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.

Al-Qaida, however, has a problem in taking this pro-Hamas stand. This is that some of the key jihadi ideologues who have long supported al-Qaida, and who command a certain following within al-Qaida’s global network, are deeply uncomfortable with it. The most noteworthy of these is Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (b. 1959), the Palestinian-Jordanian scholar whose many books, essays, and fatwas have profoundly shaped the ideological complexion of the jihadi movement, or “the jihadi current” (al-tayyar al-jihadi) as it is most commonly known in Arabic, going back to the 1980s. Al-Maqdisi has long served as something of the jihadi movement’s ideological standard-bearer, ensuring conformity with Salafi doctrinal principles that emphasize strict monotheism (tawhid) and condemnation and denunciation of all that goes again it, from supplicating saints at tombs to democracy and nationalism and failure to rule by God’s law.

Unlike in previous years when al-Maqdisi used social media accounts and wrote frequently online, over the past year or so his social media usage and his writing have been restricted by the Jordanian authorities. Even so, a number of his messages have appeared online since October 7, and for the most part these have comprised severe criticism of al-Qaida. While al-Maqdisi is not as categorically anti-Hamas as the Islamic State, he has no tolerance for what he sees as al-Qaida’s unprincipled stand of all-out support for the Palestinian militant group, a stand that he sees as representing al-Qaida’s ongoing ideological evolution toward a more generic kind of Islamism. These concerns of al-Maqdisi go to the heart of what al-Qaida is trying to become in the present moment as it repositions itself as the more “moderate” alternative to the Islamic State—and the challenge that this intended makeover entails.

Hamas between al-Qaida and al-Maqdisi

The Islamic State, to reiterate, has nothing positive to say about Hamas whatsoever. Back in January, the Islamic State’s official spokesman urged Hamas to “correct your path,” arguing that its “recent battle in Gaza” was not about “achieving the unity of God and making His word supreme” but rather about “the dirt and the land.” He went on to fault Hamas for failing to implement the Sharia in Gaza and for allying itself with Shiite Iran’s “axis of resistance,” noting that the “expansionary designs” of the “Rejectionists” (i.e., the Shia) are no less a threat to the Muslims than “the conspiracies and enmities of the Jews and the Crusaders.” The only way for Hamas to be worthy of the Islamic State’s support, in other words, was for it to abandon the resistance axis and transform itself into an extension of the Islamic State.

Al-Qaida has also in the past condemned Hamas, but never so severely and never to the point of outright excommunication (takfir). In 2006 al-Qaida’s approach turned negative when Hamas pivoted from being principally a terrorist militia to being a political group as well. That year Hamas participated in the Palestinian legislative elections, and al-Qaida responded by condemning it for participating in these “polytheistic assemblies” and effectively recognizing the Oslo Accords. In 2007 Osama bin Laden famously stated that Hamas had “forsaken their religion.”

Al-Maqdisi was even more critical of Hamas in this period, writing extensively about its perceived transgressions from its embrace of the “polytheistic” religion of democracy to its failure to implement the Sharia in Gaza (after Hamas’s takeover there in 2007) and the nationalism underlying its jihad, among other things. More broadly he critiqued Hamas for not adhering to the correct path or methodology (manhaj), meaning the ideological path associated with the jihadi movement, or Jihadi Salafism, with its emphasis on tawhid and its commitment to overthrowing the “apostate” rulers of the Islamic world.

It was in this context that al-Maqdisi came into conflict with the al-Qaida commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (d. 2010), who in a 2009 interview casually stated that “we and Hamas share the same thinking and the same manhaj.” Al-Maqdisi responded with a 20-page rebuttal setting out all the ways in which Hamas did not adhere to “the manhaj of the Jihadi Salafi current” (manhaj al-tayyar al-salafi al-jihadi). Abu al-Yazid duly issued a correction, explaining that he had misspoken (“the phrase was not precise”) and clarifying that al-Qaida’s position is one of distinguishing between the political wing of Hamas, which is deeply flawed, and Hamas’s military wing (i.e., the al-Qassam Brigades), which merits support as mujahidin fighting a shared enemy. Al-Maqdisi has sometimes indicated his agreement with this distinction between the political and the military wings of Hamas, though he has never been entirely comfortable with it. In any event, the episode with Abu al-Yazid demonstrated the kind of ideological authority that al-Maqdisi wielded within al-Qaida circles at this time. In recent years, however, this has changed, with al-Maqdisi finding himself critiquing what he sees as al-Qaida’s ideological drift and al-Qaida only drifting further.

In 2021, for instance, during an earlier round of conflict between Israel and Hamas, al-Maqdisi rebuked al-Qaida’s official media agency, al-Sahab, for its statement mourning the death of a Hamas senior military commander. He framed his criticism as though reflecting the concerns of a great many erstwhile supporters of al-Qaida. “Many mujahid brothers, shaykhs, and preachers,” he wrote,

were displeased by the al-Sahab statement’s exaltation of the al-Qassam leader who was killed in the recent war in Gaza, and they wondered astonishedly: “Are our brothers not aware of the deviation of Hamas and its leadership from the path of tawhid in favor of the path of democracy, and of their alignment with Hizb al-Lat [i.e., Hizbullah] and Bashar [al-Asad] and Iran?” … Has the manhaj changed?! Have the ranks of al-Qaida been penetrated by those who pay no heed to the purity of the manhaj?”

This was a major escalation in al-Maqdisi’s occasional criticism of al-Qaida, which had earlier included reprimanding the group for mourning the late President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt. For the first time, al-Maqdisi had accused al-Qaida of turning its back on the jihadi manhaj that he and others had worked so hard to construct. Al-Qaida was from his perspective trying to remake itself into a more pan-Islamist group that could appeal to the global Muslim community, or umma, more broadly, and this meant dispensing with the jihadi manhaj and all its ideological strictures. Since October 7, al-Maqdisi’s concerns about al-Qaida have only grown greater.

Early reactions

Al-Qaida would waste little time in publishing a statement of support for the Hamas operation. On October 13, the al-Qaida senior leadership, or “general command,” issued a statement titled “But Surely God’s Help is Nigh” (Q. 2:214) in which it hailed the October 7 attack as “one of the most courageous of heroic acts in Islam in this modern time,” and “one of the most important Islamic strides that will lead to the liberation of all the land of Palestine.” Addressing “the knights of Palestine,” the statement declared that “your brothers in al-Qaida, and all the righteous mujahidin worldwide, stand together with you in a single column, in the same trench of battle.” It further called on Muslims around the world to wage jihad against the Jews and their allies, announcing that “we are upon a great transformation in the path of global jihad.”

The October 13 statement was followed at the month’s end by the first essay in a series by Sayf al-‘Adl, al-Qaida’s presumptive leader since the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri in summer 2022. Writing under the pseudonym Salim al-Sharif, al-‘Adl heaped similar praise on the October 7 operation, portraying it as a strategic marvel that heralded the beginning of the end for the Jewish state. Despite the pain and destruction now being visited upon the people of Gaza, he wrote, the operation was nonetheless necessary in order to achieve the ultimate objective of driving the Jews from Palestine. It would further have the effect of lifting the morale of the umma and of the Muslims of the Middle East in particular, leading them “to revolt against their kings and emirs and presidents” who had done nothing over the years to restore Muslim rule in Palestine. With these two statements, al-Qaida was practically claiming October 7 as its own, portraying the attack as both a part of and in furtherance of al-Qaida’s jihad against the standing regimes of the Middle East.

Al-Maqdisi’s initial reaction was somewhat out of character. Rather than polemicizing against Hamas, he counseled restraint in condemning it at this sensitive time. In a comment relayed via Telegram on October 12, he expressed exasperation at receiving numerous inquiries about his earlier writings concerning Hamas. “I have been troubled by the brothers’ repeated questioning concerning our previous well-known statements about Hamas at this time,” he wrote, suggesting that this was not the moment for dredging up this material. At the present time, he continued, “it is obligatory to work to support Gaza and its people by any means possible, by the hand and by the tongue and by beseeching God to support the people of Gaza over the nations of unbelief who have rallied against them,” and it is further obligatory “to avoid all that might be seen as forsaking [the people of Gaza] at this time.” This moratorium on Hamas-bashing was bound to be brief.

Al-Maqdisi’s next comments on Hamas came in an issue of the jihadi magazine al-Mahajja, which appeared on November 6. In his article, titled “Proud Gaza and the al-Aqsa Flood: Studies and Lessons,” he began by praising October 7, saying that “there is no believer of true faith in this world who did not feel joy at the al-Aqsa Flood operation.” Yet this praise soon was shown to be backhanded, as in the very same paragraph al-Maqdisi described Hamas’s jihad as “marked by corruption” as he pondered “what would be the case were it a jihad in the path of God and in the path of applying His law on earth, as our Lord wishes and desires?” From here he proceeded to reaffirm his earlier criticisms “of the deviations of Hamas and its government,” saying that no military operation, no matter how great, can erase these transgressions. “The crime of neglecting the Sharia,” he wrote,

is not erased but by applying it; the sin of democracy is not erased but by dissociating from it; the veneration and adulation of the worst Rejectionist criminals and the showing of loyalty to the murderers of the Sunnis such as [Qasim] Sulaymani and his state and their satanic ayatollahs are not erased but by dissociating from them; and the praising and burnishing of Bashar [al-Asad], murderer of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, rapist of women, and destroyer of lands and persons, are not erased but by dissociating from him and his criminal regime.

Al-Maqdisi went on to note that it was the Hamas government that had instituted a “truce” with Israel in the first place, stifling the efforts of the smaller militant groups in Gaza, including the “Jihadi Salafi” ones, from making war on the Jewish state.

Here was al-Maqdisi returning to form. Whatever reservations he had about criticizing Hamas in the immediate aftermath of October 7 were gone. As al-Maqdisi announced of himself:

I am not one who is deceived by that which is not real, who goes out beating the drum for Hamas and dressing it up and beautifying it, with all its vices and faults, because of a raid it successfully carried out. In this way are people misled and their creed diluted. A great many shaykhs and groups have ridden the wave of this flood such that they have nearly drowned their followers in the misconceptions of innovative groups and ensnared them in contradictions! As if all the grave offenses that the Hamas government has committed and continues to commit are excused so long as it is fighting Jews! As if fighting Jews has become an impediment to condemnation and to takfir!

The criticism of certain unspecified “shaykhs” and “groups” here no doubt encompassed al-Qaida with its statement of unqualified pro-Hamas sentiment.  

Al-Maqdisi’s frustration with al-Qaida became even clearer in his next public remarks concerning Hamas. In this brief commentary, relayed via Telegram on November 15, he argued that there was a major difference between calling on God to support a flawed Islamic group such as Hamas and “misleading the umma” by endorsing it and exaggerating its merits. The former was perfectly in accordance with the Sharia, but the latter was not. Indeed, to take the latter course was “to destroy all that we have built before of doctrinal fortresses examining the deviation of those who fight in the path of democracy and rule by manmade laws.” “What the jihadi organizations and shaykhs are doing today,” he continued, naming al-Qaida, “is precisely this destruction and annihilation of the edifice that they had previously erected,” a structure that was built to show “the falsity of democracy and the blameworthiness of governments that refuse to apply the Sharia.” Al-Qaida and certain unnamed scholars, al-Maqdisi was thus saying, were “misleading the umma” and “destroying” the ideological edifice of Jihadi Salafism. This was heavy criticism indeed.

“Don’t ride a wave that isn’t yours”

It was not till early January 2024 that al-Maqdisi’s next words concerning al-Qaida and Hamas appeared online. What seems to have prompted him to write at this stage was the release by al-Qaida the previous month of a short video featuring footage of Hamas fighters squaring off against Israeli forces. The video, based on an earlier newsletter from November, urged Muslims to join the battle alongside “the heroes” of October 7 by waging jihad against the “Zionist” Arab regimes of the Middle East, in particular “Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon.” Once again, al-Qaida was presenting Hamas’s war on Israel and the regional agenda of al-Qaida as part of the same general jihad. Another al-Qaida media product from December did even more to portray Hamas and al-Qaida as being in perfect alignment. This was a newsletter released at the end of the month presenting the “the blessed al-Aqsa Flood operation” as the successor to 9/11, and predicting that this “the second September 11” would inevitably lead to “the third September 11.” Notably, the newsletter suggested that the perpetrators of this third 9/11 might even be “non-Muslims,” given how widespread the anger at America in the West had become.

These attempts by al-Qaida to blur the distinction between Hamas’s and al-Qaida’s strategic agendas did not sit well with al-Maqdisi. In an essay published on Justpaste.it on January 8 and shared by followers on X and Telegram, he warned al-Qaida against trying to insert itself into a war it had no business being a part of. Hamas, he explained, “adheres to a Muslim Brotherhood, Islamo-democratic manhaj, it rules according to manmade laws, and it does not fight to establish God’s law!” Implicitly addressing al-Qaida, only later identified by name, he wrote, “You are simply not a part of its [Hamas’s] direction … [and] you haven’t the least participation or say in its vital decisions.” Indeed, Hamas could end this war at any time on the orders of its foreign patrons and without consulting you. The Hamas leadership “disagrees with you in the foundations of belief (usul), not just in the branches (furu‘). You and they are not aligned either in direction or in means or in objectives.” The “Rejectionists” of Iran and Hezbollah are the more natural allies of them. “Therefore,” he concluded, “your enthusiasm for them [Hamas], and your words and your statements about them, as though you are speaking on their behalf, is to be considered fake wailing. Truly, your drumbeating for them without concern for their methodology is a mixture of stupidity and naiveté and foolishness.”

It was at this point that al-Maqdisi finally mentioned al-Qaida by name, noting the fact that it

has begun to draw in its videos from the videos of Hamas’s fighters in order to talk about the global jihad that the Hamas of the Resistance dissociates from, and indeed considers to be terrorism, or to incite through the clips of the al-Qassam fighters against idolatrous rulers and regimes that Hamas is loyal to in the first place! … So long as you have wasted the milk in the summer and have not prepared for this day in terms of men and capabilities and damaging targets, then don’t ride a wave that isn’t yours, and don’t beat the drum and dance to songs that don’t suit you.

Not only was al-Maqdisi calling out al-Qaida’s “stupidity and naiveté and foolishness” in showering praise on Hamas and misrepresenting its loyalties and strategic aims, but he was also calling out al-Qaida’s irrelevance on the Palestinian scene, as an actor that had not mobilized and prepared for battle there. Simply put, this attempt at annexing Hamas’s war with Israel to al-Qaida’s global jihad was disingenuous nonsense.

This was not to say that the only appropriate course of action was for al-Qaida, or other jihadis, to sit the war in Gaza out. But to the extent that one participated, al-Maqdisi counseled, one ought to have a clear-eyed view of what Hamas is and where one fits within the Hamas-dominated battle. “In the event that you must participate,” he wrote, “then participate as one who has become involved in a battle over which one exercises no control, but in which one sees a benefit for the Muslims and through which one aspires to an awakening of the umma and an igniting of the burning coal of jihad.” In other words, participation in Hamas’s jihad against Israel was allowed, but only participation in a supporting role aimed at “an awakening of the umma.”

This was not the only comment by al-Maqdisi to appear on January 8. A second essay, titled “The Spittle of the Stricken One,” also circulated on Telegram that day, though initially without attribution to al-Maqdisi—indeed with a deliberate attempt to mislead as to his authorship by referring to him in the third person. The writing, however, was unmistakably al-Maqdisi’s, and the attribution was soon clarified when reposted by a follower days later. Here al-Maqdisi presented the current controversy surrounding Hamas as the third “tribulation” (fitna) to afflict the jihadi movement in a series of fitnas beginning with that of the Islamic State (too extreme) and that of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (too lax). He reminded readers of what Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had said about Hamas’s deviations and pointed to his own older statements as well, asserting that Hamas is still Hamas—“a deviant and innovative nationalist group.” “We can take pleasure in their fighting the Jews,” he wrote, “just as we take pleasure in any innovative group’s fighting the Jews, but without endorsing it and deceiving and misleading people concerning its manhaj.” Rehashing many of the criticisms in the previous essay from the same day, al-Maqdisi concluded with the following admonition: “Do not mislead the umma, do not forsake your principles, and do not turn away from your manhaj or corrupt your compass!” These words, one can safely assume, were directed first and foremost at al-Qaida.

