War-torn Syria has become a battleground for competing ideologies as much as rival militias. The ultra-extremist Salafi-jihadism of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been the loudest and most visible of these ideological contenders, but Syria has also seen the birth of a revisionist trend within Islamist militancy. This trend has emerged as a reaction to the worst excesses of Salafi-jihadism and has been championed by the rebels in Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyyah (the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of al-Sham, usually just called Ahrar al-Sham). Ahrar al-Sham has by now emerged as not just a populist revolutionary force and the most powerful non-ISIL rebel faction in Syria, but also the vanguard of a revisionist school that is contesting the nature of the jihadist movement.
In interviews conducted in September 2015 over social media and messaging apps, several Ahrar al-Sham leaders and observers familiar with the group said Ahrar was originally something close to “Salafi-jihadist.” Many of its founders were alumni of the Islamist wing of Syria’s notorious Seidnaya Prison, jailed for joining or abetting international jihadist organizations that included ISIL’s precursor, the Islamic State in Iraq. Interviewees said the initial character of the group was a product of both biography and circumstance — like others taking up arms against the Syrian regime early in the revolution, they seem to have been reactivating old networks of fighters and financiers.