- Baath party was a political party that was founded in 1947 in Syria
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Baath party was a political party that was founded in 1947 in Syria. The founders of the party were Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar in conjunction with the associates of Zaki al-Arsuzi. The party emerged due to the breakup of the United Arab Republic, which was from the union of Syria and Egypt. The Baath Party was reconstituted to bring unity in the Arab world, making it a single state.
Muslim Brotherhood is an organization of Islam that was founded in March 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna in Islamia, Egypt. The organization was formed to serve as a social, religious and political movement of Islams. However, its first service was centred on education and spiritual programs. The Muslim Brotherhood spread quickly to other Arabian countries. For instance, in Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood was developed to resist the colonialism of Europeans in the Arab world.
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The theories of Aflaq, collectively called Baathism, about the economy and the politics of the society, hold that the world of Arabs needs unity. He believed that it’s the only way to achieve a progressive state of development. Aflaq was very critical to both communism and capitalism and also the view of Karl of dialectical materialism to be the only truth. Aflaq, in his theories, emphasizes socialism and liberty of Arab which was excluded in the international socialist movements of the west. Since he was a staunch admirer of secularization, Aflaq wanted religion to be separated from state (Richard 185)
On the other hand, Hassan presented a modern ideology basing on Islam intellectual history. He acknowledged as a comprehensive system of life that accepted the Quran as the only constitution Hassan wanted the state, society and the economy to be Islamized. According to him, to establish an organization, there was a need to have progressive taxation, developing the institutions and also elaborating the Islamic economic theory. In al-Banna’s Ideology, he criticized the Imperialism of the British, Western materialism and also the traditionalism of the ulema Egypt. The Ideology declared all Muslims to be members of a single nation community appealing to both Pan-Arabic and Egyptians but rejecting the Arab nationalism.
Work Cited
Richard Edwards, “Baathism,” The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History, ed. Spencer Tucker (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008), pp. 184-185.