Dr. Tariq and al-Qaida’s “end”

Since January, no new writings by al-Maqdisi have appeared online, even as al-Qaida has continued to release statements and essays supportive of Hamas. Al-Maqdisi’s criticisms of al-Qaida, however, continue to circulate and reverberate on jihadi Telegram, and other ideologues of his ilk have made similar al-Qaida-critical comments. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these is the Canadian-based Egyptian jihadi ideologue Tariq ‘Abd al-Halim (b. 1948).

In April, Tariq, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Birmingham, called attentiom to a statement issued by al-Qaida on April 22 offering condolences for Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau in Qatar, on the death of several of his children and grandchildren in an Israeli strike in Gaza. This statement seemed to be a departure from al-Qaida’s previous stance of distinguishing between Hamas’s political and military wings, as here it was saluting Hamas’s political leader as “the honorable shaykh”—twice.

On April 24, Tariq re-published al-Maqdisi’s essay “The Spittle of the Stricken One” on his Telegram channel, preceded by the words “The statement of the Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi,” as if to suggest that this was a response to al-Qaida. Minutes later, Tariq offered some critical commentary of his own, lamenting al-Qaida’s descent into ideological disorder and organizational impotence. “There is no doubt that al-Qaida,” he wrote, “following the martyrdom of its two pioneers,” meaning Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, “has passed into a state of manifest instability, confusion, and waywardness, as is perhaps apparent in its recent statement concerning the family members of Ismail Haniyeh who were assassinated by the hand of Zionist treachery.” Without elaborating, he attributed this “drumbeating” by al-Qaida for Hamas to Sayf al-‘Adl’s father-in-law, Mustafa Hamid, whom he described as carrying on close relations with Iran (where he and al-‘Adl both reside) and as the one in control of the al-Sahab media agency. As for al-Qaida’s health as an organization with real-world influence, Tariq offered a grim prognosis: “Perhaps the organization’s role on the ground has come to an end with the demise of its two pioneers.”

Surely al-‘Adl and his colleagues in the al-Qaida leadership see things differently. For them it is the exclusivist ideology promoted by the likes of Tariq and al-Maqdisi that has run its course, not al-Qaida. In the present global environment, which is witnessing an unprecedented spike in anti-American sentiment driven by Washington’s continued support for Israel, the optimal course is to put exclusivist ideology aside and to unite the umma around al-Qaida’s strategy of attacking the United States as the source of the Islamic world’s ills.

Whether al-Qaida is wisely repositioning itself for future success, or whether its self-transformation reflects profound confusion and impotence, is a question that can only be answered in time. The U.S. intelligence community has been adamant that al-Qaida, at least in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is at its weakest point in decades and is unlikely to see a revival. That assessment would seem to support Tariq’s view that al-Qaida central may well have reached its end point as a force on the ground.

In any event, what is clear beyond doubt is that al-Qaida’s pan-Islamic turn has grown increasingly visible since October 7, alienating some of the organization’s big-name scholarly proponents as never before. The controversy over Hamas and al-Qaida points to a crisis of identity on the non-Islamic State side of the global jihadi movement.

Background: jihadism confronts democracy

The Arab Spring uprisings of 2010-11, which saw autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt overthrown, paving the way for temporary democratic experiments in each, posed the initial test for the jihadi movement’s approach to democracy. In a series of message over 2011-13 directed to the people of Egypt, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri reiterated his opposition to the electoral system, stressing that “democracy is in reality a religion that rests on the sanctification of the will of the majority” and that “we, as Muslims, must reject the political process and elections, except on a foundation of the sovereignty of the Shari‘a.” Nonetheless, he refrained from calling for jihad against Egypt’s elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, stating in April 2013, “I have not called for revolution against Muhammad Morsi. Rather, I have called for the continuation of the blessed revolution that brought us Muhammad Morsi, until the desired change is achieved.” This position represented a tactical toleration of the democratic outcome in Egypt, a departure from the previous al-Qaida position of calling for the overthrow of all the region’s political leaders. A similar approach was taken by the Palestinian-Jordanian jihadi scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who from prison in 2013 wrote that it would be “politically stupid to open up battle fronts at this stage” with the newly elected rulers.

This stance was by no means an embrace of democracy, though some in the jihadi movement effectively did end up promoting democracy as a vehicle for change. The most notable example was the Syrian scholar Abu Basir al-Tartusi, who in November 2011 endorsed the Salafi candidate Hazim Salah Abu Isma‘il for president of Egypt, earning him a sharp rebuke from a member of al-Maqdisi’s Shari‘a council.

Al-Qaida’s position on Morsi may have been merely tactical and temporary, but for the ideological purists of the Islamic State it was the sort of wishy-washiness that they were no longer willing to tolerate. As the Islamic State distanced itself from al-Qaida in 2013-14, seeking to distinguish itself as the standard-bearer of a more puritanical version of Jihadi Salafism, it highlighted the issue of democracy, and of Morsi in particular, as a key area of divergence. In one of his more noteworthy audio statements, the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani cited al-Qaida’s soft position on Morsi and failure to urge jihad against him as evidence of the group’s deviation. Rejection of democracy tout court became a signature feature of the Islamic State’s messaging. As Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stated in his mid-2014 sermon following the announcement of the caliphate, “The Muslims today have a loud, thundering statement, and possess heavy boots. They have a statement to make that will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism, and boots that will trample the idol of nationalism, destroy the idol of democracy, and uncover its deviant nature.”

While the democratic winds have since subsided in the Arab world, the occasional controversy over democracy still flares with respect to Turkey, where President Erdoğan attracts a certain level of sympathy in jihadi circles. This is because Erdoğan, an Islamist, is seen as better than his political opponents in the more nationalist and secularist opposition. Most jihadis still consider him an apostate for his embrace of democracy and secularism, as well as for contributing forces to the anti-Taliban and anti-al-Shabaab missions in Afghanistan and Somalia, respectively. But they nonetheless tend to see him as preferable to the alternative.

The Turkish presidential elections of 2018 because a source of controversy when Abu Qatada Filastini, a Palestinian-Jordanian jihadi scholar based in Jordan, expressed joy in Erdoğan’s successful election. As he wrote on his Telegram page at the time, in June 2018, “There is no doubt to one possessed of knowledge that [Erdoğan’s] victory is a mercy for the people in Turkey and that the alternatives to him are apostate unbelievers who hate the religion.” His own view, Abu Qatada clarified, was that “the man does not represent me, but I am fond of his triumph over his religion-hating enemies among the leftists, secularists, and nationalists.”

A year earlier, the Islamic State had condemned the idea that one may rejoice in victories for Erdoğan. As an editorial in the group’s weekly newsletter, al-Naba’, stated in July 2017, concerning the outcome of a pro-Erdoğan constitutional referendum, “Naïve people today are rejoicing in the victory of the idol-ruler (taghut) Erdoğan over some of his opponents.” This was a mistake, for rather than choosing one taghut over another, Muslims are required to reject and wage jihad against all of them. Another recent al-Naba’ editorial, from July 2020, reiterated the Islamic State’s opposition to Erdoğan and the folly of participating in the “polytheism of democracy.” The claim that voting for a democratic ruler might bring some benefit is invalid, it said, as the greatest benefit of all is God’s oneness (tawhid), which empowering an apostate like Erdoğan vitiates.

Al-Maqdisi’s “pure milk”

The latest Turkish elections have invited even more controversy than previously, in part because Turkey now plays a key role in sustaining the presence of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaida affiliated that rules in northwest Syria. Since late 2017, HTS has cooperated militarily with Turkey, first permitting Turkish troops to establish bases and observation posts in and around Idlib Governorate and then coordinating with them more extensively. The Turkish military presence in the northwest effectively serves to guarantee the HTS statelet’s continued existence. It is unclear whether Erdoğan’s political opponents would maintain this policy, and thus for HTS and its supporters, Erdoğan’s status as Turkey’s ruler is of paramount importance.

For its collaboration with Turkey and for many other perceived transgressions, HTS is viewed as heretical by the Islamic State. But there are also numerous jihadis not aligned with the Islamic State who view HTS unfavorably, accusing it of abandoning the jihadi methodology (manhaj) in making concession after concession to secure its rule. Most of these critical voices are aligned with al-Qaida. One of these is the jihadi scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi.

In January 2022, after Erdoğan announced the upcoming elections in May, al-Maqdisi wasted no time in firing off a warning shot against participation. The next day, on January 23, he published an article on Telegram under the title “Concerning Elections: Leave the Froth and Take the Pure Milk.” The main argument was that God’s oneness (tawhid) requires the believer to disavow and reject all idols (tawaghit, sing. taghut) as God says in Q. 16:36, “Worship you God and eschew taghut.” The elected political leader today is a taghut, or idol-ruler,by virtue of the fact that he rules not by God’s law but by manmade laws and so arrogates to himself God’s divine prerogative regarding legislation. The polytheism (shirk)that he embodies is “the shirk of legislation and rule that assigns partners to God, who legislate for the people that which God did not permit.” While a taghut might exhibit some positive attributes, this does not make it permissible to vote for him. “It is only permissible, O monotheist, to call for dissociation from all forms of shirk and the rejection of all taghuts—for their rejection and not their election.”

Here as elsewhere, al-Maqdisi employed his favorite anti-democracy terms, Islamocrat (islamuqrati) and Islamo-secularist (‘ilmanislami), using these to portray his ideological foes as seeking to corrupt Islam with the polytheistic taint of democracy and secularism. Much of the article is devoted to countering the anticipated arguments of those termed “the shaykhs of Islamocracy and Islamo-secularism,” also described as “the cheerleaders of the taghuts.” The principal argument that he refuted relates to the victory of Byzantium over Persia in the seventh century, which the Qur’an mentions in Surat al-Rum, stating that “on that day the believers shall rejoice.” The argument that some democracy advocates use, al-Maqdisi explained, is that if the Qur’an can celebrate the victory of Christian Byzantium over Zoroastrian Persian, the former being seen as the closer to monotheism, then surely Muslims can cast a vote for the lesser of two evils in an Islamic context. For al-Maqdisi, however, this is wrong, for there is an important distinction to be drawn between rejoicing and supporting. While it is permissible, pursuant to the Qur’anic example, to rejoice in the victory of a more tolerable taghut over a more tyrannical one, it is not permissible to support any taghut’s empowerment by voting for him. “When we warn against participation in elections,” al-Maqdisi wrote, “we are warning against all of them. We are not aligning with a harsh and dictatorial taghut against a gentle and democratic taghut, nor against an Islamocrat like Morsi or Erdoğan.” Choosing between the lesser of two taghuts is not the business of the believer. It is believer’s business to worship God alone and “dissociate from all taghuts—all of them—for shirk and the following of taghuts are not made permissible by any of a taghut’s desirable attributes.”

Al-Mahdi and al-Dhahabi weigh in

Unsurprisingly, it was the supporters of HTS in the jihadosphere who would make the case for voting for Erdoğan. The most outspoken of these was the Syrian scholar and preacher ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Mahdi, a former member of HTS who would later resign his post, complaining about his inability to thwart HTS’s acts of “oppression.” Despite such criticism, he has remained broadly supportive of HTS and its governance project in the northwest, where he continues to reside, working as a teacher and popular writer. His fatwa channel on Telegram, where he responds to all manner of inquiries, has over 23,000 subscribers.

A recent inquiry, from late April 2023, put to al-Mahdi the following question: “What is the religious judgment (hukm) concerning participation in the elections that will take place in Turkey in the coming month? Is the one who participates in these elections charged with sin, or is there no fault in him?” Al-Mahdi’s response, or fatwa, came a week later in the form of a series of Telegram posts published between May 6 and 11. Al-Mahdi began by noting that Muslim scholars have articulated five positions on the issue of participating in elections, ranging from forbidden and excommunicable to permissible and even obligatory.

Before offering his own take on the matter, he stated that it is first necessary to establish some basic facts about Erdoğan’s challenger and what his victory would entail. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, he said, belongs to the Alawite sect and is a staunch secularist in thrall to “Kemalist ideas.” As the head of the Republican People’s Party founded by Ataturk, Kılıçdaroğlu “always stresses that he will preserve the teachings of Ataturk and his opposition to the Islamization of the state.” As president, he would likely launch a campaign against Islam and Muslims to include banning the hijab, persecuting clerics and preachers, and expelling or imprisoning those who fled the savagery of the Arab regimes. Furthermore, a president Kılıçdaroğlu would withdraw Turkey’s forces from Syria, handing power in the “liberated areas” over to the Asad regime.

Turning to the legal status of participating in elections, al-Mahdi quoted the judgments of the two most prominent Salafi scholars in Saudi Arabia of the late twentieth century, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz bin Baz and Muhammad ibn ‘Uthaymin, who both approved of participating in elections in certain circumstances. “Most Muslim scholars,” al-Mahdi declared, have thus judged participation to be permissible, “so long as the objective is establishing the Shari‘a, even if as a distant prospect, or minimizing evils and securing benefits to Muslims in their religious or worldly affairs.” He further cited a recent statement signed by dozens of scholars worldwide supporting Erdoğan in the coming election, largely on the grounds of the “great benefit” that his presidency has brought to Muslims in Turkey, including the millions of refugees.

Al-Mahdi concluded by urging his readers not to “hesitate in electing Erdoğan and the members of AKP,” noting that whatever faults or insufficiencies Erdoğan may have when it comes to implementing the Shari‘a, these pale in comparison to what is on offer in his opponent. Implicitly addressing al-Maqdisi, he wrote, “Whosoever deems elections to be forbidden contradicts the great scholars of the Hijaz, Egypt, al-Sham, and the lands of the Arab west and the Islamic east; and he gives no consideration to the principles acknowledged by the consensus of Muslim scholars: ‘the lesser of two evils,’ or ‘the lesser of two harms,’ or ‘the accrual and enlargement of benefits and the aversion of evils.’”

Also adding his voice to the mix at this time was the more obscure figure of Hani Dahab, an Egyptian former associate of HTS who goes by the name “al-Dhahabi” online. In several posts on Telegram, al-Dhahabi likewise advocated the permissibility of participating in the Turkish elections and of voting for Erdoğan. For al-Dhahabi, the heart of the matter was the comparison between the two potential outcomes, and to his mind a Kılıçdaroğlu victory was a far worse scenario than an Erdoğan one. “If the Ataturkists prevail,” he wrote, “then Turkey will return to the era of forbidding the hijab, not to mention the expulsion of the Syrians and every oppositionist who has found in Turkey a place to live … Whosoever deems Erdoğan’s victory as equivalent to his opponent’s knows nothing about the situation in Turkey nor the files related to it, especially that of Syria and the liberated areas.”

Like al-Mahdi, al-Dhahabi defended participating in elections, though unlike the former he appealed to the authority not of mainstream Salafi scholars but of the more fiery ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Tarifi, a Saudi scholar whose views are closer to Jihadi Salafism. (Al-Tarifi was arrested in 2016, shortly after criticizing the Saudi move to disempower the religious police force, and has been imprisoned ever since.) On the matter of voting in elections, al-Tarifi was supportive in the event that some benefit was to be gained. In a Telegram post, al-Dhahabi embedded a video in which al-Tarifi can be heard saying, in response to a question about participating in elections, “If a person is securing a benefit or averting a harm, then this is a permitted matter in which there is no fault.” His approval was limited, however, only to such cases and not to those where the choice is between two equally corrupt options.

