In my previous article I examined the question of how jihadists in Syria conceive of their jihad against the Assad regime. But how does the regime portray jihad?
Earlier this month, many observers were surprised by a statement issued by the Supreme Iftaa Council, whose leader is Mufti Ahmad Hassoun, the most senior Sunni cleric in Syria as Grand Mufti, with strong ties to the regime. The council’s fatwa was a call for jihad to defend Assad’s government.
I provide my translation of the statement below, as quoted by the Syrian Arab News Agency and reproduced on a pro-regime site called Zanobia (named after the empress of the Palmyrene Empire that had seceded from Rome in the Crisis of the Third Century: an apt symbol for the regime’s professed stance of ‘resistance’ to supposed Western imperialism). I highlight parts in bold for my own emphasis:
“God Almighty has said: Those who have obeyed God and the messenger after injury has struck them. To those among them [i.e. the believers] who have done good and feared God is a great reward. Those to whom the people have said, ‘The people had indeed gathered against you [i.e. the believers].’ But it increased them in faith and they said, ‘Our reliance is God and He is the best dispenser’ [Qur’an 3:172-3].
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=18307