Is Syria Becoming Salafist?, by Rahaf Aldoughli – 11 November 2026

From New Lines Magazine

The question is unavoidable, but it masks the diversity among the country’s Sunni Muslim majority and the complex ways that religion and politics interact

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, one question continues to circulate on Syrian social media, and among political elites and Western observers trying to make sense of Syria’s political transition: To what degree will the new government move toward Salafism, adopting a fundamentalist Islamist ideology?

The question arises from a number of incidents. On Oct. 8, 2025, less than a year after Assad’s fall, units of Syria’s new army marched through central Damascus in a military parade attended by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. The soldiers were expressing solidarity with Gaza, but the language in which they did so was striking. As they passed through the iconic Umayyad Square, a symbol of the Syrian revolution, they chanted, “We are the soldiers of Qadisiyya, the soldiers of Saad and al-Baraa,” invoking an early Islamic military victory and two figures associated with the Islamic conquests. Syrians’ identification with Palestine was hardly new. What was new was that the chant came from soldiers of the new Syrian army, marching through the capital before a leader whose own political trajectory had begun in jihadist networks.

Five months later, I encountered a scene in Damascus that raised the same question in a different way. On the morning of March 20, 2026, Syrians filled the Umayyad Mosque for Eid al-Fitr prayers. Among them were soldiers in uniform, standing shoulder to shoulder with civilians, bowing and praying with them. A Damascene woman who had entered the mosque for the first time since Assad’s fall was astonished by what she saw. “We would never have imagined in our lifetime seeing our army praying side by side with civilians,” she told me, “and seeing soldiers praying in public.”

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Rahaf Aldoughli is Assistant Professor at Lancaster University in the UK. Her research looks at how authoritarian rule and war reshape political identities in Syria, with a focus on political violence, sectarianism, masculinity and nationalism. She is the author of ‘Romanticizing Masculinity in Baathist Syria: Ideology, Identity and Gender’ (Manchester University Press, 2024).

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