Al-Maqdisi would respond to both of these critics in a series of tweets. First, he emphasized the point that the choice in Turkey was not between a candidate who would implement the Shari‘a and one who would not, but rather between one taghut and another. “As for your democratic elections,” he wrote, “they are marked by unbelief, as the choice therein is limited to rulers all of whom will refrain from applying God’s law.” “Be not deceived by the deceptions of the Islamocrats,” he added later, stating that “democracy” in the present case is “patent unbelief and flagrant polytheism.” Erdoğan, he continued, has promised to draft a new “civil constitution,” and “will not those voting for him bear responsibility for this constitution? … We are not partisans of the democratic game. Rather, we draw near to God by dissociating from it and from all those who rule by manmade laws. We are among the followers of the religion of Abraham (millat Ibrahim), which rejects shirk and its adherents and which unifies God in His worship and His sovereignty.” In another comment, al-Maqdisi described his opponents as “the Islamocrat scholars and the jihadi Murji’ites [i.e., those unduly tolerant in creedal matters],” claiming that they “wish to portray the struggle between the gentle secularist Erdoğan and his harsher secularist opponent as a struggle between Islam and unbelief, and in this they have deceived Muslims … If they had [merely] wished for Erdoğan’s victory without distorting facts and deceiving Muslims, I would not have criticized them. No one who is knowledgeable wishes for the victory of the more wicked.”

Evidently, al-Maqdisi himself saw an Erdoğan victory as preferable, even if he was unwilling to say so explicitly. In a reply, al-Dhahabi sought to make al-Maqdisi’s position clearer, writing that “anyone who indicates to you his lack of interest in the Turkish elections … writing for you at length about the judgment concerning elections and God’s sovereignty, [matters] about which there is no dispute … is in reality, between himself, wishing for his victory.” For al-Dhahabi, al-Maqdisi’s position was self-contradictory. Like his opponents, al-Maqdisi was hoping for an Erdoğan victory, but he simultaneously opposed any act that might help to bring that victory about.

Abu Qatada’s intervention

Al-Maqdisi’s attacks on al-Mahdi and al-Dhahabi soon elicited a response from Abu Qatada al-Filastini, al-Maqdisi’s rival in Jordan’s jihadi milieu, in the form of a Telegraph post on May 18. In recent years, Abu Qatada has split with al-Maqdisi on a range of issues, advocating a more pan-Islamist vision of jihadism that includes support for HTS. He would continue in that spirit here, implicitly criticizing al-Maqdisi (never mentioned by name) for too severely condemning his opponents and for questioning their adherence to monotheism (tawhid). Abu Qatada’s main point was that al-Maqdisi was wrong to make the dispute over elections a creedal matter as opposed to a legal one admitting of more than one acceptable view. As he wrote, “The dispute between two Muslims over the issue of legislative and presidential elections is not a dispute over the oneness of God’s lordship (tawhid al-uluhiyya),over the fact that God is the All-Ruling who possesses the right of deeming what is permissible and what is forbidden, the right of legislation.” Anyone who rejects this, in part or in full, stated Abu Qatada, is not a Muslim. However, a Muslim jurist seeking to derive a judgment on the matter of elections should be able to do so without having his tawhid thrown into question. “This is his ijtihad, and he might judge rightly and he might err,” meaning that if he errs he will still be rewarded for his sincere effort. To make the matter about tawhid, which is a creedal issue,is to put forth “a false conception of the dispute” that will inevitably lead to pronouncements of takfir.

The next day al-Maqdisi responded on Twitter, defending himself and accusing Abu Qatada (though not by name) of “seeking to sugarcoat the wicked fatwas that permit” participation in elections. The election of a person such as Erdoğan, who “embraces secularism” and has pledged to rule in accordance with “a liberal constitution,” is undoubtedly “a matter connected to tawhid al-uluhiyya.” A person can believe that God has the sole right of legislation, but that does not absolve him of stripping God of that right by issuing a fatwa permitting a vote for him. This is a “violation of tawhid.” “Whosoever issues a fatwa on behalf of electing an unbelieving, secularist ruler who refrains from ruling by the Shari‘a, who shows loyalty to unbelieving apostates, and who gives support to them against the Muslims in Somalia and elsewhere, on the grounds that in doing so he is averting the greater evil by tolerating the lesser evil, is not in reality calling for the toleration of the lesser evil; rather, he is calling for its election … And thus the fatwa is connected to tawhid even if they deny it.”

Following the exchange, one of al-Maqdisi’s allies, the Canada-based Egyptian scholar Tariq ‘Abd al-Halim, chimed in on Telegram, ridiculing Abu Qatada for making an argument so patently at odds with the basic principle of Jihadi Salafi thought. “The matter of electing someone who will rule by other than what God has revealed,” he wrote, “is not a jurisprudential matter over which jurists debate and in which creed has no place! It is a creedal matter that the right of legislation belongs to God alone, and whosoever grants it to other than God, in part or in full, has disbelieved as a matter of consensus.” ‘Abd al-Halim followed up in another post by quoting from an old essay of Abu Qatada’s condemning democracy as polytheism, asking how the methodology (madhhab) on display there can be reconciled with what he is displaying today.

This sentiment al-Maqdisi seemed to approve of, though he would also seek to defend Abu Qatada against accusations that took the criticism too far. On June 1, a certain jihadi tweeted a montage showing Abu Qatada together with a group of “Islamocrat” scholars, to which al-Maqdisi responded by saying: “It is unjust to place Shaykh Abu Qatada together with the Islamocrats. Fear you God. However much we might disagree with people it is still obligatory to be just with them. Were you to say that Abu Qatada defends some of the Islamocrat shaykhs and excuses them,” that would be acceptable, but depicting him together with such people is “wrong and we condemn it.”

Rejoicing in Erdoğan’s victory

For all the contretemps between al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada, their reactions to Erdoğan’s victory on May 28 would be quite similar. This was to express delight in Erdoğan’s triumph in light of the perceived benefits that it would bring for the Muslims of Turkey and beyond. Abu Qatada’s Twitter account reposted his reaction to Erdoğan’s win from five years earlier, in which he had written, “There is no doubt to one possessed of knowledge that [Erdoğan’s] victory is a mercy for the people in Turkey and that the alternatives to him are apostate unbelievers who hate the religion.” This included, however, the qualifying statement that “the man does not represent me.” In a similar vein, al-Maqdisi responded to the outcome by stating, “Praise be to God who averted from our brothers in Turkey the worse and more severe in enmity to Islam and Muslims.” Yet he also made sure to reiterate his negative view of Erdoğan and democracy, adding, “And we ask God to provide [the Turks] with someone who will rule by God’s law and annul secularism and positive laws. And we congratulate our brothers, the proponents of tawhid who did not participate in the 2023 Turkish elections, on their resolve in adhering to truth and not succumbing to the fatwas of the Islamocrat shaykhs.”

The response to Erdoğan’s victory from those labeled the “Islamocrats” was naturally more enthusiastic. Al-Mahdi wrote on Telegram, “We congratulate the Turkish people on the victory of President Recep Tayyib Erdoğan … And we ask God to grant success to President Erdoğan in what will bring benefit to the land and to the Muslims.” Abu Mariya al-Qahtani, one of the top leaders in HTS, likewise congratulated the Turkish people in a Tweet, imploring God to “grant President Erdoğan success and to distance him from the Alawite criminal [i.e., Bashar al-Asad] who has killed the Sunni Muslims of al-Sham.” His colleague in HTS, the cleric Mazhar al-Ways, also conveyed his congratulations to the Turkish people, as did HTS itself in a statement released by its Department of Political Affairs. Notably, these statements were not qualified by the reservations expressed by al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada.

A range of views

What this dispute over the Turkish elections shows is that the jihadi movement today admits of a range of views on the issue of democracy in Turkey. The most extreme position is that held by the Islamic State, which considers Turkey’s democracy to be shirk, rejects the validity of any opinion permitting participation, and opposes the idea that Muslims may rejoice in Erdoğan’s victory. The next most extreme is that held by al-Maqdisi, who considers Turkey’s democracy to be shirk and rejects the validity of any opinion permitting participation but accepts that Muslims may rejoice in Erdoğan’s victory. Next down the line is the position held by Abu Qatada, who considers Turkey’s democracy to be shirk but accepts the validity an opinion permitting participation and accepts that Muslims can rejoice in Erdoğan’s victory. After this is the position of the so-called “Islamocrats,” such al-Mahdi and the followers of HTS, who consider Turkey’s democracy to be shirk (at least in theory) but who themselves permit participation and even in some cases call for it. These are four distinct, if overlapping, opinions, and one could surely identify further distinctions and nuances by looking more closely.

The ideological confusion in the jihadis’ approach to this issue is further evidence of the movement’s fractured state at the present time. While the main division in the movement runs through the Islamic State and al-Qaida, there is a broader spectrum of opinion than the two-camp picture suggests. Religious authority in the movement is increasingly diffuse. While many subscribe to the Islamic State’s every word, those in the al-Qaida camp tend to revere al-Maqdisi’s views or Abu Qatada’s or those of another scholar or leader. As time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to locate the ideological center of gravity that gives this movement coherence and a sense of common purpose and identity.

It is important to note that jihadi activity in Tunisia has been on a decline in recent years due to counterterrorism and military efforts locally against al-Qaeda (AQ) and the Islamic State (IS), as well as the waning fortunes of foreign fighting endeavors in Iraq, Libya, and Syria as IS lost territory. Nevertheless, it is worth considering the issue given the large-scale mobilization seen in Tunisia over the past decade, and since any form of instability is seen as an opportunity by the jihadi movement. Plus, what initially might appear as rhetoric, as was the case with jihadis speaking on the 2011 Tunisia uprising and having no part in it, could lead to a re-energized mobilization, in the same way that Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) was able to take advantage of new conditions following the overthrow of former president Bin ‘Ali.

How Jihadis Have Framed the Crisis

Much of the messaging from jihadi thinkers surrounding the latest political events in Tunisia boils down to gloating over the embarrassment that al-Nahdah has suffered as a consequence of the freezing of parliament. In their telling, this is another example of democracy failing Islamist parties and further evidence that fighting jihad and instituting sharia are the only way to push back against local deep states and perceived anti-Islamic authoritarian forces. The Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-affiliated cleric Shaykh ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Mahdi also views what happened through the prism of a conspiracy from outside forces, in this seeing similarities with what happened in Egypt with ‘Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi and the Muslim Brotherhood: “[Sa‘id] is leading a coup with the support of France, Sisi, and [the Crown Prince of the UAE] Ibn Zayed… if the lunatic is able to he will do as Sisi of Egypt.”

Meanwhile, the Syrian-based Tansiqiyyat al-Jihad’s Abu al-‘Abd Ashida, seeking to undermine democracy as a legitimate form of governance, rhetorically and cynically states and then asks the following: “Bloody red democracy. Coup in Tunisia. Coup in Egypt. Coup of [Libyan strongman Khalifah] Haftar. So this is considered democracy?” Abu Mahmud al-Filastini, a London-based ideologue and acolyte of Abu Qatada al-Filastini, argues that “no change will come without an effective force that loosens the joints of the deep state and undermines its pillars. The path of democracy cannot lead to the rule of sharia and the building of an Islamic state.” His mentor, Abu Qatada, gets to the point and bluntly states: “Jihad is a necessity. Almost all Muslims commenting today, from all walks of life, in their comments on what happened in Tunisia agree that jihad has become a necessity… They have no other choice.”

Alluding to what has become of al-Nahdah, the leader of Jaysh al-Ummah in Gaza, Abu Hafs al-Maqdisi, quotes a saying of the second caliph ʿUmar Ibn al-Khattab: “We are a people whom God has honored with Islam, so whenever we seek honor through anything else, God will humiliate us.” Adding onto the critiques of al-Nahdah is the London-based ideologue Abu Basir al-Tartusi, who addresses the party saying, “You will not find anyone crying for you … this is the reward of those who raise the slogan ‘separating da‘wa from politics’ and the slogan ‘freedom before Islam, and before applying the teachings and laws of Islam.’ You have neither achieved freedom nor supported the religion!” Al-Tartusi goes on to call al-Nahdah out for having tried to build relations with France while the latter is, in his view, domestically attacking Islam. Therefore, “[al-Nahdah] paid the price of this stance of vacillation and dilution … and this is the fate of every movement or group that follows this false and vacillating approach of theirs!”

As for the Tunisian ideologue in HTS who goes by the name al-Idrisi, his approach is more localized since he is originally from Tunisia: “The Tunisian revolution is paying the price of not purging the country of the remnants of the former regime, from the security [services], the army, influential businessmen, and the media. The parties are paying the price of living in an illusion and wishful thinking.” Of course, since al-Idrisi is with HTS and based in Syria now, he heavily criticizes on a regional level al-Nahdah’s and the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in failing the revolution: “Peoples’ relying on the Brotherhood in leading the Arab Spring revolutions is like relying on a mirage.” This leads to a key point in buttressing his own position on leaving Tunisia, which is that the best model today is that of HTS in Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan. “The success of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the Taliban,” he says, “calls for the umma’s reconsideration of the moderate jihadist movements that have proven their political and military sophistication in managing conflict, establishing existence, and seizing freedom from the clutches of evildoers.”

Beyond specific ideologues, the pro-AQ news agency Thabat and the official IS newsletter al-Naba’ also commented on the events in Tunisia. The Thabat article was penned by an Abu al-Bara’ al-Libi, who portrays the recent experience of al-Nahdah as part of a long history of Muslim Brotherhood organizations being used and betrayed by local regimes they had engaged with. He points in particular to what happened to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt under Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and more recently in the coup of ‘Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi. Sudan and Turkey are mentioned as cases too. Whereas Brotherhood organizations, including al-Nahdah, do not not heed the lessons of the past, he claims, the jihadis are never fooled since they have “a firm and unchanging stance regarding every tyrant (taghut) who substitutes God’s law and accepts democracy.”

Tracking with the rest of the aforementioned critiques, IS’s editorial in al-Naba’ directly attacks al-Nahdah’s embrace of democracy:

And among those who have most opposed God and His Messenger in this time are the seekers, advocates, and followers of democracy, who have believed in it and taken it as a path and course, and thus have contravened the Sunna and the precepts. God has imposed on them humiliation, destitution, and becoming lost, and that has become appended to them in all of their circumstances like a collar around their necks. This is the very thing that has happened today to the apostate Ikhwan in Tunisia after they contravened the path of the believers, followed democracy, sought help in it, glorified it, and made it a judge among them and a guide for them to the path of Hellfire. The result resembled what happened to them before, when the one they were content with as a taghut for themselves turned on them.

The IS editorial also uses the downfall of al-Nahdah as an opportunity to win points with AQ and its supporters, since in the past Abu Qatada al-Filistini, whom IS sees as a pro-AQ ideologue, had commended Qays Sa‘id when he won the 2019 Tunisian presidential election. Recalling the former praise of “some of the theoreticians of al-Qaeda” for Sa‘id, the editorial notes: “Indeed the stance of the dimwits of al-Qaeda regarding the Tunisian taghut is no less than the stance of the apostate Ikhwan in its naivete.” It is possible that Abu Qatada and others favored Sa‘id because of the latter’s traditional views on the death penalty, criminalization of homosexuality, and opposing equal inheritance between men and women.

Will These Words Amount to Anything?

It is hard to believe that Sa‘id would follow the mistakes that were made in the aftermath of the revolution as it relates to the jihadi movement. There have been too many hard-fought lessons learned by the state. It will not repeat the mistake of doing a prisoner amnesty like the transitional government did in February 2011 or having a light touch policy vis-à-vis AST as al-Nahdah did following its coming to power in the October 2011 Constituent Assembly election. That said, it would not be surprising if either AQ or IS attempted to prod the capabilities of the Tunisian state if these groups foresee some opening for themselves in the medium term. If Sa‘id goes full authoritarian, however, it is likely that dynamics will play out as they did under former Tunisian dictator Bin ‘Ali: suppression of local mobilization, with much of Tunisian jihadi activity occurring outside its borders in Europe or the latest foreign fighter destination—potentially Afghanistan again in light of the Taliban’s methodical takeover of Afghan territory.

The recent hostilities between Hamas and Israel have brought the controversy over Hamas back to the fore, shedding new light on the jihadi movement’s ideological fault lines. The first division is that between al-Qaida and the Islamic State, and as one would expect it is the Islamic State that takes the harder line against Hamas. There is another fault line, however, that runs between two ideological camps on the pro-al-Qaida side of the jihadi movement. It is here, as will be seen, where the most intense debate has taken place. One of the camps has not shied away from criticizing al-Qaida itself.

