Roj Bash !

 

 

   

One year after sheikh Maashuk al-Khaznawî’s death, the case remains mysterious and still  unclarified. But will it be ever cleared up ?

On May 10th 2005, Sheikh Khaznawi received by phone a call from people pretending to have an old and ill father, whishing his visit : Could he come at their home for the breakfast  ? It seems that the Sheikh was sceptical about that story. According to his sons, he would have even said : “When Intelligence forces will stop to peest me ?” but he accepted though to go (as with Ghassemlu, or Sherefkandi, it is Kurdish leaders’ habit to go “tough” to an appointment with their murderers…). Nobody saw him alive, after he left his people by saying  : “I shall be back after 2 hours.” However, almost one month following his disappearance, a government official told to his sons that they will have soon good news concerning their father. Instead of this, on June 1^st 2005, the corpse was found in Deir ez Zor, Eastern Syria. Security agents led them to Sheikh Maashuk’s corpse. Beard hacked off, broken teeth, burned marks on skin, obviously, the Sheikh has been tortured. Syrian forces asserted they have caught five suspects and 2 of them confessed the murder. Syrian TV showed even their “confession » : “We have killed Sheikh Khaznawi for he deviated from the religious way of his fathers, and harmed it with his performances on Satellite Broadcasts”. The supposed murderers told thay have kidnapped and drugged the Sheikh, driven him to Aleppo, where the driver of the victim’s elder brother would have suffocated him with a pillow. This version is supported by Khalid Hammud, the investigator judge in Damascus : he affirmed that the corpse had no sign of violence and then the most probable death is asphyxia. So, according to the State point of view it was a familial quarrel with a religious background.But the victim’s family contests this version and the absence of torture. It stressesd the strange attitude of police during the days following the disparition. When they asked the list of the last number phones which called the Sheikh’s handphone, – “an operation whick takes 5 minutes and costs only one $” – Syrian communications ansewered that a authorization of security services was necessary.Moreover, a physician working in the military hospital of Tishrin, in Damascus, called Khaznawi’s sons, and told that he had seen the Sheikh on May 27th, in a room of the hospital, watched by Syrian agents. He had signs of torture, and was in a very critical state, unconscious. He had been treated by antibiotic and other medicines, and after 15 hours, transferred to an unknown destination. His body was found in Deir ez-Zor, at the other side of Syria.In an interview given to al-Jazeera, Islam Dari, the manager redactor of the newspaper Tishrin, a media controlled by the State, is however convinced that it was a familial tragedy : “It was not the interest of Syria to arrest Sheikh Khaznawi for many reasons. Firstly, he was a religious. Secundly he was Kurd and had nothing to do with politics.” Islam Dari evoked financial problems (for a inheritance issue) between the Sheikh and his brother as a possible motive for the murder. But the Sheikh’s sons denied this explanation : “The affair was ended since a long time. We lived in a city, and [our uncle] in antoher one. Our father stopped to claim his inheritage.”

Curiously, 2 of the 3 main suspects died shortly after the murder, by « accident »”. Sa’id Hadeela in a car-accident and Abd-al-Razzaq in a train-car accident, for he has had the bad idea to park his car on railways and to stay inside the car… A witness affirmed though that the body showed no trauma nor injuries, perhaps because the train did not bump the drivers’ place. Emotion probably killed him… Some Kurdish sources told also that when authorities wanted finally to exhume the corpse for an investigation, the coffin was empty. Pure lack of attention, undoutebdly.

Sheikh Mohammad Maashuk al-Khaznawî belonged to a lignage of Kurdish Naqshbandi sheikhs. He was the Sheikh Azzedîn Khaznawî’s son and the grand-son of Sheikh Ahmad Khaznawî, the author of a huge exegesis of the Kurdish poet Meleyê Cizirî. He studied in Tell Maaruf and Qamishlo, then followed his studies of theologia in different universities of the Middle-East. In 1992, he came back in Syria and took the function of imam in the Edleb mosque, near to Aleppo. Then he came back in his homeland region as the imam of Qamishlo, until his murder. Qamishlo and was also deputy director of the same center in Damascus. He was member of Jerusalem Fundation in Beyrouth and member of the Committee for dialogue between Muslims and Christians in Damascus. Therefore he was invited just before his death by the ministry of Foreign Office in Norway to a congress about Islam. During all his life, the Sheikh never stopped to defend his own vision of Islam, by insisting on tolerance and progress. He condemned without ambiguity terrorist actions in the name of his religion. Moereover, he expressed constantly his concern for the Kurdish cause and denounced the situation of Kurds without passport in Syria, of which a great part live in Qamishlo area, where he exercized. He sought to tie links between Kurdish parties in Syria, stressing the necessity to unite Kurds in the aim to growing their impact on Syrian politics. Durgint the bloody Newroz of March 2004, his main aim was to avoid massacres. He organized meetings with Kurdish parties representatives and officials. Syrian Government, a bit snowed under events, asked him to serve as mediator in Qamishlo to appease tensions. But it did not prevent him to support also Kurdish claimings, even if he opted for a peaceful way. When 312 Kurdish detainees were released one year later, in March 2005, he was there to welcome them, with Kurdish political leaders. And celebrating the anniversary of the 2004 Uprising, he criticized opendly Syrian regime and the lack of rights for Kurds. He invited too several Western diplomatical delegations in Qamishlo to aware them about Kurd’ fate. “The Sheikh was a symbol for Kurds, and he wanted that they all unite themselves in a peaceful struggle”, stated Hasan Saleh, the General Secretary of the Kurdish party Yekitî.Was his activism becoming embarrassing for Baathist regime ?

