Syrian Jihadism by Aron Lund

Even so, most fighters are acutely aware of their Sunni Muslim identity, and over time, the
insurgent movement has taken on a Sunni sectarian hue.
For example, the FSA-aligned Farouq Brigades 9
in Homs began as a movement of army
defectors, phrasing their propaganda in a mostly non-religious military and nationalist
vocabulary. Since autumn 2011, symbols traditionally associated with Islamist militancy have
instead come to the fore. For example, the group has switched to a black logotype over
crossed swords, and several unit leaders have grown salafi-style chin beards. In sum, the
Farouq Brigades were not created as an ideological organization, but they are gradually taking
on the appearance and rhetoric of an Islamist group.
The growing prominence of Islamist imagery is perhaps more due to its usefulness in Sunni
identity politics, than to the ideology itself. Religion is not the driving force of the rebellion,
but it is the insurgent movement’s most important common denominator. For Syria’s
revolutionaries, Islam functions both as a ready-to-use ideological prism, a sectarian identity
marker, and an effective mobilization tool in Sunni Muslim areas – and, of course, as a source
of spiritual comfort in wartime. Nir Rosen, an American journalist who has travelled
extensively among the Syrian rebels, points out that many insurgents ”were not religious
before the uprising, but now pray and are inspired by Islam, which gives them a creed and a
discourse.” 10
Assad as the Islamists’ ”perfect enemy”
The sectarian makeup of the Assad regime, and its alliances with Shia forces in Iran, Iraq, and
Lebanon, were always major irritants to Sunni Islamists. Since the 1960s, Syrian scholars
such as Muhibbeddin el-Khatib (1886-1969), the Muslim Brotherhood’s Said Hawwa (1935-
1989) and the contemporary salafi ideologue Mohammed Surour Zeinelabidin (1938-) have
contributed to the development of a virulent anti-Shia strand within modern Sunni Islamism,
particularly salafi Islamism. Sheikh Surour’s sectarian polemics, for example, were ”a
9 Farouq Brigades, official page on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/Al.Farouq.Battalions
10 "Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria's armed opposition", Aljazeera English, February 13, 2012,
www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html.
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