[1] His father, Sheikh Sulayman al-Ahmad, was a prominent Alawite imam from the Kalbiyya tribal confederation, and also served in the Damascus-based Arab Academy of Language in 1919.

[5][2] Following the French occupation of Syria in the aftermath of World War I, Badawi joined the Al-Ali Revolt, which centered in the Syrian coastal mountain areas.

He also served as an intermediary between al-Ali and the King of Syria, Faisal I. Badawi was incarcerated by the French Mandatory authorities for many months in 1920–21 for his involvement in Syrian resistance activities, but was ultimately released because of his young age.

In 1936, he made his way back to Syria where he studied law at the University of Damascus for a short time before being arrested by the authorities for his earlier anti-French activities.

He wrote that socialism was an "evil" system that merely served to concentrate power and wealth into the hands of the elite by seizing resources, denying individual freedom and justice to citizens and encouraging immorality in society.

[8] During his time in al-Ghazzi's cabinet, he publicly stated his opposition to Quwatli's closeness with the pan-Arabist and socialist president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the Soviet Union.

[7] Early in his career, Badawi viewed the role of the poet as synonymous with that of the "public spokesman of the [sic] community", according to literature expert Reuven Snir.

[2] He did not consider free verse to be poetry at all, but rather a completely different form of literature, insistent that eventually, Arabic poets would return to the classical tradition.

According to Jayyusi, Badawi "surpassed all his neo-classical contemporaries ... by his ability to achieve a universality, to arrive at the poetic moment in which the factual and metaphysical merge."

His poetry often expressed constant loneliness, unquenchable thirst and foreboding which reflected the real-time events of his life and the greater Arab population yet in nature, were abstract.

[12] Badawi's poetry also reflected an extent of automatism as testified by a moment during one of his parliamentary campaigns in the 1950s when a crowd of supporters gathered around to hear him speak about his political goals.