Al-Qaida vs. the Islamic State

Shortly after the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on May 10, when Hamas fired more than 150 rockets into Israel and Israel responded with airstrikes, most jihadi groups, including the various branches of al-Qaida, issued statements of solidarity with the Palestinians. The statements also decried the perceived Israeli aggression on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, where clashes had been taking place between worshippers and Israeli security forces since May 7. Al-Qaida central, through its al-Sahab media outlet, issued three such statements between mid-May and early June.

The first statement appeared on May 11 in the form of an issue of al-Qaida’s occasional newsletter, al-Nafir. Titled “Al-Aqsa in the Care of the Descendants of al-Bara’ ibn Malik,” it appears to have been written before the air war began as its focus is the Palestinian demonstrations around the al-Aqsa mosque. Al-Qaida here likens the fearlessness of the demonstrators to that of the Prophet’s companion al-Bara’ ibn Malik, who was launched into a walled area of thousands of apostates in the so-called “wars of apostasy” in early Islam. The issue also quoted at length from a March 2002 speech by Osama bin Ladin in which he inveighs against normalization with the Jewish state and encourages Muslims to kill Americans and Jews by any means possible.

Several days later, on May 17, came a more controversial statement from al-Qaida’s “general leadership,” titled “Statement of Love, Honor, and Support for Our People in Palestine.” The purpose of the statement was to salute the “mujahidin” in Gaza and their launching of “jihadi missiles toward the Zionists.” The statement never mentions Hamas, but it does mourn the death of one of its military commanders. Toward the end, the al-Qaida leadership offers its condolences (or congratulations) to the Palestinians on “your pious martyrs, foremost among them the heroic leader Basim ‘Isa Abu ‘Imad.” Basim ‘Isa, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on May 12, was a top military commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing. As noted by the analyst Wassim Nasr on Twitter, the praise for Basim ‘Isa here was in keeping with a preexisting al-Qaida policy to distinguish between the political and military wings of Hamas. That policy was elucidated over a decade ago by the al-Qaida commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (d. 2010) after he made the mistake of saying in an interview that “we and Hamas share the same thinking and the same methodology.” Following criticism of his remark, Abu al-Yazid issued a clarification acknowledging that he had misspoken and explaining that the approach of the al-Qaida leadership is to distinguish between Hamas as a political organization, which had committed terrible methodological errors such as embracing democracy, and the righteous mujahideen fighting under Hamas’s banner (i.e., the al-Qassam Brigades, or at least some of them).

The third al-Qaida statement appeared on June 2, two weeks after a ceasefire was reached between the warring parties on May 21. Once again taking the form of an issue of al-Qaida’s al-Nafir newsletter, the statement hailed Hamas’s “sword of Jerusalem” campaign as a great victory that should be seized on “to revive the duty of jihad” in the youth of the Muslim umma. The model of initiating battles to defend mosques under siege from unbelievers and apostates was one to be followed across the Islamic world. The statement went on to praise “the mujahidin in Gaza” and in particular “their heroic leader Muhammad al-Dayf,” the supreme military commander of the al-Qassam Brigades. The singling out of al-Dayf further exemplified the al-Qaida leadership’s fondness for Hamas’s military wing to the exclusion of its political wing.

Taken together, the three statements show al-Qaida posturing as the ally of the al-Qassam Brigades and trying to portray the hostilities with the Jewish state as part of al-Qaida’s larger war with the Americans, the Zionists, and the “client” Arab regimes. Nowhere in these statements is there any hint of criticism of Hamas as a political organization, unless that is to be read in the omission of Hamas’s name. In the past al-Qaida has issued harsh condemnations of the Hamas political leadership, but here no such thing is to be found.

The Islamic State could not have responded more differently to the war between Hamas and Israel. After more than a week of silence on the matter, the official line came in the editorial of the May 20 issue of the Islamic State’s weekly newsletter, al-Naba’. Titled “The Road to Jerusalem,” the editorial condemned Hamas (never mentioned by name) as a proxy of Shiite Iran and as part of its axis of “resistance.” Hamas’s warfare was not to be considered jihad as it served the interests of the Iranians and their plot for regional domination. “The difference between jihad and resistance is as the difference between truth and falsehood,” the editorial read. “Whoso allies with those who curse the Prophet’s wives [i.e., the Shia] will never liberate Jerusalem … and whoso differentiates between the Rejectionists [i.e., the Shia] and the Jews will never liberate Jerusalem … Indeed, we consider the mujahid who lies in wait for the Rejectionists in Iraq to be closer to Jerusalem than those who show loyalty to the Rejectionists and burnish their image.” The editorial went on to claim that all of the Islamic State’s battles “east and west are in fact steps in the direction of Jerusalem, Mecca, al-Andalus, Baghdad, Damascus, and all other captured Muslim lands.” In other words, it is the Islamic State, and not Hamas, that holds the promise of liberating Jerusalem.

Perhaps the most notable line in the editorial was a remark toward the end rejecting the idea of Palestinian exceptionalism. “The soldiers of the caliphate,” it stated, “have not exaggerated the issue of Palestine and have not made it an exception among the issues of the Muslims … They have not differentiated between the blood of their Muslim brethren in Palestine and the blood of their brethren in other lands.” This is a remarkable statement, and one that illustrates a stark difference between the Islamic State and al-Qaida regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike al-Qaida, the Islamic State is not interested in posing as the ally of whatever Sunni Muslim group is waging war against the Jewish state. For the Islamic State, any group that deviates from its methodology (manhaj) is simply not worthy of honor and support.

On June 21, the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurashi, delivered an audio address that echoed much of the sentiment of the editorial. Al-Qurashi ridiculed the idea that Hamas could ever bring victory to Palestine and urged the Palestinians not to be deceived by the rockets launched by Hamas “in service of their Iranian masters.” Hamas was hypocritical for condemning the Gulf states’ normalization with Israel when it had normalized relations with “Zoroastrian, Safavid Iran.” As in the editorial, the idea here is that it is folly to differentiate between the Jews and the Shia.

Al-Maqdisi vs. Abu Qatada

Among jihadis opposed to the Islamic State and generally aligned with al-Qaida, a divide has emerged in recent years between two competing ideological camps—namely, those who side with the more hardline ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and those who ally with the relatively more moderate Abu Qatada al-Filastini. Both men, who are Palestinian-Jordanians, have active social media presences and devoted followings. Much of their disagreement has revolved around the issue of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria, which al-Maqdisi has condemned and Abu Qatada praised. The matter of Hamas has proven equally controversial.

The war of words over Hamas, which played out on the messaging app Telegram, began on May 13 when al-Maqdisi responded to a comment by the jihadi scholar Na’il ibn Ghazi Musran, who is aligned with Abu Qatada. Musran had written that Gaza was “the standard of distinction between faith and unbelief, and the line separating monotheism (tawhid) in its entirety from apostasy in its entirety.” The author was referring to the different reactions in the Arab world to the Gaza conflict, his point being that those unsupportive of the Palestinian belligerents were in “the camp of apostasy” and those supportive were in “the camp of truth.” In his response, al-Maqdisi ridiculed the idea that “Gaza is the standard,” as the ongoing battle was not one between tawhid and unbelief. He cited what he saw as the outright apostasy of some Palestinian youth and their adherence to pagan nationalism. Addressing the people of Palestine, he wrote: “Do not expect victory from God so long as you are silent about the reviling and cursing of God around you.”

Later that day, Abu Qatada authored a brief response in which he objected to such casual dismissal of unspecified Palestinian youth as apostates. “It is incumbent upon us,” he wrote, “to treat the Muslim youth, even if they are people of sin, as belonging to us. We should understand them as belonging to us and being of us, for the call to expel them from the umma means making them the soldiers of Satan, and making them against us and against Islam. This is a profound error.” Abu Qatada did not believe that Hamas’s efforts would achieve “complete victory and the elimination of the Jewish state,” but nonetheless “these winds of faith in Palestine,” he said, referring to Hamas’s military operations, keep “the spirit of jihad” alive and renew faith in “the necessity of waging jihad against the unbelievers and the apostates.” And likewise, “they teach us to keep in check our quarrels with the Muslim sinner, the Muslim innovator, and the Muslim who errs.”

If Abu Qatada’s view was that the Gaza conflict ought to teach jihadis to be more tolerant and openminded, al-Maqdisi’s view was the opposite. In a post published on May 14, al-Maqdisi accused a certain unnamed shaykh (ba‘d al-shuyukh) of “exploiting these events to spread error and confusion.” “What is necessary,” he retorted, “is that these occasions and battles and wars be exploited to teach people their tawhid and their true religion, not to dilute it, change it, and distort it with false conceptions.” The problem with “making Gaza and Palestine the measure of unbelief and faith,” he reiterated, was that it overlooked the transgressions of the those purporting to wage jihad. “It is impossible for victory to come,” he declared, “from the exaltation of the Rejectionists of Iran and its affiliated parties that attack the honor of the Prophet’s wives, pronounce takfir on the Companions, and kill the Sunnis in Iraq and al-Sham.” In a subsequent post published the next day, al-Maqdisi clarified that while he supports the military efforts of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad against the Jews, he nonetheless does not consider them “jihad in the path of God”; for the path of these groups is not “tawhid and dissociation from all forms of polytheism and idolatry,” but rather “exalting and burnishing of the image of Rejectionist Iran.”

Al-Maqdisi vs. al-Qaida (and Abu Qatada)

The war of words between al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada went on hiatus for about two weeks. It resumed on June 1 when al-Maqdisi authored a post condemning al-Qaida’s statement mourning the death of the Hamas military commander Basim ‘Isa. In the post, titled “Questions Posed to the Brothers at al-Sahab,” al-Maqdisi presented his criticism in the form of questionings attributed to others. “Many mujahid brothers, shaykhs, and preachers were displeased,” he wrote, “by the al-Sahab statement’s exaltation of the al-Qassam leader who was killed in the recent war in Gaza, and they wondered astonishedly: ‘Are our brothers not aware of the deviation of Hamas and its leadership from the path of tawhid in favor of the path of democracy, and their alignment with Hizb al-Lat [i.e., Hizbullah] and Bashar [al-Asad] and Iran?’” Al-Maqdisi continued in this way, referring to the “surprises, shocks, and perturbations” that have succeeded one after the other since the mourning of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by some of the al-Qaida leadership. “Has the methodology (manhaj) changed?” he asked. “Or have the ranks of al-Qaida been penetrated by those who pay no heed to the purity of the manhaj? … It is presumed that al-Qaida continues to condemn the advocates of democratic Islamism and to dissociate from their manhaj, so how can it mourn their dead when they died on behalf of democracy? And how can it exalt their military leaders who in turn exalt Iran and Bashar and choose the path of democracy?” Al-Maqdisi was putting it out there that a lot of supporters of al-Qaida, himself included, were aghast at such praise for Hamas, even if the praise was restricted to Hamas’s military wing.

The following day, Abu Qatada responded to al-Maqdisi with a brief post implicitly rebuking him for suggesting that Hamas’s war dead were not martyrs (al-Maqdisi had pondered how al-Qaida could “mourn their dead when they died on behalf of democracy?”). Hamas was far from perfect, Abu Qatada explained, yet it nonetheless deserved praise for having “returned the Islamic identity” to the Palestinian cause that had been dominated by leftist and secularist parties. For this reason, he said, and because the secularist alternative is far worse, the critics of Hamas have generally been restrained in their criticism. The right way to deal with them, he declared, was to seek their improvement (ta‘dil) and not their destruction (tadmir). “Their dead are martyrs and their legal status is Islam,” he concluded. “Patience concerning their errors, together with the proffering of advice, is the right-guided sunni way.”

Al-Maqdisi’s response, which appeared the next day, was to insist that “whoso is killed in the path of democracy, and in support of a group that refrains from implementing the Sharia and chooses democracy, is not a martyr; rather he is a corpse (fatis), bother some though it will.” In the same post, al-Maqdisi launched into a comparison of Hamas and the Islamic State, both of which, as he explains, have killed their opponents and exposed their civilian populations to bombardment. Though al-Maqdisi has long been a critic of the Islamic State, here he suggests that the caliphate is superior to Hamas in that it has implemented the Sharia as opposed to democracy and does not show loyalty to idolatrous tyrants (tawaghit). Why then, he asks, addressing Abu Qatada (though not by name), is it your view that we must approach the Islamic State as something to be destroyed (tadmir) but Hamas as something to be improved (ta‘dil)? Al-Maqdisi’s point here was not that the Islamic State is improvable while Hamas is not. His point, rather, was that if the Islamic State is irredeemable then Hamas is doubly so, since Hamas is worse than the Islamic State in certain ways.

This time Abu Qatada did not respond. Al-Maqdisi would follow up to reaffirm that “whoso dies in the path of democracy is a corpse, not a martyr,” and later he would author a long post quoting some of Abu Qatada’s older works that were highly critical of Hamas and its ilk. The most recent post by Abu Qatada regarding Hamas was actually a statement condemning the group for allying with Iran and its Shiite proxies, and particularly the Houthis whom a Hamas representative had recently honored with a medal. Yet even here it was clear that Abu Qatada considered Hamas a Muslim group; the criticism was harsh but still intended as constructive.

Whither al-Maqdisi and al-Qaida?

As noted above, the jihadi reactions to last month’s Israel-Hamas war point to two fault lines in the Sunni jihadi movement: one between the Islamic State and al-Qaida, and one in the pro-al-Qaida side of the movement between the followers of al-Maqdisi and the followers of Abu Qatada. Al-Qaida, as I have written before, almost certainly would like to hold on to both ideological camps, but increasingly it is alienating al-Maqdisi and his followers. The change in approach appears to be by design. With the Islamic State representing the more extreme and intolerant version of Jihadi Salafism, al-Qaida is intent on presenting itself as the movement’s more moderate face. To that end, it has taken a softer line on mainstream Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and played down the emphasis on ideological exclusivism promoted by al-Maqdisi and his camp.

Al-Qaida has long wavered between a more pan-Islamist and a more Salafi (i.e., doctrinally exclusivist) tendency, and today the pan-Islamist tendency has the edge. Al-Maqdisi has taken note of this development, hence his questioning whether al-Qaida has “changed its methodology.” For the supporters of the Islamic State, the answer to this question is obvious and al-Maqdisi knows it. As one Islamic State supporter recently wrote, addressing al-Maqdisi, “Yes, it has changed, and you have ceased to have any value to them and they no longer pay any heed to what you say. Soon they may issue a statement in which, implicitly or explicitly, they dissociate from you and your extremism.” The writer was probably overstating the divergence between al-Maqdisi and al-Qaida; neither is eager for a divorce. But if al-Maqdisi continues to express outrage at what he see as the accumulating deviations of al-Qaida, then a breakup of sorts may well be inevitable.

In the world of Sunni jihadism, the U.S.-Taliban deal and the associated peace talks have elicited a range of reactions, from celebration to condemnation. This divergence of views reflects the fractured state of the jihadi movement—or its “tri-polar” character—split as it is between the three poles of the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria. The cautiously optimistic views of certain jihadi scholars add another layer of complexity to the picture.

The Islamic State

The Islamic State, it will be recalled, considers the Taliban to be a movement that has abandoned Islam and taken up the cause of Afghan nationalism. Its media routinely portray the Taliban as a nationalist and polytheist group, one that is theologically flawed, tolerant of the Shia, and in bed with Pakistani intelligence. The Islamic State’s “Khorasan Province” has also fought with the Taliban on numerous occasions. It thus comes as no surprise that the Islamic State has represented the recent deal and negotiations as further evidence of the Taliban’s apostasy.

An early response came in the form of an editorial in the Islamic State’s al-Naba’ newsletter in mid-March in which the Taliban were condemned for taking the “Crusaders” (i.e., the Americans) as their “new allies.” Unlike the Taliban, the Islamic State, the editorial boasted, would not cease to attack the Americans in Afghanistan, citing a recent Islamic State attack on the Bagram Air Base. This was a message to the Crusaders, the editorial continued, that the Islamic State’s war on them would continue despite the peace agreement with the “apostate” Taliban, who would also continue to be targeted.

