Profile of Dr. Mohammad Al-Ammar

Profile of Dr. Mohammad Al-Ammar
Al-Laith Al-Basrawi – Basra Al-Sham

“Nonviolence is the path to peace, not surrender.” These are words I heard from Dr. Mohammad Al-Ammar, a kind and optimistic individual despite the great pain surrounding him. He dreams of a future that preserves the dignity of his homeland, and he is one of the prominent figures in the nonviolent movement in Hauran.

Dr. Al-Ammar is a human doctor and a preacher at his city’s mosque. He is a Syrian dissident who was a disciple of the nonviolent preacher Joudat Sa’id. He always sought to diagnose and prescribe remedies for both bodies and minds in a time dominated by ignorance, where mental illness was more challenging than physical ailments.

While practicing medicine, Dr. Ammar also spreads the culture of nonviolence in Hauran. He conducts dialogues with various segments of his community, aiming to raise awareness among people. I was fortunate to meet him in several of these sessions.

In these sessions, he works to convey his experience to the younger generation about different concepts than the reality they live in. He mentioned an incident during one of the sessions where he was summoned to visit one of the intelligence branches for investigation after mentioning a few words in a Friday sermon at the mosque.

At the beginning of the Syrian revolution, he was invited by Asef Shawkat, who was the director of military intelligence, to speak about the situation in Hauran and Syria in general. His clear opinion was that there must be a gradual peaceful transition to a democratic state. Shawkat shook his head throughout the session and, angered by Dr. Ammar’s position, referred his file to Zayeb Zaitoun, the head of the political security branch. After a lengthy dialogue session that ended in silence, Zaitoun, who had been angered, ultimately released him.

Dr. Ammar’s stance clarified that the nonviolent movement is stronger than violence and weapons, a fact feared by security agencies. These agencies do not differentiate between violent and nonviolent methods and base their actions on political opinions, nothing more.

But what deeply affected me is that there is a difference between the methods of violence and nonviolence. Violence creates excuses to commit massacres with various charges, the most famous being terrorism. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is a method of dialogue of the mind and soul to reach a solution without allowing the opponent, no matter how oppressive, to use excuses to commit massacres.

I still echo what Dr. Ammar said to this day, “Nonviolence builds and does not destroy.”