Apparently, Ahrar Al-Sham Al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Movement of the Free Men of Syria), one of the largest rebel groups in Syria, is going through a moderate ideological transformation. Or at least that's what one might think from the recent spate of PR that suggests Washington should ally with the group. Ahrar plays a leading role alongside Al-Qaeda's Syrian arm, Jabhut Al-Nusra, in the wider rebel coalition of Jaish Al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) in Syria. Jaish Al-Fatah, which includes “moderate” rebels, receives weapons, funding and logistical support from US-led coalition allies, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. In April, US commanders in the operations room in southern Turkey gave the green light to coordinate between Islamist factions and “moderate” vetted rebel groups in Syria. Then, in July, the US agreed to Turkish demands to create a de facto “safe zone” in northwest Syria, along the border with Turkey, and supported by US air cover in a move that, if implemented, would empower both Ahrar and Al-Nusra. Around the same time, former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford urged the Obama administration to open talks with Ahrar Al-Sham or face being “left behind” in the race to “influence” the “fate of Syria.” Similarly, last month US Syria analyst Sam Heller pointed to interviews where Ahrar representatives disavowed past connections to “Salafi-jihadism,” raising the prospect of a more moderate “revisionist school” of jihadism. Ahrar's professed rejection of “Salafi-jihadism,” argued Heller, has manifested itself in fundamental disagreements with Islamic State (IS) and Al-Nusra on popular inclusion, Sharia (Islamic law) and political strategy. “It is a sort of Salafist reformation within jihadism itself, casting off some of the accumulated mythology of Salafi-jihadism,” Heller wrote. “In that sense, some have compared it to the big-tent, pre-Salafi-jihadist militancy of Abdullah Azzam — albeit filtered through the region's newly charged sectarianism — a comparison with which interviewees agreed.” But Abdullah Azzam, former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's mentor and founder of the pan-Islamist jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, was not “pre-Salafi”. Salafism, a movement within Sunni Islam, advocates returning to “authentic” Islam, as encapsulated by the first three generations of Muslims after the Prophet Mohamed. What Heller and others have failed to grasp — and what the ideologues of Ahrar are obscuring — is that “Salafism” itself is a broad tent. The Salafis are simply those who, in demanding the strict emulation of the Prophet, reject a role for human reason and experience in understanding Islam. Their focus on banishing deviant traditions by adhering strictly to their own purportedly literalist readings of Islamic texts distinguishes the Salafis from members of the majority Sunni and Shia sects. But like these schools, the Salafis still differ on what such alleged literalism means. Salafism is a diverse tradition that has undergone profound changes with numerous regional variations. While many Salafists reject political participation as a form of shirk (polytheism), others embrace party political engagement to defend society from secularism. Western Salafists increasingly see democracy as legitimate if it permits Muslims to practice freely, though a minority embrace military jihadism. As noted by UK academic Shane Drennan of the University of St Andrew's Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Abdullah Azzam was the first theorist of “Salafi jihadist ideology,” calling for “the unification of the ummah [global Muslim community] through defensive jihad.” His and Bin Laden's Maktab Al-Khidmat (Services Bureau) “created the organisational archetype for the current manifestation of the global Salafi-jihad and Al-Qaeda specifically,” Drennan says. Azzam's approach to Salafi-jihadism was about defending and uniting the Muslim ummah “from invasion by kuffar (infidels or nonbelievers),” rather than engaging in takfir (excommunication of other Muslims as apostates). By reverting back to Azzam's Salafi-jihadism, the Ahrar Al-Sham group is not moving away from Salafism, but merely watering down its takfiri policies to strengthen the pan-Islamist Sunni jihad, while temporarily restraining its draconian political programme to engender popular support. Instead of apostatising non-Salafi Sunni Muslims, as IS does, Ahrar prefers only to apostasise Muslim “heretics” like Shias and Alawites. Ahrar's rhetorical shift is not driven by theological and scriptural revisionism, but is a tactical turn to achieve the group's long-term vision. Much has been made of Ahrar Al-Sham leader Hashem Al-Sheikh's Al-Jazeera interview in April, confirming that in his view Syria, after the fall of President Bashar Al-Assad, would have a government chosen by the people based on a Sharia-based constitution. Minorities would be protected, he said, and added that Ahrar disagrees with Al-Nusra on politics and “its connection with al-Qaeda.” But there is nothing new here. In a 2014 interview with Al-Jazeera, Ahrar's former leader, the late Hassan Aboud, acknowledged his group's collaboration across the spectrum of rebel forces to enfranchise the Syrian people. When asked about Ahrar Al-Sham's relationship with Al-Qaeda in Syria, Aboud made it clear that their disagreement was not fundamental. “We meet with them on some points and disagree on other points, and we militarily meet in matters of tactics and disagree with them on other tactics,” he said. “We may agree with them that Islam is the adjudicator of our work and we may disagree on some other points.” When asked how a post-Al-Assad regime could be selected, Aboud endorsed anything other than democracy. “The method of selecting a ruler varies in the Islamic state. There are those like today's monarchies, for example, where the king appoints his successor, and also there are those where leaders are selected by senior nobles and wise men, and there are those consulted by citizens. All these methods are legitimate and nothing is wrong with them.” However, he described “democracy” as a “sword hanging on everything that Western powers want . . . Democracy is to control people via people according to what they think of rules. We say that we have a divine system prescribed for his caliph and slaves . . . It is the system where the rules are for pure Islamic law. Allah's law is complete, and you need only consider the texts and derive the rules.” Ahrar's rejection of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's declaration of the “Islamic State” — and the curtailing of Al-Nusra's fledgling Sharia courts — is not theological, but strategic. Said Aboud: “The most important duty now is to punish the unjust aggressor of our nation and our people. Now is not the time for the enforcement of the projects of each group, if they exist.” He continued, “There is no doubt that many in this country want to be governed by the laws of Allah and for the state's constitution to be the Qur'an, but what will be the nature, shape and timing? This is where we disagree and agree with many of the other elements.” Despite his sweet talk about minorities, Aboud made it clear that Ahrar Al-Sham's vision is fundamentally sectarian. Referring to a “Shiite crescent” encircling “our Muslim East,” he lambasted Russian and Iranian designs, pinpointing the Shia threat, which he described as “a sickle stabbed into the side of this ummah. It is a Persian Safavi populist sickle, and its purpose is to be an obstacle to the advancement and restoration of the glory of the Muslim nation,” he said. Aboud also threw light on Ahrar Al-Sham's regional and global ambitions to destroy national borders through a new Islamic super-state. “We look forward to the day that we destroy with our own hands the Sykes-Picot walls which were imposed on us,” he said, referring to the agreement that European powers used to divide up the Middle East after the First World War. “We look forward and hope to see this [global Muslim] ummah as one entity again.” Ironically, the escalation of Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria is fanning the flames of this apocalyptic vision. By intervening directly in the Syrian quagmire, these countries will not end the conflict, but instead will stoke the fires of a regional sectarian war that will dominate the Middle East. The writer is an investigative journalist and a scholar on international security.