In a speech two months later, in May 2020, the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurashi, commented further on the U.S.-Taliban agreement, alleging a conspiracy between the two sides to destroy the Islamic State in Afghanistan. “The agreement regarding the withdrawal of the American military from Afghanistan,” he said, “is a cover for the standing alliance between the apostate Taliban militia and the Crusaders for fighting the Islamic State, and a basis for establishing a national government that brings together the apostates of the Taliban with the polytheist Rejectionists [i.e., Shia] and other apostate and unbelieving sects.” In al-Qurashi’s view, the deal was to be understood in light of the purported preexisting alliance between the United States and the Taliban to root out the “caliphate” in Afghanistan. What the Taliban sought was a “national government” in which it could share. The Islamic State, however, would stand in the way of all this, intent on fighting “the Crusaders and the apostates” until true Islamic rule is established throughout the land.

Al-Qaida

Al-Qaida has portrayed the agreement in an entirely different light. On March 12, the “general leadership” of the group released a statement hailing the U.S.-Taliban deal as a “great historical victory” for the Taliban, focusing on the agreed-to withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The Taliban, the statement argued, by remaining steadfast and true to their faith, have defeated and brought low an enemy of far greater size and strength. Theirs is thus a lesson to be heeded by all jihadis fighting oppression and occupation.

Noticeably absent from this statement, however, was any mention of the Taliban’s pledge regarding al-Qaida or the coming negotiations with the Afghan government. Al-Qaida proceeded as if none of that mattered. As it had in the past, it described the Taliban in terms of the future caliphate, as “the nucleus of the Islamic state that will rule by God’s pure law.”

Since 2014, al-Qaida has repeatedly portrayed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan—the Taliban’s official name—as the seat of the anticipated caliphate and the Taliban leader as the caliph-in-waiting. In July 2014, for instance, it released a newsletter renewing the bay‘a (i.e., pledge of allegiance) to Mullah Omar, affirming “that al-Qaeda and its branches in all locales are soldiers in his army acting under his victorious banner.” A few months later, when al-Qaida in the Islamic Subcontinent was announced, its leader emphasized that he had given bay‘a to both al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar. The next year, when it was discovered that Mullah Omar had actually been dead since 2013, al-Zawahiri released an audio message giving bay‘a to his successor, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur. The exercise was repeated for the next Taliban leader, Haybat Allah Akhundzadah, after Mullah Akhtar was killed in an airstrike in mid-2016. In both of these statements, al-Zawahiri indicated that everyone who gives bay‘a to the leader of al-Qaida has in effect given bay‘a to the leader of the Taliban, and that the latter bay‘a is to be understood as al-bay‘a al-‘uzma, or “the supreme bay‘a,” meaning the kind of bay‘a that one gives to a caliph. In 2017, when the subsidiary group of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam al-Muslimin, was proclaimed, its leader articulated three bay‘as—one to the leader of AQIM, one to al-Zawahiri, and one to Akhundzadah. In his speeches, al-Zawahiri has continued to emphasize the theme of al-Qaida’s bay‘a to Akhundzadah. The issue even played a role in the debate between al-Qaida and HTS, the former al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, over the latter’s decision to leave al-Qaida. In a speech in November 2017, al-Zawahiri condemned HTS’s move, saying: “O brothers. By God’s grace and favor you belong to a greater union than the union you have. You are in the Qa‘idat al-Jihad group that is pledged in bay‘a to the Islamic Emirate in an expansive jihadi confederation.” The argument did not persuade, however. In a response, HTS’s representative rejected the idea that the Syrian group had ever owed loyalty to the Taliban.

As all of this shows, the relationship with the Taliban is of central importance to al-Qaida. In its self-presentation, al-Qaida is little more than a global military unit in service to Akhundzadah, whom it sees as its quasi-caliph. It would thus be a pretty big blow to al-Qaida, in material and propaganda terms, if the Taliban were to cut all ties with the group. That is not what the text of the U.S.-Taliban agreement requires, though it comes fairly close. The agreement states that the Taliban “will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies, and will prevent them from recruiting, training, and fundraising and will not host them in accordance with the commitments in this agreement.” Threatening the United States and its allies is the raison d’être of al-Qaida, and the Taliban is supposed to be its supreme “host.” If the Taliban were to honor this pledge—and it has repeatedly said that it will—it would be embarrassing for al-Qaida.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

On September 13, the head of HTS’s Sharia committee, Abu ‘Abdallah al-Shami (aka ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun), issued a statement congratulating the Taliban on the start of negotiations with the Afghan government. “This great victory that the Muslims in Afghanistan have achieved,” the statement read, “brings us joy as it brings joy to every free and passionate Muslim.” The key to the Taliban’s success, according to al-Shami, in addition to its extraordinary perseverance in resisting the American occupiers, was its ability to translate military success into political gains, and to do so by maintaining a united front. The implication of al-Shami’s words was that the Taliban’s approach was a model for HTS. Recently, the more hardline jihadi factions in Syria have criticized HTS for seeking a monopoly on violence in the territory it controls. Such an approach, al-Shami seems to be saying, is vindicated by the experience of the Taliban.

Other voices within HTS made similar comments, some of them more explicit in presenting the Taliban as a model for HTS to follow. On September 14, another HTS Sharia official, Muzhir al-Ways, commented that “the Taliban’s example” was “inspiring for all,” the Taliban being “a model in jihad and a model in political activity, a model in methodology and approach and respect for religious knowledge and jurisprudence.” While “every theater has its particularities,” he added, and no one example ought to be emulated in its entirety, the case of the Taliban offered lessons worthy of consideration.

Supporters of al-Qaida were quick to respond that HTS and the Taliban were in fact nothing alike. “The matter of likening the Taliban to [HTS] is entirely invalid,” wrote Jallad al-Murji’a on Telegram. In another post he supported his claim by citing the example of HTS’s cooperation with “the secular Turkish army … which was a participant in the war on the Muslims in Afghanistan under the banner of America and the Crusader NATO alliance.” Another al-Qaida supporter would point out that HTS, in its cooperation with Turkey and Russia, has fallen victim to “the game of international politics.” This was quite contrary to the successful experience of the Taliban. “Do not be deceived,” he wrote, “by what you have done, and don’t take pride in your victories, from which we have seen only destruction and devastation.” “How great is the difference,” wrote another, “between humbling oneself before the unbelievers and humbling the unbelievers.”

In response to these sorts of comments, HTS supporter al-Ifriqi al-Muhajir took issue with this characterization of the Taliban’s policy as one of uncompromising jihadism. There were elements of the Taliban’s policy, he said, that these voices failed to appreciate. The Taliban were not even forthright about their relationship with al-Qaida. He quoted an excerpt from a letter by the al-Qaida ideologue ‘Atiyyat Allah al-Libi (d. 2011), who wrote as follows about the nature of the Taliban’s dealings with al-Qaida: “Of course, the Taliban’s policy is to avoid being seen with us or revealing any cooperation or agreement between us and them. That is for the purpose of averting international and regional pressure and out of consideration for regional dynamics. We defer to them in this regard.”

Scholarly reactions

The senior scholars of the jihadi movement, including the Palestinian-Jordanians Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini, have expressed both praise and concern for the Taliban’s recent doings. While deeply divided over the issue of HTS—Abu Qatada is generally supportive, al-Maqdisi fiercely opposed—the two men’s views on this subject are not so far apart.

Back in February, Abu Qatada heaped praise on the Taliban for signing the agreement with the United States. In a statement on Telegram, he wrote that “the Afghan situation” is “an important example” and one that “deserves to be studied.” While rejecting the idea that every jihadi group should follow the Taliban’s path “step by step,” he highlighted several admirable aspects of the Taliban’s approach. These included the Taliban’s commitment to “staying the course” on the battlefield, its strong connection to the society in which it operates, and its status as a scholarly movement, that is, as a “movement of scholars.” On September 13, Abu Qatada continued in this vein in another statement, praising the Taliban’s success in securing the release of thousands of prisoners. “This is a jihadi victory the like of which has not been seen in our modern history,” he wrote.

Yet with regard to the negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, he was much less enthusiastic. “The Taliban’s agreeing to sit down with the [Afghan] government is an American victory,” he wrote in the September 13 commentary. “This has to be acknowledged.” For Abu Qatada, this was a potentially troubling development, for any concession to the Afghan government from this point forward would strip the Taliban of its status as “a legitimate emirate for Afghanistan.” The worst possible outcome, in his view, would be for the Taliban to enter into a power-sharing arrangement. He held this possibility to be remote, however, hoping that the negotiations would continue only as a “tactic” for achieving the American withdrawal.

Al-Maqdisi was similarly boastful about the Taliban’s initial agreement with the United States. In late February, he wrote that it was only the Taliban’s unrelenting “will to fight” that had forced the United States to negotiate with them, and that this was a “clear lesson” for jihadis. It showed that “the solution is not in democracy and ballot boxes! Rather it is in jihad and ammunition boxes.”

The next day, on March 1, al-Maqdisi published an “open letter to the Taliban,” sounding a more critical and cautionary note. In the letter he objected to the open-ended nature of the Taliban’s agreement with the United States, including the clause regarding al-Qaida, arguing that a non-aggression pact with unbelievers should be for no more than ten years in keeping with prophetic practice. This was, in his view, no more than “a jurisprudential transgression.” It was certainly the Taliban’s right to restrict al-Qaida, he said, particularly as Mullah Omar had never given his blessing to the 9/11 attacks. But should the “peace agreement” with the United States lead to the abrogation of jihad, this would speak to a deeper, more theological problem with the Taliban. Al-Maqdisi further faulted the Taliban for giving thanks to Qatar, Pakistan, and China, among other countries, in a statement issued by its leader upon the signing of the agreement. Such expressions of gratitude to states whose rulers are at war with Islam, he wrote, leave one to wonder about possible changes in the Taliban’s methodology.

Particularly troubling, in his view, was the clause in the agreement stating that the United States and the Taliban “seek positive relations with each other and expect that the relations between the United States and the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government … will be positive.” Perhaps all of this, he speculated, is nothing more than “maneuvers and political steps to achieve important interests.” But like Abu Qatada, he was concerned about what would come once the Taliban and “the client Afghan government” actually sat down to negotiate. More recently, after the negotiations got under way in September, al-Maqdisi reiterated his concerns. “What worries me,” he wrote on Telegram on September 12, “is not the sitting down [at the negotiating table] in itself, but rather the results of the sitting down!” He would wait to pass judgment, however, until the results were clear and documented.

Another jihadi scholar, the London-based Egyptian Hani al-Siba‘i, who is close ideologically to al-Maqdisi, has been somewhat more upbeat in responding to the Taliban’s recent moves. He also has contributed a somewhat different take on the Taliban’s pledge regarding al-Qaida. In a sermon delivered in March, al-Siba‘i pointed out that the Taliban, to its credit, “did not dissociate from [al-Qaida] and did not hand them over [to the Americans].” The Taliban’s commitment in the agreement was in reality nothing new, since the Taliban were already forbidding al-Qaida from launching attacks on the United States from Afghan soil.

In a more recent sermon in mid-September, al-Siba‘i added a few comments on the matter of al-Qaida’s bay‘a to the Taliban leader. The bay‘a, he explained, is conditional. When al-Zawahiri gave bay‘a to Akhundzadah, he stipulated certain conditions, including that the Taliban adhere to the Sharia. Therefore, if the Taliban were to deviate from its current path, al-Qaida would be within its rights to withdraw the bay‘a. For al-Siba‘i, however, this was a worst-case scenario, and a remote one. Let us wait, he suggested, and see what happens. For as of now, the Taliban have conceded nothing.

No consensus, uncertain future

If one thing is clear from this motley of views concerning the Taliban’s deal with the United States and its negotiations with the Afghan government, it is that there is little consensus in the jihadi world on what the nature of the Taliban truly is. For the Islamic State, the Taliban is an ungodly movement ready and willing to renounce jihad and share power with the Afghan government. For al-Qaida, it is the future Islamic caliphate. And for HTS, it is a model of jihadi realpolitik. The scholars, for their part, wary as they are of where the negotiations will lead, reflect a deep uncertainty about the future of the Taliban. Their worst fear is that the Taliban will make peace with the Afghan government and shed its character as “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Their greatest hope is that the negotiations will turn out to be a time-saving ruse. They are not so hopeful, however, as to assume this outcome as a given.

Background: HTS Dismantles Hurras al-Din and the So Be Steadfast Operations Room

Hurras al-Din (HD) was established in February 2018 as AQ’s official branch in Syria, after HTS publicly distanced itself from its parent organization. Later, in October 2018, HD set up the Wa-Harridh al-Mu’minin (And Incite the Believers) Operations Room in conjunction with two smaller AQ-aligned groups, Jabhat Ansar al-Din and Jama‘at Ansar al-Islam. HD and the operations room were allowed to operate at the behest of HTS and received food and ammunition provisions from HTS. Therefore, as I noted in September 2019, “If [HD] were to grow significantly stronger, HTS may try to suppress it and arrest its leaders in order to preserve its own power base. In that sense, HD’s local growth potential is somewhat limited.”

And in many ways this is what happened. On June 12, 2020, HD, alongside its two partners in the operations room, established a new operations room called “Fa-thbutu” (So Be Steadfast) that also included the groups Tansiqiyat al-Jihad and Liwa’ al-Muqatilin al-Ansar. The leaders of these latter groups, Abu al-‘Abd Ashida’ and Abu al-Malik al-Talli respectively, both had falling-outs with HTS over the direction of the jihad, relations with Turkey, and corruption issues. Similarly, ahead of this announcement, Abu Salah al-Uzbeki, leader of Katibat al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, switched its alliance from HTS to Jabhat Ansar al-Din, thereby adding another strength to this alternative jihadi bloc.

As a consequence of these shifting alliances and the bolstering of the HD-led alternative jihad, HTS arrested al-Uzbeki on June 17 and al-Talli on June 22. This led the new Fa-thbutu operations room to warn HTS that it would “bear the consequences” if it did not release its leaders or subject itself to a religious court. HTS retroactively claimed, in a circular by its Higher Follow-Up and Supervision Committee, that individuals needed authorization to either leave the group or join other groups. Anticipating a policy that would be set out in a statement days later, HTS was showing that it would not allow others to have a monopoly on violence in the territories it controlled. The arrests and perceived lack of transparency behind them led to infighting between the two factions in the towns of ‘Arab Sa’id, al-Hamamah, al-Ya’qubiyah, Jdaydah, Armanaz, Kuku, and Shaykh Bahar over the next few days until truces were brokered due to HTS overpowering HD and its allies.

This led HTS on June 26 to proclaim that the only military efforts that could be conducted would be via itself or through its own al-Fatah al-Mubin (The Clear Conquest) military operations room, thereby banning any other efforts outside this infrastructure such as HD and its own operations room. As a result, HD’s military bases were shut down by HTS. Since then, neither HD nor its Fa-thbutu operations room have publicly operated, frustrating the ability of AQ to return to the forefront of the insurgency in Syria (for now, at least).

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi Responds

Two days later al-Maqdisi responded to these events. In an online essay he described two categories of groups that he sees as working against the interests of the true jihadis in northwest Syria: overt and covert client groups. The former are those directly backed by Turkey such as the Syrian National Army/National Liberation Front, which is operating in the Turkish-controlled zones that were taken from the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in parts of northwest and northeast Syria. The latter groups are an unstated reference to HTS, which al-Maqdisi sees as more dangerous since it claims the mantle of being a jihadi group but in reality is helping Turkey pursue its aims in the region. In particular, al-Maqdisi highlights how HTS protects Turkish patrols and forbids the true jihadis from targeting the Russians when Russia conducts joint patrols with Turkey. Furthermore, al-Maqdisi alludes to the above infighting and dismantlement of HD and the Fa-thbutu operations room by noting that these so-called “manipulated factions have killed the jihad of al-Sham, broken it up, and subjected it to the secular Turks.”

In response, al-Maqdisi suggests two possible ways of overcoming these assaults on the legitimate jihadis. The first involves eradicating the overt client groups and reforming the covert client groups by getting defections from sincere individuals among them and then slowly replacing and overtaking their leaders. Of course, this is easier said than done. Therefore, al-Maqdisi advises that the true jihadis follow the second possible course of action, which is to disband themselves and lay in wait for the right opportunity to return. It is plausible that new and more clandestine formations like Kata’ib Khatab al-Shishani (which announced itself in mid-July) and Sariyat Ansar Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (which announced itself in late August) are examples of this at play.

