When military commander Ahmad al-Sharaa entered Damascus on December 8, 2024, he walked directly into the Umayyad Mosque. He led the prayers, addressed the crowd and announced the fall of the Assad regime. “Syria is being purified today,” he declared, presenting the moment not only as a Syrian victory but as a triumph for the wider Islamic nation. The symbolism was unmistakable. The Umayyad Mosque summoned layers of national, regional and historical memory in a region long marked by Sunni grievances, shaped by sectarian geopolitics and defined by the retreat of Iranian influence.
On the first anniversary of the regime’s collapse, President al-Sharaa returned to the same mosque wearing the same military fatigue he had worn upon entering the capital. Leading the dawn prayer, he spoke of closing the chapter on a dark era alien to Syria’s history and civilization. He pledged that rebuilding the state would rest on obedience to God, support for the oppressed and the establishment of justice. Beyond the symbolism, the speech revealed a deliberate intertwining of religious and political authority, suggesting a profound reordering of the relationship between religion, the state and perhaps the governing system itself.
The history of religion and state in Syria is intricate and insufficiently studied. The emergence of the modern nation-state alongside the colonial period reshaped religion’s role in public life, thrusting questions of Islamic law and cultural identity into political debate. French mandatory rule deepened these tensions by instrumentalizing religious sects, forming the Levant Army largely from marginalized minorities and attempting to partition the country into Alawite, Druze and Sunni entities.
After the Ba’ath Party seized power on March 8, 1963, religious identity became the principal tool through which the Military Committee—led by Alawite officers Muhammad Umran, Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad—consolidated control over the armed forces. Widespread purges of Sunni personnel followed. Under Hafez al-Assad, this evolved into what Sadiq Jalal al-Azm described as “political Alawitism,” a system that relied on sectarian networks to dominate state institutions through unspoken discriminatory practices.
Tensions between the new rulers and religion had surfaced even earlier. Umran’s imposition of radical socialist policies on a previously liberal economy, combined with his coastal background, ignited hostility that culminated in the 1964 Hama protests and the shelling of the Sultan Mosque—the first bombardment of a mosque in modern Syrian history. Sheikh Marwan Hadid’s movement emerged in this climate. By the 1980s, the regime had conflated Sunni Islam with the Muslim Brotherhood, transforming anti-religious repression into a central mechanism of state survival. Practicing religious rites within the military or civil service became grounds for suspicion and accusations of political disloyalty.
When the Syrian revolution erupted in 2011, it was unsurprising that demonstrations began in mosques. Religious adherence became a form of resistance; submission to God alone implied a rejection of submission to Assad. Under authoritarian rule, societies often grow more conservative as faith offers protection against despair and the promise of ultimate justice. Friday prayers provided the only permissible space for public assembly, allowing religious devotion and political protest to converge. The state could not easily close mosques during an uprising, and as sectarian policies turned faith into a political identity, even non-religious citizens joined the demonstrations. Despite intelligence efforts to provoke sectarian slogans, protests emerging from mosques largely maintained a non-sectarian discourse, underscoring how religion functioned primarily as an instrument of anti-regime resistance.
President al-Sharaa now confronts this legacy: religion as a vehicle of political resistance and as a core component of identity. Restoring the status of Islamic law, rejecting the nation-state order and pursuing change through force have long defined the worldview of jihadist-Salafist movements. Al-Sharaa’s own trajectory—from traveling to Baghdad to fight the U.S. occupation, to founding Jabhat al-Nusra, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the Salvation Government—continues to shape his engagement with the state’s inherited structures.
Dismantling the former regime’s anti-religious legacy has naturally become a priority for the new leadership. This includes purging remnants of the Assad system, neutralizing the religious imprint of Iranian intervention and establishing a reconciled relationship between state and religion. Over his first year in office, al-Sharaa has governed largely through pragmatic rather than doctrinal policies, grounding domestic and foreign decisions in state interests rather than predetermined religious rulings. Yet actions by certain officials—such as directives issued by governors in Damascus and Latakia—have prompted questions about whether a top-down Islamization of society is underway.
This pragmatic approach faces resistance from hardline figures within Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, particularly amid ongoing threats from ISIS, which seeks to exploit internal dissent. At times, controversial administrative decisions appear intended to placate internal hardliners and ease tensions among former battlefield allies rather than signal a lasting policy direction. Such measures are often reversed when confronted with resistance from Syria’s diverse society.
Rebuilding the religious landscape has required systemic policy changes, beginning with the restructuring of religious institutions. Political vetting was applied to clerics, prayer leaders and academics who had been loyal to the Assad regime. The Syrian Islamic Council—originally established to counter ISIS and guide revolutionary activities—was dissolved and replaced by a broader Fatwa Council that, for the first time, integrates Salafi and Ash’ari perspectives. Sheikh Osama al-Rifai was appointed as its head and as Grand Mufti of the Republic, alongside the creation of a new position for a presidential advisor on religious affairs.
Historically, the Ba’ath regime stripped the Grand Mufti’s office of independence, interfering directly in the 1964 election of Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro before Hafez al-Assad abolished elections altogether and transformed the post into an appointed instrument of regime policy. Under the new administration, the appointment mechanism remains executive-led, yet the selection of the Mufti now occurs largely through consensus between the Fatwa Council and the presidency, preserving a measure of symbolic authority that resists external imposition.
The Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs—established in 1965 to control the religious sphere by turning clerics into state employees—has also been repurposed. Now led by a figure with a background in the opposition and charitable work, the ministry has scaled back its surveillance functions and focused instead on fostering cohesion through the Covenant of Islamic Discourse Unity, an agreement establishing shared principles within the framework of the state.
These restored religious institutions now contribute to state legitimacy. Integrating them into the governing apparatus while respecting their symbolic autonomy stands in sharp contrast to the post-1963 Ba’athist era, which systematically subjugated religious bodies and drove opposition discourse underground. Religious activities, previously banned or tightly controlled, are returning with limited oversight, and institutions operate as part of the state rather than in opposition to it.
This reordering is reflected in the Constitutional Declaration, where President al-Sharaa retained two traditional clauses present since the 1950 constitution: that the religion of the President of the State is Islam, and that Islamic jurisprudence is the primary source of legislation. Altering these provisions would have created a crisis of legitimacy among his core base and sent a conflicting signal to the Sunni majority that carried the revolution’s burden. Moreover, a government deriving its authority from revolutionary legitimacy lacks the mandate to decide on foundational sovereign matters in the absence of an elected parliament.
Under decades of Ba’athist rule, officials displayed superficial religious observance during major holidays to maintain a veneer of legitimacy, even as state policies remained hostile to religion. President Ahmed al-Sharaa, by contrast, is a devout figure whose personal faith informs his leadership style. The ongoing effort to redefine the relationship between religion and state in Syria flows directly from this reality.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
