
Hamidi said.


6. (C) RELIGION AND POLITICS: The movement is reportedly
heavily influenced by Sufism, including the Nakshbandi
tradition, which emphasizes the withdrawal of spiritual
leaders from worldly affairs, according to our contacts.
Indeed, Qubaisis can spend up to 25 years without ever seeing
Munira Qubaisi, Hamidi said. Other contacts suggested that
the Qubaisis are also influenced by Sunni Islamic
fundamentalist Wahabi thought, which is strong in Saudi

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Arabia where Qubaisi spent many years.


7. (C) Qubaisi was heavily influenced in her youth by Amin
Kuftaro and, later, his son Ahmad Kuftaro, who founded the
Abu Noor Institute in Damascus, according to Ahmad Kuftaro's
son, Sheikh Salah Kuftaro. Qubaisi first studied biology in
the 1950s and then Islamic Studies in the 1960s at the
University of Damascus where she became influenced by the
Muslim Brotherhood, Kuftaro said. Sometime after that,
Ba'ath Party authorities ordered her out of the country, and
she chose to continue her work in Saudi Arabia until banned
by officials there in the mid-1980s, Kuftaro said. Qubaisi
successfully sought Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro's help to return to
Damascus where she continued her preaching under the cover of
the Abu Noor Institute to avoid prosecution, Salah Kuftaro
said. Two years ago, Syria's then-Chief of State Security
Branch of the General Intelligence Directorate Bahjat
Suleiman sought an evaluation of the Qubaisis from Kuftaro,
who said he characterized the group as a spontaneous movement
without a political agenda that should be permitted to
lecture in mosques under the authorities' supervision. Two
female Syrian-American journalists in Damascus, who have
sought unsuccessfully to attend Qubaisi sessions, noted that
their female family members who belong to other Islamic study
groups are concerned almost to the point of paranoia about
the need to avoid being followed by members of the security
services.


8. (C) There are some signs that the movement has an
indirect, but powerful influence on Syrian society and
politics, perhaps in part due to its leading members' family
connections. One story making the rounds in Damascus says
that several senior Qubaisis were arrested in November for
preaching without permission but were then released within
hours after Syrian President Bashar al-Asad was besieged with
phone calls, according to a locally-based U.S. journalist and
think-tank fellow who is also working on an article about the
movement. Although this story could not be confirmed, Abu
Noor Institute leader Sheikh Salah Kuftaro said that the
Syrian Minister for Religious Trusts recently issued licenses
to five Qubaisis to give lessons in Damascus mosques.
Kuftaro said that security authorities objected to the
decision, but the Minister said he obtained the clearance
from high-level officials, including Asad's office director,
presumably acting at the President's direction. For the most
part, Munira Qubaisi has refrained from making direct
political statements, although some say in the past 18 months
she has commented favorably about the SARG, Hamidi said.


9. (C) According to women's rights activist Mousa, the
Qubaisis and the Ba,ath Party use a similar line regarding
women's issues: "Our laws are righteous and promote equality;
women just have to be educated on these rights." The
Qubaisis frame their teachings to educate women on their
rights within Islam, as a religion that they say promotes
gender equality. They focus on, for example, topics like a
wife's rights in her marriage contract, or discussions about
the acts and roles of the Prophet's wives in the Hadith (the
collective body of traditions relating to Mohammed and his
companions),Mousa said. The focus remains on the most basic
rights and does not promote critical thinking about the
religion, Mousa asserted. An aggrieved Qubaisi would not
divorce her husband but instead, armed with her newfound
knowledge of Islamic law, would accuse him of not holding up
an aspect of the marriage contract or (in the case of
polygamy) Koranic requirements, Mousa said. Indeed some
contacts cited anecdotes about husbands who divorced their
wives after they became too religious.


10. (C) Comment: The SARG's blessing for Munira Qubaisi's
return to Syria in the 1980s, after its massive military
operations to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, fits into its
broader campaign to curry favor with Syria's Sunni majority.
Forty years after Qubaisi was banished from Syria, it is not
clear what if any relationship she has with the Muslim
Brothers. The apparent popularity of her movement, however,
is another sign of rising Islamic fervor here that has
occurred over the last two decades.


11. (C) Comment continued: It is difficult to know the
extent of the Qubaisis' power, but, based on anecdotes about
the organization, it clearly has some social and political
influence. It is noteworthy that in a country where
political and religious activities are closely monitored and
controlled, some women are organizing and making connections
in a socially and religiously-sanctioned way, to some extent
beyond the regime's reach. A few contacts argue that the

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movement has within it the seeds of women's empowerment that
could advocate from within Islam's deeply conservative
traditions for greater rights and freedoms for Muslim women.
Given the apparently aggressively traditional religious
visions of the Qubaisis, however, it seems unlikely that the
movement would take such a direction.
SECHE