Al-Maqdisi Disavowed By HTS

Two months later, on August 21, the feud between al-Maqdisi and HTS was reignited when al-Maqdisi shared a post on his Telegram channel by an AQ supporter called Ya Sariyat al-Jabal (Oh Mast of the Mountain). The post repeats claims and affirmations about secret dealings between HTS and Turkish intelligence. The most controversial part is about how these alleged actions have essentially pushed HTS away from faith: “Everyone with knowledge of the nullifiers of Islam who is aware of these details [in relation to actions HTS has allegedly taken with Turkey] will see after considering them carefully that the leadership of [HTS] day after day gets closer to disbelief and draws farther away from faith.” Members and partisans of HTS thus interpreted al-Maqdisi’s sharing of this as his excommunicating HTS from Islam.

One of HTS’s top ideologues, Dr. Muzhir al-Ways, responded that day to this in a Twitter post, republished by the unofficial HTS support media outlet al-Bayyinah under the title “After Being Accused of Diluting and Deviation and Stultifying the Jihad [in Syria], al-Maqdisi is Now Excommunicating HTS.” Al-Ways writes that al-Maqdisi’s false accusations against HTS today are no different from those that IS lodged against the jihadi groups in Syria some years ago. Therefore he is the “shaykh of the khawarij.” More damning and possibly embarrassing if true for al-Maqdisi is al-Ways’s suggestion that the account al-Maqdisi shared was in fact something he himself created to try and amplify the message while making it seem like he didn’t say it himself. The charge is not far-fetched since al-Maqdisi has been known to write content under pseudonyms before.

The next day al-Bayyinah released a fuller take down of al-Maqdisi by al-Ways derisively titled “The Monotheism of Barqawism,” a reference to al-Maqdisi’s real last name and a way of stripping him of honorific legitimacy. Here al-Ways calls al-Maqdisi out for having his own version of monotheism (tawhid) that he uses to attack and discredit his opponents. Al-Ways also states that al-Maqdisi is not only out of touch in regard to sharia and scholarly limits related to excommunication (takfir), but also ignorant of what is going on the ground in northwest Syria since he is basing his views of events on television reports and social media. Interestingly, al-Ways claims that al-Maqdisi practices taqiyyah (dissimulating one’s true beliefs) by using euphemisms such as “dilution” of ideology instead of outright doing takfir on HTS.

Al-Bayyinah Media shared a number of other anti-al-Maqdisi releases in the following week via its Telegram channel. Of note is the claim that al-Maqdisi is in fact an asset of Jordanian intelligence and that his attacks on other jihadis are intended to damage and break up the movement. Al-Bayyinah Media highlights examples of suspicious timings in the past when al-Maqdisi has been released from prison and the fact that he has legitimized his dealings with the Jordanian government over the negotiations with IS regarding the captured Jordanian pilot in 2015.

To further discredit al-Maqdisi, al-Bayyinah Media set up a mock website that appears to look like al-Maqdisi’s old Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad library of jihadi primary sources. Yet unlike the original, this is a spoof that seeks to delegitimize al-Maqdisi by highlighting articles that expose his extremism and incorrect views. On the top of the site, the creators of it state that the original Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad website was set up as a “cartoon media platform for himself” and sarcastically exclaim that “tawhid is a trademark registered in the name of al-Maqdisi,” who was allowed at his own whim to determine who was legitimate. The site is clearly set up to expose al-Maqdisi’s problematic views over the years. Interestingly, the site also features quotes from IS’s founder Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi and one of AQ’s top ideologues historically, Atiyat Allah ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Libi, discussing al-Maqdisi as being important and having made a contribution to the jihadi movement but rejecting the idea that his word is infallible truth on everything.

As a consequence of all of this, Jallad al-Murji’ah (Executioner of Those Who Postpone), a pro-AQ supporter on Telegram, complained that HTS was essentially conducting a disinformation campaign and that HTS is like the “pharaoh’s magicians, when they were bewitching the eyes of people, misleading them, making the truth void, and falsehoods correct.”

A Splintered Jihadosphere

Based on all of this, unlike in the past when HTS was willing to tolerate al-Maqdisi’s broadsides and even responding civilly, a redline has clearly been crossed. With accusations of creeping apostasy and extremism going back and forth, it appears unlikely that some form of reconciliation is a possibility. Back in 2013-14 we saw similar dynamics play out between jihadi groups and the ideologues of the jihadi movement, leading to an irrevocable split and the division of jihadism into a bipolar world, one torn between AQ and IS. It seems in many ways that we are now entering an era of a tri-polar jihadosphere.

Although some perceived HTS’s initial breaking of ties with AQ as a fig leaf to cover up a strong and enduring relationship, evidence from the past few years in northwest Syria—of arrests, infighting, ideological arguments, and now these latest dynamics between HTS and AQ factions since June—run counter to such a view. The dynamic between HTS and AQ is not similar to that between the Taliban and AQ, whose relationship has been tight and never foundered. HTS truly has created its own pole of jihadism outside the framework of the historical AQ network or the more contemporary IS network. What this means for the future of the broader movement is difficult to say since it does not appear (yet) that HTS has ambitions beyond Syria in comparison with the globalized networks of AQ and IS. The implications for al-Maqdisi are clearer. Considering the antipathy that both IS and now HTS have for him, al-Maqdisi’s influence continues to diminish due to the erosion in consensus amongst the broader jihadi movement over the past 15 years. And although there is no one who has likely eclipsed al-Maqdisi’s influence, it does not make sense anymore to say that al-Maqdisi is the most important jihadi ideologue in the world today when two of three jihadi poles are against him.

Although some in the Tunisian jihadosphere, especially those that are pro-AQ, claim that the spread of this trend among Tunisians is a consequence of the Tunisian government attempting to sully and divide the Tunisian jihadi movement, it is a bit more complicated than that.^[3] As background, al-Hazimi did four different lecture series in Tunisia between December 2011 and May 2012 (see table 8.1) with the local jihadi milieu. Interestingly, the first series was announced on October 25, 2011, a mere two days after the Tunisian Constituent Assembly election, which al-Nahdah won as the leading political party.^[4] Al-Hazimi’s first three visits to Tunisia were in coordination with and sponsored by the Hay al-Khadra’ Mosques Committee and the Islamic Good Society in Tunis. The committee was headed by Abu Muhanad al-Tunisi, who was a senior cleric in AST [Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia] and also ran the al-Rahmah Mosque in Hay al-Khadra’, a neighborhood in Tunis.^[5] The al-Rahmah Mosque became an AST-run mosque following the 2011 revolution.^[6] Abu Muhanad’s first lecture promoted by AST at the al-Rahmah Mosque noted that it “is where the organization of the two previous sessions with Shaykh Ahmad Bin ‘Umar al-Hazmi” took place since it happened in mid-February 2012.^[7] As for the Islamic Good Society in Tunis, in May 2014, the head and some of its members were arrested for money laundering and terrorist financing.^[8] This could suggest that this charity was involved with more than just spreading its interpretation of Islam, but with assisting individuals involved in terrorism or helping finance travel abroad to Syria as well. Al-Hazimi’s final lecture in Tunisia was at the Grand Mosque of Medenine, a city sixty-five miles northwest of the Tunisian-Libyan border.

Besides these courses, in early March 2012, al-Hazimi helped create and was the supervisor of the Ibn Abu Zayd al-Qayrawani Institute for Sharia Sciences.^[9] It was based in Hay al-Khadra’ and was named after the historical Tunisian Maliki scholar. This institute was established in conjunction with the Hay al-Khadra’ Mosques Committee, highlighting its connections to AST as well.

After the institute opened registration on March 10, 2012, there was now a specific institute in Tunisia that was teaching a curriculum that adhered to al-Hazimi’s views on creedal matters (more on this below).^[10] This is likely where many Tunisians became exposed to al-Hazimi’s ideas beyond his in-person lecture series or his online presence.

Furthermore, AST promoted Hazimi’s ideas on its official Facebook page via its sharia committee. In December 2012, AST published a list of content that “is obligatory to learn for members of AST” as part of their dawa efforts.^[11] AST also republished this list on its official Facebook page as a reminder in mid-January 2013.^[12] Besides al-Hazimi’s content, the post suggested Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Democracy: A Religion and The Religion of Abraham as well as a Saudi Arabia Ministry of Islamic Affairs Dawa and Guidance book from 2004 called Accessible Jurisprudence in Light of the Qur’an and Sunnah.^[13] The al-Hazimi content contained a six-part lecture series titled al-Usul al- thalatha (The three fundamental principles) exploring the ideas of “Who is your Lord?,” “What is your religion?,” and “Who is your Prophet?”; an eight-part lecture series titled A‘lam al-sunnah al-manshurah fi a’tiqad al-ta’ifah al-mansurah (Highlights of the sunni knowledge on the creed of the victorious sect); and most importantly to the discussion related to extremism within the IS context, a four-part series titled Nawaqid al-islam (Nullifiers of Islam).

The latter lecture is based on a creedal work by the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and relates to ten ways that nullify someone from being a true Muslim. In short, the third nullifier says, according to Cole Bunzel, that “one must pronounce takfir (excommunication) on those failing or hesitating to pronounce takfir” in relation to acts of polytheism.^[14] Takfir in the jihadi context leads to the legitimization of killing those that fall outside the bounds of their interpretations of Islam. Within this third nullifier is where the shades of takfir between different jihadis, including within IS, is contested. Al-Hazimi believes in the idea of takfir al-‘adhir (excommunication of the excuser), meaning those who follow al-‘udhr bi-l-jahl (excusing someone from the duty of takfir on the basis of ignorance in what they are doing). This, according to those who opposed the followers of al-Hazimi within IS, would lead to a so-called endless chain of takfir. These ideas were thus promulgated in al-Hazimi’s lectures in Tunisia and in the audio series AST posted online for its followers. This negates AQ-apologetic ideologues like Abu Lababah al-Tunisi or al-Maqalaat claiming that the growth in these ideas in Tunisia were a consequence of some conspiracy by the Tunisian government.^[15] That being said, it is important to remember that AST’s approach within Tunisia was not takfiri in any manner due to its dawa-first approach. It is clear, however, that these ideas by al-Hazimi did incubate within the minds of some and then were brought to fore more so in Syria once the Tunisian jihadists had joined ISIS/IS. Most notable among these figures was Abu Ja‘afar al-Hatab who had been on AST’s sharia committee.

Based on a reading of al-Hatab’s publications with AST, al-Nahdah’s crackdown upon AST following the government blocking AST from conducting its third annual conference in mid-May 2013 led al-Hatab down this ultra-extreme path. This is because al-Hatab was not writing anything along the lines of takfir al-‘adhir for AST publications. Ahead of the third annual conference, there were signs that al-Nahdah was planning to shut it down, but based on its past behaviors as described in chapter 4 of my book Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad, some within AST likely saw it as a bluff and were not necessarily taking it seriously. Despite these warnings, AST wanted to prepare its followers for the conference, so al-Hatab penned guidance and instruction on how to act. In particular, the third instruction illustrates that al-Hatab was not yet believing in such ultra-extreme ideas. He said, “We need to be humble whether alone or in groups. . . . Our brothers don’t be arrogant especially with your brothers who have not joined AST. They are our brothers in faith. Be humble with them and invite them to attend our annual meeting. Even if they have disagreed with us, they still have the right to guardianship in Islam.”^[16]

Only six weeks after this al-Hatab wrote his treatise defending ISIS, saying the only legitimate baya was to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This suggests that the al-Nahdah-led crackdown upon AST, which began in May 2013 and culminated in the group’s eventual designation in August 2013, led al-Hatab to adopt more radical views over time. This was likely reinforced by JN’s [Jabhat al-Nusra’s] challenge to ISIS as well as reinforced once he made it to the war zone context in the summer of 2013. The failed AST experience of a dawa-first approach probably also pushed al-Hatab down a path of no compromise since the softer way did not work in Tunisia. This dynamic was seen with other Tunisians within ISIS too. For example, according to Rania Abouzaid, a Tunisian leader doing a Friday sermon in Syria equated JN’s allegedly softening positions to his experience with al- Nahdah in Tunisia: “He had seen what he termed ‘the reality of these people’ in Tunisia, before his pilgrimage to Syria. ‘They curse God and the Prophet and say it is freedom of expression. They walk around naked and say this is freedom! If you are a Muslim and express your opinion, you are a terrorist! If you call one of them an infidel, they say you are an extremist!.’ ”^[17]

Within a year of joining ISIS, al-Hatab and other Tunisians who began to internalize al-Hazimi’s ideas started to run afoul of the group, even though many Tunisians including al-Hatab came into important positions within the organization. For instance, when al-Hatab joined ISIS in the summer of 2013, he was a part of an early version of ISIS’s sharia committee alongside Turki Bin‘ali, who became an arch nemesis of the Hazimi trend within ISIS, and Abu ‘Ali al-Anbari.^[18]

Based on my reading of WikiBaghdady, an alleged insider account and leaks on the inner workings of ISIS, which were published between December 2013 and June 2014, the ISIS infighting with JN helped cause the ascendancy of al-Hatab and other Tunisians within ISIS, which allowed for greater space for the Hazimi trend to grow.^[19] While some within IS and AQ circles have skepticism about this source, a number of details from these leaks cohere with other information known about IS that has been independently written about since this time period.

In the early stages of the infighting between JN and ISIS, JN arrested two Tunisians, Abu Taj al-Sussi and Abu ‘Umar al-‘Abadi, among others who were not Tunisian, due to their takfiri ways and loyalty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.^[20] In line with this, due to the loyalty of Tunisian foreign fighters during the fight with JN, a number of Tunisians were given more senior positions within ISIS, including al-Hatab. As a consequence of ISIS’s violent infighting with JN, which became far more aggressive in January 2014, a number of foreign fighters soured on ISIS because they did not want to fight those they perceived as their brothers in JN, even if there were some political and strategic disagreements. In response, al-Baghdadi nominated al-Hatab to try to stem these losses by receiving new bayat from others who supported the group in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey.^[21] Al-Hatab also took charge of attempting to persuade leaders of Syrian rebel factions to defect and join ISIS with a $1,500 incentive; however, this effort allegedly failed.^[22] Furthermore, al-Baghdadi placed spies—trusty Iraqis and loyal Tunisians—“with each field commander to fortify ISIS from any defections and have an early notification to try to dissuade the dissidents or liquidate them.”^[23] Later on, al-Hatab became an official in IS’s Diwan al-Ta‘alim (Administration of Education).^[24]

Shortly after providing more space to Tunisians due to their loyalty, their extreme positions on takfir came to light and increasingly became a problem for ISIS later in the year. In early March 2014 an audio leaked of a conversation between Abu Muhammad al-Tunisi, an ISIS sharia official in al-Hasakah, Syria; and Abu Mus‘ab al-Tunisi, an ISIS sharia official in Deir al-Zour; and Abu Usamah al-Iraqi, the wali (governor) of al-Hasakah, during which they described the Taliban and Usamah Bin Ladin as infidels.^[25] A couple of weeks later another audio leaked of Abu Mus‘ab al-Tunisi, now doing takfir on AQIM [Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb] and AST and claiming that only ISIS is part of al-ta‘ifah al-mansurah (the victorious sect).^[26] He also believes that “jihad will die” in Tunisia because of those two groups.^[27] It should be noted that Tunisians were not the only ones associated with the Hazimi trend; in addition to al-Hatab, one of the early leaders in this trend was Abu ‘Umar al-Kuwaiti.^[28] In August 2017, an IS scholar named Abu ‘Abd al-Malik al-Shami also highlighted that Egyptians, Saudis, Azerbaijanis, and Turks were among the early adopters of the Hazimi trend, along with Tunisians.^[29] The increasing voice and strength of this trend, however, led to a backlash by some within the senior leadership of IS, who were worried about this excessive extremism in the use of takfir. This led to a series of arrests and then executions in August and September 2014, including of al-Hatab, Abu Mus‘ab al-Tunisi, and Abu Suhayb al-Tunisi.^[30] In the following years there were a number of other public incidents related to the Hazimi trend (see table 8.2) that Tunisians were involved in as well.