According to his relatives and other witnesses, the Sheikh had been « warned » many times by Syrian secret services, that his actions were « dangerous » for himself. Since many months indeed, intelligence forces targeted the Sufi, at a such point that he should call his sons each hour to reassure them that he was not arrested. One month before his death, he said in an interview by phone to a Canadian newspaper, that the regime should change or leave, making an allusion to Americans’ will to get rid of dictatorships in the regions. Officers of secret political services made a meeting in Qamishlo to debate on the Sheikh’s case. “They wrote a report about him, saying that the Sheikh was becoming a source of troubles, and that it was necessary to get rid of him.” 

Anotehr point, terribly hot in the Sheikh’s file, his meeting, in February  2005, in Brussels, with the exiled leader of Muslim Brothers, Ali Sadreddin Bayanuni, a bête noire for Syria after the attempt of revolt from Islamists in 1982. This meeting could not be stayed without reprisals from Baathists. Moreover, this alliance could be dangerous. While Kurdish opposition makes hardly accept to Syrian Arab opposition its own rights, a few time after the return of Khaznawi in Syria, Muslim Brothers stated in a communiqué that they recognized the need to find a solution to the Kurdish issue, and this step was welcomed as a victory in many Kurdish circles.For some analysts, this death happened in an atmosphere of tension and paranoia against Kurdish political movements. “Stability of Syria is in Kurds’ hands” did not hesitate to writer Ibrahim Hamidi, in al-Hayat. “They occupy a unique position. They are organized, they have an islamic identity, a regional support from Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, and an international Eurpoean lobbying, and a political status in Iraq.” In fact, the emergence of a Kurdish state “de facto” in Iraq, which is the main ally of America, contributed to a kind of psychose around an infiltration in Syria of pro-Kurdish-US elements… That sort of rumours had a great success in the Serhildan of 2004. But Sheikh Mashuk had other ennemies : Sunni Islamists who did not appreciate his positions for a moderate, democratic and reformist Islam. They did not appreciate his condemnation of suicide-attacks in Iraq, that he never called « martyrs », while sunni religious authorities don’t oppose great protests against them. Muhammad Habash, the director of the Center of Islamic Studies in Damascus, a center acting for a modern and moderate Islam, defends against the family’s opinion, the thesis of a murder by Islamists and does not believe in the guiltiness of Syrian State :

“They have warned me many times, and they warned Khaznawi also, that we play with fire (…) I think there is a clear plan from Fundamentalist to fight the renewal of Islam.” Both religious dignitaries were indeed a target for extremists or muslim conservatives, who called them kafirs (unbelievers), infidels, and other kind names : “We were in the same fight against daarkness and corruption in religion.”Habash signed them a statement denying the responsability of Syria in the murder, that Sheikh’s sons see as a will to exonerate the regime :”He alwaus said : “If something happen to me, it will come from authorities” explained Sheikh Murad Khaznawi.Indeed, in islamist circles, sufis in general had never had a good reputation, but this sheikh especially gave nightmares to conservatives, even within his own tariqat. Sheikh’s charism and intellectual domination are praised in most of sufi movements. Sheikh is considered as the threshold leading to the vision of Allah, so obediience and absolute devotion from the murîd (follower) to the murshîd (master) are generally required. At the contrary, Sheikh Mashuk preached individual freedom and responsability, opposite to a blindful obedience to a leader. “The Sheikh used to speak against most of sufi ways. Je said it was like drugs for minds” explained his son Murad. “He thought that everybody should express his own opinion while other sheikhs ask silence and obedience,” confirmed Hasan Salih. “Other sheikhs ask people kiss their hand. He refused a such practice.”But far from being a malamatî (an adept of Blame Path), this father of sixteen children, who was a son, a grand-son, a grand-grand son of distinguished Naqshbandis, presented a smart aspect, with his grey dress, his white turban and his long beard. But he had, as it seemed, a good sense of humour, and did not hesitate to break with certain habits of bigotry or excessively scrupulous, as sufis’ refuse to shake women’s hand (this contact being supposed to make them impure for prayers). He fought difference of status between genders in Sunna, for example the fact that a male witness is valued as the double of a female’s one in a trial. He praised too the separation of religion and politics in a state. His political actions seem to have been a trouble as such as his religious positions. Syria refused during years to give him a passport for going out of the country, his books on islam were banned and he was prevented to pronounce the khutba (Friday Preach). So it is difficult to separate his Kuridsh activsm with the religious one’s, and perhaps this conjunction was a trouble for Syria. Then, during the commemoration of the murder by torture of anotehr Kurdish opponent, Farhad Muhammad Ali, Khaznawi condemned openly Syria and compared this man’s death with a Companion of Prophet’s murder, tortured because he refused to insult Muhammad. Ibrahim Yusef, a Kurdish acitvist who was a friend of the victim said that after a such speech, he was threatened by Syrian services, for having crossed “the red line and stated Jihad agaisnt tne country”. A such alliance of politics and religion seemed to worry Syrians. After all, in the Kurdish past, the greatest revolts were often led by Kurdish sheikhs…

The Sheikh used to say : “If their Islam does not accept Kurds in Heaven, then I won’t go in Heaven, and I will stay with Kurdish people.” Perhaps this Kuridsh voice has disturbed both Arab nationalism and rigorist Islam.Source :
Syrian comment.
Christian Science Monitor
Al-Jazeera.net
Syrian Human Rights Committee

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