- He was born in the city of Homs in 1915.
- He grew up in a family known for scholarship, as his father and grandparents preached in mosques in the city of Homs.
- He was influenced by his father, Sheikh Hosni al-Sebai, who was a religious scholar.
- He began to memorize the Holy Quran and received the basics of Islamic sciences until he was old enough to enter primary school, where he enrolled in the Masoudiya School.
- After completing his primary education there, he enrolled in the Sharia High School and completed his studies there in 1930.
- In 1933, he went to Egypt for university studies at Al-Azhar.
- In 1941, he participated with Egyptians in demonstrations against the British occupation.
- He supported Rashid Ali al-Kilani’s revolution in Iraq against the British.
- The Egyptian authorities arrested him by order of the British with a group of his fellow students for about three months, then he was transferred to Sarafand detention center in Palestine, where he stayed for four months, then was released on bail.
- He presented his scientific thesis “The Sunnah and its Place in Islamic Legislation”, which received a distinction degree in 1949, which became one of the important contemporary references for the Islamic world.
- He obtained his doctorate in Islamic law from Al-Azhar in 1949, making him the first Syrian to obtain this higher degree.
- He participated in the resistance to the French occupation of Syria at the age of sixteen.
- He was first arrested in 1931 on charges of distributing leaflets in Homs against French policy, and then he was arrested a second time for his speeches against French policy and the French occupation.
- He participated in the 1948 Palestine War and commanded the Syrian battalion.
- During his student days in Egypt, he met the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, and the two remained in contact after his return to Syria
- He met with some scholars, preachers, and men of Islamic associations in the Syrian governorates and decided to unite their ranks and work as one group, thus establishing the Muslim Brotherhood for the entire Syrian country.
- This meeting was attended from Egypt by Said Ramadan, one of the leaders of the first generation of the Brotherhood, and this was in 1942.
- Three years later, in 1945, Mustafa Sibai was chosen to be the first general controller of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
- In 1947, he established the newspaper (Al-Manar) until it was suspended by President Hosni Al-Zaim after the military coup in 1949.
- In 1955, he and others founded the weekly magazine Al-Shehab, which continued until the unification with Egypt in 1958.
- In the same year, 1955, he obtained a license to issue the monthly magazine (Muslims) after it was stopped in Egypt, and it continued to be published in Damascus until 1958, when it was transferred to its owner Said Ramadan in Geneva, Switzerland.
- In its place, al-Sibai published the monthly magazine Hadhara al-Islam (Civilization of Islam) until his death, when it was taken over by Dr. Muhammad Adeeb Saleh in Damascus.
- Al-Sibai was elected as a deputy from Damascus in the Constituent Assembly (the Syrian Parliament) in 1949.
- He was elected vice-president of the Council.
- He was elected as a member of the 9-member Constitution Committee.
- In 1950, he was appointed a professor at the Faculty of Law at the Syrian University.
- He was able to establish the Faculty of Sharia at Damascus University in 1955 to become the first dean of the Faculty of Sharia at Damascus University.
- The University of Damascus lectures, especially (the research hall), and Syria’s cultural and intellectual clubs and publishing houses knew him as a poet, a sage, and a journalist who mastered the art of the religious and political article.
- In 1956, Al-Sebai asked the Syrian government to allow the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the Suez War alongside the Egyptians, but the government of President Adib Shishakli dissolved the group and arrested Al-Sebai and his brothers.
- Shishakli ordered Sibai’s dismissal from the Syrian University and his deportation out of Syria to Lebanon.
- After the arrest of Hassan al-Hudaibi in Egypt during the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s confrontation with the government of the July Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood in Arab countries established an executive office headed by Dr. Mustafa al-Sibai.
- His most important works include: “The Sunnah and its Place in Legislation”,
“Explanation of the Personal Status Law” (three parts), “Masterpieces of our Civilization”, “Women Between Jurisprudence and Law”, “Thus Life Taught Me” (three parts written during his illness), “Socialism in Islam” (then printed under the title Social Solidarity in Islam), “Religion and the State in Islam”, “The System of Peace and War in Islam”, “Flexibility and Evolution in Islamic Legislation”, “Our Approach to Reform”, and “Muslim-Christian Relations in History”. and the State in Islam”, “The System of Peace and War in Islam”, “Flexibility and Evolution in Islamic Legislation”, “Our Approach to Reform”, “Relations between Muslims and Christians in History”, “Religious Tolerance”
and other works that made him the first theorist of the Islamic movement in Syria. - At the end of his life, he contracted paraplegia, paralyzing his left limb, and remained for 8 years, until he died on Saturday, 27 Jumada I 1384 AH / October 3, 1964 AD, at the age of 49, and his funeral was held in the Umayyad Mosque with a funeral in which all spectrums participated in Damascus.
We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the memory of the founding statesmen of Syria, we recall one of Syria’s influential statesmen, and one of the symbols of the flags of the first Syrian state and the Islamic movement that contributed to influencing its structure, the first academic and founder of the Faculty of Sharia in Damascus, Sheikh “Mustafa al-Sibai” within a sequential file we present to you to include symbols and flags of the Syrian state. In our desire to link our contemporary revolutionary present with a solid past and historical stations, we hope to revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, learn from their experiences, build on their history, preserve the homeland, safeguard the gains, and restore the Syrian state to its glory after years of injustice, tyranny and corruption.