Likewise, behind the scenes, those who were against the Hazimi trend within IS wrote several letters and memos that have since been leaked online that included details on later manifestations of this trend, which also highlighted some more Tunisians among a broader grouping of people. Some of them had positions within IS, including Abu Hudhayfah al-Tunisi, a member of IS’s Diwan al-I’alam (Administration of Media) and previously a judge of “real estate” in Wilayat al-Raqqah, and Abu Dhar al-Tunisi, the founder of IS’s Military Academy, which had lectures on warfare and tactics.^[31] Beyond these two individuals mentioned for their extremism in use of takfir, IS’s Diwan al-Amn al-Am (Administration of General Security) notes some secret groups that came into being following the death of al-Hatab and his associates, including the Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Tunisi group and the Abu Ayub al-Tunisi group.^[32] The latter group had the support of the wali (governor) of Aleppo, making it difficult to go after them even if the diwan viewed them as dangerous. Therefore, even if the Hazimi trend is less open publicly within IS, there remains some remnants of it left as of the fall of 2019.

Notes

^[1] Haïfa Mzalouat and Malek Khadhraoui, “Fayçal, du jihad en Syrie à la désillusion,” Inkyfada, August 31, 2018; Lina Sinjab, “al-Qaeda’s Brutal Tactics in Syria Force Out Moderates,” BBC News, November 27, 2013; Mansour Omari, “Two Years an ISIS Slave,” Daily Beast, December 22, 2015; Yaroslav Trofimov, “In Islamic State Stronghold of Raqqa, Foreign Fighters Dominate,” Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2015; and Charlie Savage, “As ISIS Fighters Fill Prisons in Syria, Their Home Nations Look Away,” New York Times, July 18, 2018.

^[2] “Birnamij hamuna 4—al-halaqah al-sadisah—tujarib shabab mugharar bi-him,” Saudi Channel 1, YouTube, March 5, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ8SS1HmT2o.

^[3] Abu Lababah al-Tunisi, “Series About the Causes of the Spread of Extremism in the Tunisian Youth: Why Are Tunisia’s Youth the Most Extreme in the Ranks of the State Organization?, Parts 2, 3, 4,” September 3, 2015, https://jihadology.net/2015/09/03/new-article-from-abu-lababah-al-tunisi-series-about-the-causes-of-the-spread-of-extremism-in-the-tunisian-youth-why-are-tunisias-youth-the-most-extreme-in-the-ranks-of-the-state-or/; and al-Maqalaat, “Tunisia: A Reason For the Current Extremism in the Jihadi Movement,” November 19, 2015, copy retained in author’s archives.

^[4] Abu al-Zubayr al-Qabsi, “al-Dawrah al-’ilmiyah al-ula li-l-shaykh ahmad bin ‘umar al-hazimi bi-tunis,” Ahl al-Hadith Forum, October 25, 2011; and “Dawrah ‘ilmiyah: Shaykh ahmad bin ‘umar al-hazimi,” Mawqah al-Islam fi Tunis, October 29, 2011, https://islamentunisie.com/?p=453.

^[5] See https://masejed.weebly.com/index.html.

^[6] Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia’s Clerical Establishment Database, created by Aaron Y. Zelin, available at http://tunisianjihadism.com, last updated August 10, 2016.

^[7] Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, “Khutbah of Abu Muhanad al-Tunisi,” al-Bayyariq Media, February 17, 2012.

^[8] Salwa al-Tarhuni, “Bitaqah ida’a bi-sijin fi haqq ra’yis jami’ah al-khayr al-islamiyah bi- tuhamah tamwil al-irhab,” Tunisien, May 14, 2014, available at http://www.tunisien.tn.

^[9] “Bayan bi-khasus iftitah ma’had ibn abu zayd al-qayrawani li-l-’ulum al-shari’ah,” March 1, 2012, http://majles.alukah.net/t97703.

^[10] “Tariqah al-tasjil fi ma’had ibn zayd al-qayrawani li-l-’ulum al-shari’ah,” March 1, 2012, http://majles.alukah.net/t97703.

^[11] Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia Facebook page, December 22, 2012.

^[12] Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia Facebook page, January 15, 2013.

^[13] As linked to by AST on its official Facebook page: Fiqh al-Muyasar fi Dhu’ al-Kitab wa-l-Sunnah, Saudi Arabia: Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Dawah and Guidance, 2004, https://ia800204.us.archive.org/10/items/fikh_moyasar1/fikh_moyasar1.pdf.

^[14] Cole Bunzel, “Ideological Infighting in the Islamic State,” Perspectives on Terrorism 13, no. 1 (February 2019): 13–22.

^[15] Tunisi, “Series About the Causes of the Spread of Extremism; and al-Maqalaat, “Tuni- sia: A Reason For the Current Extremism in the Jihadi Movement.”

^[16] Abu Ja’afar al-Hatab, “Stance Ahead of the Third Annual Conference,” al-Bayyariq Media, May 13, 2013.

^[17] Rania Abouzeid, No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (New York: Norton, 2018), 515–17.

^[18] Bunzel, “Ideological Infighting in the Islamic State.”

^[19] WikiBaghdady, December 14, 2013–June 13, 2014, originally posted here: https://twitter .com/wikibaghdady, and archived here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wEQ 0FKosa1LcUB3tofeub1UxaT5A-suROyDExgV9nUY.

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] Ibid.

^[22] Ibid.

^[23] Ibid.

^[24] Islamic State, “Report on the Phenomenon of Extremism in the Islamic State,” November 14, 2015, http://www.jihadica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/zahirat-al-ghuluww.pdf.

^[25] “Shari’iyun da’ish yukafirun harakat taliban wa usamah bin ladin khatir jidan,” YouTube, June 28, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_LANfh2BOU.

^[26] “al-Dawlah al-islamiyah ‘da’ish’ wa ‘aqidat al-takfir—da’ish tadu’i anaha al-ta’ifah al- mansurah wa ansar al-shari’ah ‘ala khata,’ ” March 13, 2014, originally available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvHnfeaBQ9E, author maintains a copy in his archives.

^[27] Ibid.

^[28] Tore Hamming, “The Extremist Wing of the Islamic State,” Jihadica, June 9, 2016, https://www.jihadica.com/the-extremist-wing-of-the-islamic-state.

^[29] Abu ‘Abd al-Malik al-Shami, “Sighs from the Islamic State Buried Alive,” August 2017, copy retained in the author’s archives.

^[30] Islamic State, “Report on the Phenomenon of Extremism in the Islamic State.”

^[31] “Message of the ‘Council of ‘Ilm’ on the State of the Extremists in the Media Diwan,” al-Turath al-‘Ilmi Foundation, 2018; and Abu ‘Abd al-Malik al-Shami, “Sighs from the Islamic State Buried Alive.”

^[32] The Islamic State, “Report on the Phenomenon of Extremism in the Islamic State.” Other members of the Abu Ayub group included Abu al-Darda’ al-Tunisi, Abu al- Yaman al-Tunisi, Abu Qatadah al-Tunisi, Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Libi, Abu Khalid al-Tunisi, Abu al-Mu’tasim al-Tunisi, and Jahabdhah al-Tunisi.

Excerpted from Your Sons are at Your Service (c) 2020 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Recently, the two men and their supporters have feuded over another matter, namely, the network of religious scholars previously associated with the Islamic State. Sometimes known as “the Bin‘ali current” or “the Bin‘aliyya,” these are men who, beginning with the eponymous Turki al-Bin‘ali himself, the head of the Islamic State’s Office of Research and Studies until his death in 2017, emerged as critics of the caliphate’s drift towards an even more extremist theology in 2016-2017. Those who survived the ensuing turmoil grew more critical still in 2018 and 2019, publishing numerous commentaries online accusing the Islamic State’s leaders of extremism and oppression. Ultimately, in early 2019, they turned against the caliphate entirely.

In October 2019, al-Maqdisi began expressing his admiration for al-Bin‘ali and the so-called Bin‘aliyya, praising them for opposing the Islamic State’s “extremism.” Predictably, Abu Qatada and his allies were up in arms at this ostensible embrace of a group of “Kharijites.” One of their number has speculated that al-Maqdisi is trying to form a new jihadi group.

Praising al-Bin‘ali

To be sure, this is not the first time that al-Maqdisi has spoken kindly of al-Bin‘ali. The latter, as will be recalled, was a student of al-Maqdisi’s and wrote prolifically for his website. The two fell out in 2014 over the matter of the Islamic State, which al-Bin‘ali had joined. Even though al-Bin‘ali, in 2015, accused al-Maqdisi of “falling away from the religion,” this did not prevent al-Maqdisi from eulogizing his former pupil upon the latter’s death in an airstrike in May 2017. In a brief note on Telegram, which included the phrase “may God have mercy on him,” al-Maqdisi praised al-Bin‘ali for having raised “objections to the extremists” in the Islamic State. At the same time, he was careful to dissociate himself from al-Bin‘ali’s “errors.”

It was Abu Qatada’s indirect praise for a certain Mauritanian Islamist, Muhammad al-Hasan Wald al-Dadaw, that inspired al-Maqdisi to return to the subject of al-Bin‘ali. On October 11, 2019, Abu Qatada reposted a Telegram message noting the death of al-Dadaw’s father and in so doing praising the son, who is known for his favorable view of democracy. (Al-Maqdisi has written several refutations of al-Dadaw; see, for instance, here.) Later the same day, al-Maqdisi responded on Telegram, remarking that al-Bin‘ali’s “sandal covered in dust” from fighting jihad is “better than an earth’s full of Wald al-Dadaw and the likes of him who argue on behalf of the idol-rulers and defend democracy.” Al-Bin‘ali, he wrote, “advised his state, condemned its errors, and sought reform.” He asked God to forgive al-Bin‘ali his trespasses and to reunite them in paradise.

Al-Maqdisi’s post touched off a new round of refutation and counter-refutation regarding al-Bin‘ali. The London-based Abu Mahmud al-Filastini, one of Abu Qatada’s chief supporters, retorted that al-Maqdisi was misrepresenting al-Bin‘ali as some kind of moderate. The reality, he contended, was that al-Bin‘ali’s differences with the senior Islamic State leadership were an intra-Kharijite affair: “Al-Bin‘ali to the last moment of his life proclaimed the unbelief of al-Qaida, the Taliban, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the religious scholars … and his final words contained a clear excommunication of Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaida.” This second point was a reference to an audio statement by al-Bin‘ali observing the degeneration of al-Qaida and describing al-Zawahiri as “the fool who is obeyed” (al-ahmaq al-muta‘). What is more, added Abu Mahmud, al-Bin‘ali had “disparaged” al-Maqdisi “in the worst possible terms,” as indeed he had. For instance, al-Bin‘ali described al-Maqdisi as “abominable” (khabith) in a letter sent to the Delegated Committe in May 2017.

Another response to al-Maqdisi’s post came from the Syrian Islamist scholar and HTS supporter ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Mahdi, who took exception to al-Maqdisi’s imagery. “It is never permitted to compare a Muslim to a sandal,” he wrote. Al-Maqdisi replied that it is indeed permitted in the case of Wald al-Dadaw and those like him who promote the polytheistic system of democracy.

On October 19, Abu Qatada himself entered the fray, writing an essay on his secondary Telegram channel, “The Pearls of Shaykh Abu Qatada,” and signing it “the administration.” In the essay, Abu Qatada chided al-Maqdisi for preferring “the Kharijite al-Bin‘ali” to the well-respected al-Dadaw and for excommunicating the latter. It was this quickness to engage in takfir, he averred, that had led al-Maqdisi’s students, al-Bin‘ali among them, to slander him and call him an unbeliever. “Don’t you see, o shaykh,” he continued, addressing al-Maqdisi, “that you have made very light of the matter of the extremists and their bloodshed?” “Don’t you see that your output in recent years has been confined to generating tensions and stirring up hatreds?”

The next day, al-Maqdisi returned fire with an essay of his own, published in like fashion on his own secondary Telegram channel. The essay derided Abu Qatada for trying to distance himself from a piece that was so obviously his. It was not true, al-Maqdisi claimed, that al-Bin‘ali had excommunicated him; nor was it true that he had excommunicated al-Dadaw. Abu Qatada, he shot back, was the one inciting hostilities, not him. “Don’t you see, o shaykh,” he wrote, imitating Abu Qatada’s language, “that you have begun to make very light of the matter of the defenders and advocates of democracy, endorsing many of its chief figures, even publicly proclaiming your love for them?” “Don’t you see, o shaykh, that most of your output in recent years has been devoted to arguing on behalf of the chief figures of democracy, venerating them, and asking God to have mercy on those of them who have died?”

To make things even more personal, al-Maqdisi recalled Abu Qatada’s enthusiastic support in the 1990s for the radical Algerian Armed Islamic Group, or Groupe islamique armé (GIA), including in particular his 1995 fatwa permitting the killing of women and children—“the likes of which not even the most recalcitrant extremists in our time have issued.” Al-Maqdisi reproached Abu Qatada for his refusal to retract this fatwa, as well as for claiming that his former views are entirely consonant with his present ones. The dispute between the two men would appear to be very deep indeed.

Praising the Bin‘aliyya

Following the exchange with Abu Qatada, al-Maqdisi began extending his praise to the other Islamic State scholars in al-Bin‘ali’s circle. On October 21, he shared a letter from al-Bin‘ali to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from January 2017, in which the former warned against a policy of appeasing the “extremists” in the Islamic State. In an accompanying commentary, al-Maqdisi described this as “part of the efforts and attempts of shaykh Turki al-Bin‘ali to push back against the influence of the extremists in the State,” noting that it had been shared with him by one or more of “the supporters of shaykh Turki who opposed the extremists alongside him.” Al-Maqdisi went on to describe these struggles at some length:

[Al-Bin‘ali] contended a great deal with the extremists of the State and opposed them, especially the minister of media, Abu Muhammad al-Furqan. Al-Furqan considered Turki a mortal enemy; the extremists were not pleased with Turki’s work in the research center [i.e., the Office of Research and Studies]. Thus they sought to restrict the authority of the research [center] and to weaken it, because Turki was working through it to confront their extremism, sometimes openly, sometimes through debate, and sometimes by complaining to al-Baghdadi and warning him, as in this document … Al-Bin‘ali represented the tie between the scholars and al-Baghdadi; he hoped and was determined to bring about reform, but al-Baghdadi forsook him.

A-Maqdisi then turned his attention to these other scholars:

The scholars in the State, or those known as the al-Bin‘ali current, were suppressed by the Media Department and its minister, al-Furqan. He punished them severely, to the point that some of them were imprisoned and killed. Among the distinguished scholars who stood up to extremism (and it is just that they be cited, mentioned, and not eradicated physically, ideationally, or literarily) were:

• Abu Hafs al-Hamdani al-Yamani (killed)
• Abu Ya‘qub al-Maqdisi (killed)
• Abu Muhammad al-Masri (most likely killed)
• Abu Mus‘ab al-Sahrawi (killed)
• Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Zarqawi (fled, then killed by the State’s security officials)
• Bilal al-Shawashi (fled)
• Abu ‘Isa al-Darir (fled)

And many more besides them. The people of the State ought to know why it was that they were killed or fled! Among them were outstanding and distinguished scholars. One of them [i.e., Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Zarqawi] was around during the [Islamic] State of Iraq and was a judge for Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi … May God have mercy on those of them who were killed, and may God confirm on the clear truth those who have fled.

As if anticipating the ensuing criticism, al-Maqdisi added that “none of this conflicts with our previously known reservations and well-known refutations of the errors of the State Group.”

In the following days, al-Maqdisi continued his trumpeting of the Bin‘aliyya by sharing more relevant files. On October 23, he shared the recently published “testimony” of a former Islamic State scholar, Abu Jandal al-Ha’ili, regarding the massacre of intended “penitents” in Iraq in 2014. Abu Jandal, according to al-Maqdisi, had worked closely with al-Bin‘ali and was one of the scholars who “condemned the oppression and transgressions” of the Islamic State. A week later, al-Maqdisi posted a short biography of the Yemeni Islamic State scholar Abu Hafs al-Hamdani, authored by an anonymous admirer of al-Hamdani’s. A few days after that, on November 3, he shared an essay by the pseudonymous Ibn Jubayr, likely a former Islamic State scholar who fled eastern Syria in 2018, titled “The Collapse of the Fiction.” The essay is a refutation of the Islamic State’s appointment of a new and anonymous caliph. Its importance, al-Maqdisi said, lies in the fact that it is “an internal criticism.” He was not sharing it, he emphasized, because he agreed with it in its entirety, but because it was “from within the State.”

