Epstein Secrets

ot subject to change. Nor did they ever need to be, since they were derived from the highest and most successful model ever -- that of the prophet Muhammad, his companions and successors. Following this model, the Brotherhood had created individual members who were "a walking Qur'an; whose faith, worsh

s Alawites and Sunnis under one banner. Although Sunnis initially tolerated the growing clout of the Alawite community, resentment resurfaced when Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite and the father of the current president, seized power in 1970. When he proposed a new constitution three years later that mandated a se

first Arab kingdom, the first stop the desert warriors from the Hejaz made when they came out of the Arabian Peninsula. In the telling, the Prophet Muhammad favored this realm. He had seen Damascus from the hills above it, and the fabled Ghouta, the gardens and orchards that once circled this city. The

ck 2. The Daily Beast Syria: The Lost Bequest of Hafez Assad Fouad Ajami January 23, 2012 -- Bashar, son of Hafez Assad, has a son by the name of Hafez. But as the defiance and bloodletting in £yria would seem to suggest, Bashar needn't worry about training his son for future rulership. The house t

e Atlas Mountains and the Persian Gulf. Yet unlike the Muslim Brotherhood's rebellion in Hama, which shook the government of Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez in 1982, the Facebook rebellion seems curiously faceless. There are some signs of opposition violence with "plausible reports of security forces bein

stian, Muslim, and Zoroastrian elements. Their leading theologian, Abdullah al- Khasibi, who died in 957, proclaimed the divinity of Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, whom other Shiites revere but do not worship. Like many Shiites influenced by ancient Gnostic teachings that predate Islam,