Jawdat Said

After the 1973 war, the city of Quneitra and some villages of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights were liberated. Among the liberated villages after being occupied for almost 6 years, was Ber Ajam. Now that he was unemployed, Said decided to return to settle there and restore the house with his family. Said lived there, working in beekeeping, agriculture, and keeping up with the intellectual activities, and abreast of developments and discussions in the Arab, Islamic, and global arena.

He finished military service and was appointed to be a teacher at Damascus high schools of Arabic language. No sooner had he started than he was arrested for his intellectual activity. Despite repeated arrests and the issuance of decisions to move him to schools in various regions across Syria, he did not leave the field of teaching until a decision was made to discharge him from his work in the late 1960s.

The book appeared in the mid-1960s, before the emergence of the (Ikhwan) trend in Syria and the incidents of violence and widespread arrests among activists. Some believe that Said's experience in Egypt, recognizing that what has been between the Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood there is expected to be repeated in Syria. Jawdat's first book appeared only after he was arrested for the first time on a background of his intellectual activity. After the experience of detention, he felt that it was necessary to write down some of the ideas he had in mind, especially those related to nonviolence.

On 1956 he encountered Professor Malek Bennabi in the last stages of his presence in Egypt through the book ((rebirth)). He immediately felt that Malik had something different, soon he had the opportunity to meet him personally before leaving Egypt for good.

Said was born in the village of Beer Ajam in Quneitra Governorate in the Golan Heights in Syria, heavily populated by Circassians. He completed his primary education in the city of Quneitra, then his father sent him to continue his studies in Egypt (Al-Azhar) in 1946, where he completed the secondary studies. He studied in the Faculty of Arabic Language, and got a degree in Arabic language.

Tsey Jawdat Said (Adyghe: Цэй Джэудэт-Саид, romanized: Tsəy Djəwdət-Said; Arabic: جودت سعيد; 31 January 1931 – 30 January 2022) was a Syrian-Circassian Islamic scholar who belonged to the School of the famous Islamic thinkers professor Malek Bennabi and Muhammad Iqbal. He was called the Circassian Gandhi for his pacifistic opinions.