By sharing and commenting on the these works, al-Maqdisi revealed not only his enthusiasm for this group of erstwhile Islamic State scholars but also his familiarity with their struggles and writings. Furthermore, he showed himself to be well plugged in to their network. When one of the Bin‘aliyya, Abu Ya‘qub al-Maqdisi, was executed by the senior Islamic State leadership back in 2018, he was charged with, among other things, communicating with al-Maqdisi. The charge is not so difficult to believe.

A new group?

On November 5, one of Abu Qatada’s allies, a certain Abu ‘Umar ibn Sihman al-Najdi, came out with an essay attacking al-Maqdisi’s recent efforts on behalf of the Bin‘aliyya. Titled “al-Maqdisi and the Bin‘aliyya: Refuting al-Maqdisi’s Rehabilitation of Kharijite Bin‘ali Current,” it sought to debunk the notion that al-Bin‘ali and his allies were waging a war against extremism in the Islamic State. Al-Bin‘ali, the author wrote, did not oppose the takfir of the Taliban and al-Qaida or the shedding of innocent Muslim blood. What al-Bin‘ali was against, as seen in his letter to al-Baghdadi, was the notion of chain takfir, or takfir in infinite regress (al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul), which some members of the Islamic State were promoting and which was leading some of them to pronounce takfir on al-Baghdadi himself.

Speculating as to his motives, the author mused that al-Maqdisi was dissatisfied with al-Qaida and the Taliban, deeming them insufficiently ideologically pure. His cheerleading for the Bin‘aliyya was thus part of an effort “to create a new entity that he could defend” without embarrassment, one that would be “an effective alternative on the ground.”

Later in the month, on November 20, Abu Qatada wrote an essay referring to al-Maqdisi’s support for the “remnants of the Kharijites,” warning against their reintegration before they are made to repent. In his characteristically oblique style, he denounced the efforts of “the one who is known for making light of extremism” (i.e., al-Maqdisi) to rehabilitate and organize the Kharijite remnant (i.e., the Bin‘aliyya).

According to one member of the Bin‘ali current, Abu Qatada had caught wind that al-Maqdisi might be trying to form a new group. A number of mostly Jordanian jihadis had sent a letter to al-Maqdisi and Bilal Khuraysat, a scholar associated with Hurras al-Din (the new Syrian al-Qaida branch), asking for their help in establishing a “group” (jama‘a) that would be free of both the “dilution” of al-Qaida and the “extremism” of the Islamic State.

The letter in question, which was later published, did not in fact propose the formation of a “group” (jama‘a). It did, however, ask al-Maqdisi and Khuraysat, and “all the shaykhs of the intermediate path,” to “bring together the monotheist brothers under one banner, far from the unbelieving parties such as the Brotherhood group … and from the waywardness of extremism and takfir of the Muslim masses.” The authors, who described themselves as former Islamic State supporters and students of Mahdi Zaydan (a Jordanian scholar who joined the Islamic State in 2014 and died in 2017), expressed their disapproval of the “creed” of the Taliban and the “dilution” of the “Brotherhoodized” al-Qaida.

The letter was sent to a media agency affiliated with Hurras al-Din, the “Bayan Foundation” (Mu’assasat Bayan). An image of the correspondence on Telegram shows a representative of Mu’assasat Bayan saying that he showed the letter to Khuraysat, and that the latter sent it to al-Maqdisi. Curiously, Khuraysat denied any knowledge of the letter, as did al-Maqdisi. One of Abu Qatada’s supporters thereafter collected these sources in an essay accusing al-Maqdisi and Khuraysat of lying.

The jihadi homeless

As this correspondence suggests, a number of jihadi intellectuals are currently without an organizational home, having been turned off by the perceived moderation of al-Qaida and the hyper-extremism of the Islamic State. The Bin‘aliyya fall into this category, as do the men who wrote to al-Maqdisi and Khuraysat, these  “shaykhs of the intermediate path.”

Al-Maqdisi would appear to be the natural leader of this current, though some among the Bin‘aliyya, it is worth noting, still bear him ill will. In time, these wounds may heal, but none of this necessarily portends the creation of a new group. What it does suggest is that the two leading groups in the Sunni jihadi universe—al-Qaida and the Islamic State—are out of step, each in its own way, with the “intermediate path” represented by al-Maqdisi. In the short term, this is likely to limit these groups’ appeal; in the long term, it may well leave the door open for the emergence of an alternative.

Al-Maqdisi vs. Abu Qatada

The leading parties to the debate were the Palestinian-Jordanian scholars Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini, longtime friends who have fallen out in recent years over the matter of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Syrian jihadi group that broke ties with al-Qaida in attempting to present a moderate face. In short, al-Maqdisi, the more ideologically intransigent of the two, has condemned HTS for abandoning al-Qaida and diluting the principles of jihadism, while Abu Qatada, the more open-minded one, has championed HTS and its seemingly moderate turn. Al-Maqdisi, it could be said, represents a more exclusivist form of jihadism, one concerned with defining and policing the boundaries of the faith, while Abu Qatada stands for a more inclusive version, one that deemphasizes the strict Salafi-Wahhabi theology adored by al-Maqdisi and appeals to the umma broadly. For al-Maqdisi, then, a man such as Morsi has committed the unforgivable sins of partaking in democracy (understood as polytheism) and failing to implement the Sharia. Abu Qatada is willing to overlook these faults.

On June 17, less than an hour after the news of Morsi’s death broke, Abu Qatada took to Telegram to bemoan his loss. “May God have abundant mercy on him and accept him among the righteous,” he wrote. “May God have mercy on you, Dr. Mohamed. We give condolences to his family, and we say, ‘Surely we belong to God, and to Him we return’ [Q. 2:156].” A few minutes later, in a second note, he urged all Muslims to join him in mourning the late president: “[This is] an appeal to every Muslim on this earth to beg pardon for him and to ask God to have mercy on him, for he died unjustly. Not for a moment did I doubt that he possessed a heart sincerely devoted to his religion and his umma.” He added shortly thereafter, “Dr. Morsi—I bear witness before God that I loved him for the sake of God.”

Al-Maqdisi could not contain his exasperation. Writing on Telegram a few hours later, he declared that his stance was unchanged as regards “Morsi, Erdogan, Hamas, and the likes of them who have chosen the path of democracy, having been misled and having misled their followers thereby.” “We do not love them,” he continued, in an obvious reference to Abu Qatada’s remarks, “and it is not permissible for us to love them, as do those whose balance of association and dissociation (al-wala’ wa’l-bara’) has become defective; and we do not ask God to have mercy on them; nor do we call on people to ask God to have mercy on them when they die. For theirs is a heresy warranting excommunication.” While he took care not to name Abu Qatada here, it was clear to all concerned who stood accused of having a faulty theological compass. In the same post al-Maqdisi attacked the selfsame unnamed person for “turning his back on his old method.”

A day later, on June 18, Abu Qatada responded to al-Maqdisi, among other critics, in a written Q&A with his London-based student, Abu Mahmud al-Filastini. Reaffirming his belief that Morsi was a Muslim sincerely devoted to the faith, Abu Qatada clarified that he did not support everything the man had said or done. But his sympathy for him was evident. He remarked that the burden of responsibility borne by Morsi as president of Egypt constrained him severely, and that in any case one cannot expect perfection from an Islamic leader given the circumstances of the age—“the reign of idol rulers, the corruption of education, and the drying up of the springs of guidance.” Abu Qatada was likewise careful to avoid mentioning his antagonist by name. His student, Abu Mahmud, however, did not show the same compunction.

In a post following the Q&A, Abu Mahmud quoted an essay by al-Maqdisi from a few years prior, one that appears to defend the Muslim Brotherhood from excessive criticism. Al-Maqdisi had argued that it was wrong to accuse every member of the Muslim Brotherhood of unbelief, or to equate the Brotherhood with those far worse than it, such as secularists. “If I said these were the words of the one who has been condemning and denouncing and acting enraged because of asking God to have mercy on Morsi, would anyone believe it?” Abu Mahmud wrote. He then referred to the Taliban’s recent eulogy of Morsi, which he quoted in full. Let’s see al-Maqdisi get worked up over the Taliban’s statement, he wrote.

The next day, al-Maqdisi uploaded a pair of audio messages to Telegram in an attempt to clarify his position. In the first he explained that his main issue was not with asking God to have mercy on Morsi, that is, saying “may God have mercy on him.” While he was opposed to it himself, he did not deem it such a big deal so long as one refrained from praising Morsi and leading people to believe that democracy was acceptable. “My only problem,” he said, “is with him who asks God to have mercy on him and in doing so leads people to believe that his method is correct; or adds to asking God to have mercy on him praising him and endorsing him, even endorsing the contents of his heart that only God knows.” In the second audio message he elaborated on his reasons for not saying “may God have mercy on him” with respect to Morsi, citing the practice of the Prophet and earlier Muslim scholars not to use such statements with respect to various “innovators.” For whatever reason, here and elsewhere al-Maqdisi avoids denouncing Morsi as an unbeliever in explicit terms, preferring to describe his behavior—not necessarily the man—as unbelieving.

Secondary contributors

Meanwhile, other notable names in the jihadi world contributed opinions on the matter. Among them was Abu ‘Ubayda Yusuf al-‘Annabi, a senior leader in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, who sided passionately with Abu Qatada in a short interview. Al-‘Annabi wrote that Morsi had died “unjustly and oppressed … so how could we not ask God to have mercy [on him]? … If we could we would seek revenge on his behalf.” Regardless of what errors he may have committed while in office, he continued, Morsi’s “independent reasoning and interpretation” shielded him from charges of unbelief. Also in Abu Qatada’s corner, unsurprisingly, were the scholarly voices of HTS, including its leading Sharia official Abu ‘Abdallah al-Shami. HTS as a group would also issue an official statement of mourning.

More critical of Morsi, but still willing to say “may God have mercy on him,” were the Egyptian scholars Hani al-Siba‘i and Tariq ‘Abd al-Halim, allies of al-Maqdisi who reside in the United Kingdom and Canada, respectively. Each of them, however, was careful to distance himself from the methodology of the Muslim Brotherhood (see here and here). ‘Abd al-Halim added that while he disagreed with al-Maqdisi’s position on asking God to have mercy on Morsi, he certainly understood where he was coming from—Morsi had no doubt uttered words indicative of unbelief.

As can be seen, it was the two Palestinian-Jordanians who were setting the terms of the debate. And it was not over yet.

A mirage of unity

On June 20, al-Maqdisi released a more aggressive attack on his critics, this time in written form. His target was the more inclusive form of jihadism advocated by Abu Qatada. “Certain persons,” he wrote, “are calling on the jihadi current to revise itself and to purify its ranks and its writings of extremism.” Indeed, he said, “the time has come for full and comprehensive revisions to the methodology of the jihadi current,” but this was “to defend and protect it,” not from extremism, but “from attempts to corrupt it by certain characters, groups, and individuals.” These were people who did not belong to the jihadi movement at all:

It appears that the current has, over the past decades, been united with certain individuals as in a mirage. As facts have come to light in incidents and convulsions, it has become clear that we are united with them neither in methodology nor in politics nor in jurisprudence nor even in sentiments.

In years prior, he suggested, it had been possible to paper over the differences between the real and the faux jihadis, but this was no longer the case:

The agreed principle of global jihad and enmity for the idol-rulers, and the principle of rebelling against them and fighting, united us with many, but as for methodology, jurisprudence, political theory, and the firmest bonds of monotheism … they have opposed us in these for decades … The time has come to purge this imaginary and flimsy union.

The idea of unity with Abu Qatada and his allies was a fantasy no longer worth indulging. This was a civil war, and it could not be avoided. Now more than ever, he said, it was imperative to define our core jihadi principles sharply and definitively, to “lay a foundation of monotheism, creed, and methodology above all things,” and on that foundation to “build a true and honest union.”

Abu Mahmud, the student and ally of Abu Qatada, replied on Telegram that it was al-Maqdisi who was the “intruder upon the current,” not his opponents.  “The jihadi current has never embraced the methodology of extremism,” he wrote, and al-Maqdisi has never been considered the principal “theoretician” (munazzir) of the movement. This was the view of al-Qaida’s leaders and scholars, who, he claimed, did not subscribe to al-Maqdisi’s exclusivist theology. Days later, al-Qaida would seem to prove his point.

Al-Qaida’s eulogy

On June 27, the “general leadership” of al-Qaida put out a statement eulogizing Morsi and advising the Egyptian people to rise up in armed jihad. “May God pardon him and forgive him,” it read. “We have no doubt that he was killed unjustly and oppressed, and we give our condolences to his family and to all his children and loved ones.” The two-page statement was no endorsement of Morsi or the Muslim Brotherhood, however, as it urged Egyptians to reject “the religion of democracy.”  The message was similar to an earlier al-Qaida statement from 2017 eulogizing Mahdi ‘Akif, the former spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. While registering its “disagreement” with ‘Akif on unspecified matters, al-Qaida had nonetheless underscored a shared “brotherhood of Islam.”

The reaction from Abu Qatada’s allies was predicable enough. Abu Mahmud, in an audio statement, suggested that al-Maqdisi would now have to accuse al-Qaida of diluting jihadism. Another ally of Abu Qatada’s hailed the statement as evidence of al-Qaida’s pan-Islamist orientation, saying the group does not subscribe to “the religion of the jihadi current” that some people are trying to found. Al-Qaida “sees itself as a part of the umma, not as an alternative to it,” he wrote. (Islamic State supporters, for their part, also felt vindicated. One of them took the statement as further proof of the “Brotherhoodization” of al-Qaida under the leadership of Zawahiri.)

Al-Maqdisi sought to downplay the apparent difference between himself and al-Qaida in light of the statement. In an audio message he once again stressed that his problem was with praising and expressing approval of Morsi, not so much with asking God to have mercy on him. And the al-Qaida statement had been clear in criticizing the democratic and pacifist inclinations of the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, the statement was for the most part unobjectionable.

In any case, he asserted, it would not be long before he was vindicated, as always happens. “Those who follow our history,” he said, “know that we have disagreed with al-Qaida before, and we have disagreed with some of the leaders of al-Qaida … and by the grace of God all those we have advised, in the end and after a certain time, not because I am infallible but by the grace of God … it has become clear that we were correct.” As evidence of his sterling record in this regard, al-Maqdisi cited the time in 2009 when he publicly took issue with an al-Qaida leader’s comments on Hamas—an episode described by Daniel Lav in his book (p. 171). The leader, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, had said an interview with Al Jazeera that “we and Hamas share the same thinking and the same method.” Al-Maqdisi objected in an essay, whereupon Abu al-Yazid recanted in a clarifying statement, acknowledging his error and thanking al-Maqdisi for his intervention.

In recounting this ten-year old story, however, al-Maqdisi invites the question whether al-Qaida would show him the same level of deference today as it did then. At a time when it is seeking to distinguish itself from the “extremism” of the Islamic State and appeal broadly to the umma, the likely answer is no.

Al-Qaida amid the storm

While al-Maqdisi’s views, particularly as regards theology, are highly popular among jihadis who support al-Qaida, the latter is trying to cultivate a broad base of support in the Islamic world. It needs the likes of al-Maqdisi for ideological legitimacy, but it also needs the support of Abu Qatada and his ilk if it is going to succeed in generating pan-Islamist appeal. The jihadi civil war being waged by the two men is thus an unwelcome development as far as al-Qaida is concerned. The group would like to hold on to the supporters of both, not choose between them. But the case of Syria, where HTS decided to cut ties with al-Qaida in pursuing the vision espoused by Abu Qatada, and where al-Qaida loyalists aligned with al-Maqdisi have formed a new al-Qaida franchise, suggests this may not be possible. The divide between these two ideological camps may well be unbridgeable, as al-Maqdisi suggests. He is always proven right, after all.