Sa`id Hawwa

Sa`id Hawwa (Arabic: سعيد حوى, Sa`īd Ḥawwá) (1935–1989) was a leading member and prominent ideologue in the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria. Hawwa authored a large number of books that dealt with the proper organizational principles and structures for Islamist organizations, the proper spiritual and practical training for Muslim activists, and issues of interpretation, jurisprudence, and creed in Islam. As a high-ranking member of the Syrian Brotherhood, he was involved in the escalating unrest directed against the Ba`thist regime throughout the 1960s and 1970s and played a role from exile in the latter part of the failed Islamist uprising in Syria of 1976-1982.

Hawwa was born in 1935 and grew up in the `Aliliyat (Arabic العليليات) quarter of the central Syrian city of Hama. According to Hawwa' autobiography, his father's family was descended from the al-Na`im tribe, which traced its lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad, while his mother's family belonged to the al-Muwali clan. Due to the death of his mother and the temporary forced exile of his father as the result of a feud, Hawwa was raised in his early years by his grandmother. Following the return of his father to Hama, Hawwa worked alongside him in his wholesale produce business.

Hawwa was affected by the tense political atmosphere in Hama in 1940s, largely the result of the activism of Akram al-Hawrani and his Arab Socialist Party. Hawwa's father was active in Hawrani's movement and engaged in organizing within the `Aliyliyat neighborhood against rich landowners in addition to participating in the final efforts to expel the French from Syria in 1945.

The importance of education and religion was impressed upon Hawwa by both his mother and his father. The formative figure in Hawwa's young spiritual and educational life was Shaykh Muhammad al-Hamid (Arabic محمد الحامد), who taught religious instruction at Hawwa's high school and delivered religious lectures and sermons in Hama's famous Sultan Mosque. Al-Hamid was a member of the Naqshabandi Sufi order and a proselytizer of the ideas of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, whom he had met during a stay in Egypt. Hawwa joined the Hama branch of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood at the direction of al-Hamid in 1953 and participated in the group's attempts to organize the city's youth in opposition to the various leftist movements active in Syrian politics at that time.

...
Wikipedia