Ahmed Mouaffaq Zaidan, the newly appointed media adviser to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, has publicly called on the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to dissolve itself, a move widely seen as an early policy signal from the new authorities in Damascus. Publishing on Al Jazeera Net within days of his appointment, Zaidan framed the appeal as both a historical correction and a political necessity, arguing that the Brotherhood had previously suspended its activities for the sake of unity and should do so again to consolidate Syria's new order.
The Syrian Observer notes it has not independently verified the claims. In that article, Zaidan's message is presented less as a personal opinion than as a formal political cue delivered through a platform long viewed as sympathetic to the movement, thereby amplifying its impact within Brotherhood circles.
Citing precedents from Turkey, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco—where Brotherhood-affiliated groups re-emerged as political parties after dissolution—Zaidan combined pragmatic arguments with stark imperatives. He invoked past Arab unification with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser to recall how Syria's Brotherhood once stood down. Yet, he also asserted that the overriding goal today is "to consolidate al-Sharaa's rule." In a controversial passage, he asked whether Nasser's call was "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," language critics say instrumentalizes wartime losses to justify the movement's exit from politics.
The message lands as the Brotherhood's influence, once dominant in exile politics from the Syrian National Council's formation in 2011 until the regime's collapse, has markedly faded. According to the piece, the al-Sharaa government has moved to erase political life—dissolving parties, opposition bodies, and revolutionary organizations—while elevating the Islamic Council to religious roles and excluding the Brotherhood from formal structures. Nine months into the transition, there is still no law governing political parties; future representation appears to be trending toward notables and communal quotas rather than ideological platforms, raising concerns about a tightly managed, sectarianized public sphere.
Zaidan's call also mirrors a regional reorientation. The Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed in Egypt since 2013; Saudi Arabia and the UAE designated it a terrorist organization in 2014. Jordan, according to the article, revoked its legal status and froze assets in 2025. Turkey and Qatar have scaled back support amid shifting alliances. At the same time, Hamas—its Palestinian offshoot—faces deepened isolation after the October 7, 2023, attack and ensuing war, as Arab states push to re-center the Palestinian file with the PLO and Palestinian Authority.
What follows the Brotherhood's retreat is uncertain. Advocates of pluralism worry Syria could revert to a 1950s-style formula of one man, one party, one voice. Zaidan himself closed by urging unity behind the "newborn state," writing that "all must chant the same tune, the same melody." Though he prefaced his text as personal conviction, he signed it as "Media Adviser to the President of Syria"—a detail that, for many observers, underscored the message's official weight.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons