On December 8, 2024, Syrian rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized power in Damascus following a ten-day offensive, bringing a swift and unexpected end to the Asad regime’s decades’ long rule. The question now is what comes next.
In the past, HTS’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani, had praised al-Qaida, of which his group once formed a part, and repeatedly stated that his highest aim was to implement the sharia. “Whether we are with al-Qaida or not,” he declared in an interview in 2015, “we will never retreat from our principles and our constants. We will continue to strive to implement the sharia.” Two years earlier, in his very first interview, he outlined his vision for how Syria would be ruled post-Asad:
When we come to the stage of liberating al-Sham, when Damascus falls, for instance … at that time sharia committees will assemble; the people who loosen and bind (ahl al-hall wa-l-‘aqd), and religious scholars (‘ulama) and intellectuals from among those who participated [in the fight] and who sacrificed, those with an opinion, even if they are from outside the country, will assemble; and the religious scholars of al-Sham will assemble, for instance; and shura councils and councils of the people who loosen and bind will be convened. Then a plan will be put forward appropriate for administering this country. Of course, this will be in accordance with the Islamic sharia, and in it God’s law will rule, consultation will be extended, and justice will spread.
Al-Jawlani’s vision here was a profoundly religious one, informed by traditional Islamic concepts like the notion of ahl al-hall wa-l-‘aqd, which refers to “those members of the religious and the political elite” who select and advise the caliph, and emphasizing rule by the sharia. Indeed, it was applying the sharia that mattered above all. In the same interview, he went on to say,
We do not strive to rule the country, but we strive for the sharia to be applied in the country. Whether we rule or not, this matter does not concern us. What concerns us is for the sharia to rule, for justice to spread, for the oppression of the people to be lifted, for a righteous Islamic government to be established on the prophetic methodology that seeks to liberate Muslim lands, to apply God’s law, to act justly toward the people, to relieve people of oppression—that is what we strive to achieve.
Some years later, in yet another interview, he reiterated the point, stating, “We do not aspire to rule in the country, but we do aspire for the sharia to rule in the country.” As for his own role in a future government, he foreswore any political ambitions, saying that once a proper “Islamic government” is formed, “we will be the first soldiers in this righteous government, and we do not aspire to rule or anything else.”
Yet now that Damascus has indeed fallen, and al-Jawlani, opting for his given name of Ahmad al-Sharaa, has assumed the role of “overall leader” of Syria’s transitional government, the man of the hour has been singing a different tune. Having swapped out his military fatigues for suit and jacket, he continues to equivocate on the question of his own political future, saying in response to a question about running for Syria’s presidency, “If the Syrians do not want that, I will be satisfied.” But otherwise his language is of a dramatically different character. Gone is the emphasis on implementing the sharia, replaced by a newfound emphasis on tolerance, minority rights, and building an inclusive and representative government whose leaders are chosen by the people.
For al-Sharaa’s jihadi critics, such utterances are proof positive of what they have long believed: that he has abandoned jihadism altogether, becoming a garden-variety Islamist who aims not to apply the sharia but rather to impose a system of rule more akin to that of Erdogan’s Turkey. Having previously criticized him for abandoning al-Qaida and “diluting” the jihadi methodology, they are crying foul once again, this time over his seeming embrace of democracy and reluctance to apply the sharia.
Islamic state or constitutional democracy?
The idea that Western-style democracy is tantamount to polytheism (shirk) is one of the keystones of jihadi ideology. The view is premised on the idea that in Islam sovereignty belongs to God and God’s law, whereas in democracy sovereignty belongs to the people and their manmade laws. This was a view that, even after leaving the fold of al-Qaida, HTS never deviated from. As ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun, HTS’s chief religious authority, wrote in early 2019, “Democracy, from a creedal standpoint, is opposed to Islam, as Islam is premised on giving rule to God, while democracy is premised on giving rule to what is apart from God, whatever that may be.” In the same year, a statement of HTS’s core principles affirmed that “The sovereignty of the sharia is the aim of the jihad and the revolution, and rejection of democracy and secularism.”
Yet now, if his utterances are to be believed, al-Sharaa has developed a newfound affection for representative government. In a December 19 interview with BBC, for instance, he spoke about the need to build “the infrastructure for elections,” noting that half of all Syrians are currently living abroad, many of them lacking proper documentation. On hearing this the interviewer interjected, “You’re talking about elections. Does that mean you would like this country to become a democracy?” “The people,” al-Sharaa responded, “have the right to choose who leads them. The people have the right to choose those who represent them in the people’s assembly (majlis al-sha‘b) and the council of representatives.” The people’s assembly is the name of Syria’s parliament, while the council of representatives is an older term for the same body. Thus, going by al-Sharaa’s words, Syria’s future government will include a legislative body whose members are elected by the people, and will include an executive (president) likewise to be elected by the people.
It will also include a new constitution, as he went on to explain, noting that the process for drafting a new constitution is underway with “a legal committee” consisting of various Syrian “experts and legal authorities.” In saying all this, al-Sharaa studiously avoided any mention of the term sharia, opting instead for the less Islamic term qanun, meaning law or law code, typically in the sense of secular or administrative law. Whereas before his goal was for the sharia to rule in Syria, he now stated that “the law (qanun) is what will rule this country, and the law will protect all, and will preserve the rights of all.” “At the end of the day,” he added, “what the Syrian people agree upon in terms of law and constitution, our objective is to implement it, to maintain it, and to safeguard it.”
Given how decidedly at odds all this was with what al-Sharaa had previously stood for, it was inevitable that his jihadi critics would respond. The most notable of these is Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the Jordanian-based scholar whose writings were critical to the formation of jihadi ideology. A supporter of al-Qaida and the Taliban, al-Maqdisi is well known for his condemnations of the Islamic State, though he has been no less critical of HTS.
On December 20, al-Maqdisi posted on X a video of al-Sharaa’s answer to the question of whether he intends for Syria to become a democracy, asking, “Is this not the plain rule of democracy? For sovereignty to belong to the people who choose, according to the majority, the one who rules them even if he is a secularist? The one who rules by manmade laws! Is this their right in God’s law? Or in the democracy of Ahmad al-Sharaa?” He followed this up with another post accusing al-Sharaa of a host of opportunistic and treacherous acts. “Al-Jawlani turned against ISIS and swore fealty (bay‘a) to al-Qaida so that it would stand with him against ISIS,” he wrote. “Then he betrayed his bay‘a to al-Qaida and turned against it. He used the jihadis in martyrdom operations and promised them that their blood would not be in vain but would be a price for applying the sharia. Then when he arrived at the presidential palace he announced that the law (qanun) will rule and that democracy will be the methodology.”
Avoiding a “hypocritical society”
Typically, when jihadi groups have come to power in recent years, they have made a show of implementing the so-called canonical penalties (hudud) in public fashion (e.g., chopping off hands of convicted thieves), thereby showcasing their stalwart commitment to applying the sharia. When HTS first took control of Idlib, it did not indulge in such displays of brutality as the Islamic State did in the areas it occupied, but it did ban the sale of alcohol and field a morality police force aimed at enforcing conformity with Islamic strictures, such as a dress code for women and bans on smoking and the intermingling of the sexes in public. According to some reports, however, even these efforts were gradually reined in. “Buying and selling alcohol was banned” in Idlib, the New York Times recently reported, “but residents said the group did not try to root out drinkers, and people were allowed to smoke in public.” According to CNN, summarizing the views of Jerome Drevon, al-Sharaa “slowly phased out the strict application of Islamic law, turned a blind eye to gender mixing and smoking and allowed protests against him. A Sharia law-based morality unit was disbanded but women were encouraged to cover their hair.”
In April 2024, al-Sharaa offered some justification for this relatively more permissive environment, saying twice in a public address that he did not wish to foster “a hypocritical society,” by which he meant one that abides by Islamic legal norms only out of fear. On the matter of requiring prayer, for instance, he stated, “The government does not have the right to impose worship on people. We do not wish to turn society into a hypocritical society wherein if they see us, they pray, and if they don’t see us, they don’t pray.” In matters of commanding right and forbidding wrong, he added, the government’s approach was one of emphasizing “the aspect of preaching over the aspect of the stick.” This did not mean that the government had no authority to impose prohibitions, but that any such prohibition “had to be truly a matter of consensus, of decisive proof and evidence,” for the government to impose it.
Despite some early reports of women being required to cover their hair, the same light touch to enforcing sharia norms appears to have prevailed so far in post-Asad Syria. On December 15, ‘Abdallah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi former sharia official in HTS who remains close to al-Sharaa, tweeted what appeared to be a defense of this less punitive approach. Here he echoed much of what al-Sharaa had said in his comments back in April:
I am receiving a flood of questions on the reality of the new Syrian state, among them:
How will the mujahidin deal with behaviors that are prohibited and women wearing makeup in the newly liberated areas, where people are accustomed to a different way of life?
My answer:
The reality of the people [i.e., the leadership] in the new Syrian state today is that they are more mindful of issues such as the question of prohibited behaviors and how to deal with them. The brothers prioritize the aspect of preaching and bolstering it, and abstaining from alienating people and taking care to preserve the spirit of love that, by God’s leave, we have won, such that we do not produce a hypocritical generation that refrains from prohibitions out of fear of us and not of God. All this without diluting the religion and while clarifying what is prohibited and proffering advice thereon.
In response to this post, al-Maqdisi quickly authored an essay titled “Warning against a Corrupt Phrase Diluting the Religion and Justifying the Suspension of the Laws of the Sharia and the Application of Manmade Laws.” The phrase in question, he wrote, “which has been repeated by certain leaders of the revolution, their shaykhs, and their prominent personalities in Syria, in the past and recently, is their words, ‘We will not impose the hijab or prayer or any other such rites on anyone, in order not to produce a hypocritical generation that refrains from prohibited acts out of fear of us and not of God, one that prays when they see us and refrains from prayer when they don’t see us.’” Al-Maqdisi’s main argument, as betrayed by the title, was that such words corrupted and diluted the religion, particularly as regards the duties and obligations imposed by God on Muslim rulers, above all the duty of applying the sharia.
According to al-Maqdisi, the sentiment behind this phrase has no basis in Islam, being out of step with the words of the Prophet’s companions and numerous scholarly authorities. To make the point he drew attention to the widely attested dictum, attributed to two of the early caliphs, that “God deters with political authority (al-sultan) that which He does not deter with the Quran.” The meaning of this, according to al-Maqdisi, citing premodern Muslim scholars, was that more people are deterred from committing evil acts out of fear of the sultan than they are out of fear of God. On this basis, it was widely deemed appropriate for the ruler to coerce right behavior in conformity with the sharia, including prayer. The same idea, he noted, is present in one of the Prophetic hadith in which God is described as observing those who “are dragged to paradise in chains.” As these prooftexts showed, al-Maqdisi argued, the early Muslims were perfectly comfortable with the idea that a Muslim sovereign ought not only to apply the sharia but also to impose legal obligations on his subjects. By contrast, the “cowards” of HTS seek to evade responsibility for applying the sharia and enforcing conformity with the religious obligations “in order to please the infidel West, which they fear more than they fear God.”
The bars of Damascus
On December 14, the day before al-Muhaysini’s tweet that drew al-Maqdisi’s ire, Agence France-Presse published a story about Damascus’s bars cautiously reopening. According to the story, the bars and liquor stores of the capital remained closed for four days after al-Sharaa’s forces entered the city, but this had been due to fear, not a ban. Once bar and store owners received word from the new authorities that they were free to operate as usual, business resumed. “Talk about an alcohol ban is not true,” an anonymous HTS official was quoted saying. The official grew irritated when pressed for further comment, noting that the government has “bigger issues to deal with.” The story received coverage in the Arab press as well.
In his December 19 interview with BBC, al-Sharaa was asked whether his new administration would ban alcohol, expressly forbidden in Islamic law. He responded in an equivocal manner, saying, “Many issues I do not have the right to speak on, because this is a purely legal matter (masʾala qanuniyya).” He went on to describe the committee of experts tasked with drafting a new constitution, remarking that “they are the ones who will decide this matter.” In a separate interview on December 16, asked whether he would ban alcohol and pork, al-Sharaa responded, “We will not interfere in personal freedoms in a deep way.”
Al-Maqdisi’s response to these remarks was a pair of tweets bemoaning the fact that “[e]ven on the matter of alcohol, al-Jawlani’s tongue has been tied after coming to power,” and condemning him for failing to keep his promises to “the mujahidin who brought him to where he is today.” Similarly, al-Maqdisi’s colleague Tariq ‘Abd al-Halim, an Egyptian jihadi scholar based in Canada, posted on his Telegram channel about the bars in Damascus reopening, “What is happening in Syria?! What is the plan? What is the methodology? What is the reference? Where is the bearded minister of the interior? Is it a secular, infidel state, or an Islamic, sharia-based state? What is the difficulty in adopting one of the two ideologies, when there can be no third!?”
That al-Sharaa would fail to commit himself to an alcohol ban is indeed remarkable, as the widely acknowledged punishment for drinking in Islamic law, as established by the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-644), is flogging by 80 lashes. Moreover, as Felicitas Opwis has observed, “this punishment was considered to belong to the divinely prescribed punishments, the so-called ḥudūd (sg. ḥadd), which are imposed for particular acts forbidden in the Qur’ān, such as theft (sariqa), unlawful sexual intercourse (zinā), wrongful accusation of adultery (qadhf), and banditry (qaṭ‘ al-ṭarīq, ḥirāba).” This point would be raised by another Egyptian jihadi scholar in al-Maqdisi’s camp, the London-based Hani al-Siba‘i, who wrote on his Telegram channel on December 20, “Alcohol is forbidden (haram) in our religion, and the penalty (hadd) for it is well known … Has fear of the West reached the point that we are going to form a committee of legal experts [to decide the matter]”?
From jihadi to Islamist
As far as al-Maqdisi and his allies are concerned, the transitional government of Ahmad al-Sharaa so far amounts to a complete betrayal of the Islamic principles that he previously espoused. Not that this came as a shock. For them, al-Sharaa’s seeming embrace of democracy and unwillingness to apply the sharia are the consummation of a long trajectory of unprincipled and duplicitous behavior, one beginning with the decision to break ties with al-Qaida and progressing to security cooperation with (infidel) Turkey and persecution of al-Qaida loyalists.
This is not to say that al-Maqdisi’s perspective is entirely valid. While it is true, as I have written elsewhere, that al-Sharaa likely used his jihadi affiliations opportunistically in pursuit of power, and has gradually distanced himself from jihadi ideology more generally, it is also likely that he remains a committed Islamist who intends to transform the Syrian state in ways not amenable to Syria’s minority communities and more secular-minded Syrians, to say nothing of Syria’s neighbors and the international community more broadly. The reality, in all likelihood, is that al-Sharaa is pursuing a more gradualist and democratic approach to Islamizing Syria’s state and society than is tolerable to jihadis, but it is still an approach premised on an Islamist agenda. In the case of alcohol, for example, his statement about deferring the matter to a committee of legal experts may sound moderate today, but if legislation is passed banning the sale and consumption of alcohol it will have a very different look to it. Perhaps a legislative ban is what al-Sharaa is counting on from a freely elected Syrian parliament, along with a host of other such measures informed by the sharia.
As for democracy and a new constitution, it is now clear that al-Sharaa is working on a longer timetable than previously appeared from his earlier interviews. In a subsequent interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya, aired December 29, he indicated that drafting a new constitution will “need a long time,” and “perhaps will take two or three years.” As for elections, he similarly noted that “we need a long time” to prepare, signaling that this could take as long as four years. (Asked if preparations could take four years, al-Sharaa answered, “maybe,” going on to explain the difficulties involved.) At the end of the day, the democratic system he intends to put in place may well resemble Turkey’s more than France’s, with al-Sharaa playing the role of the long-ruling Erdogan, who, it may be noted, further cemented his power by pushing through a series of constitutional amendments in 2017.
While all this may be anathema to jihadis like al-Maqdisi, it is not a betrayal of a more general Islamism, meaning an approach to politics aimed to instituting a manifestly Islamic regime. Unless something drastic changes, that may well be where Syria is headed under al-Sharaa’s leadership.
