Meet the Syrian sheikh battling Islamic State ideology one mind at a time

REYHANLI, Turkey — In a bare, three-story building near the Syrian border, a clean-shaven US-backed Syrian rebel commander sits with his sheikh, plotting how to protect his fighters against Islamic State (IS).

It’s not guns and ammo they are discussing, but steeling the minds of his poor, tired and frustrated fighters against defecting to the group that has sucked recruits from rebel groups across the country.

“ISIS has the dream. They have the Islamic state,” says Sheikh Abu Omar Shishani. “The Syrian people were poor to begin with, and the war made them poorer. ISIS is the strongest in terms of money and weapons so people resort to it because they think they have no choice.”

The sheikh sips his tea through his six-inch orange and grey bushy beard. Dressed in a long navy and white pinstriped galabia, he laughs through his missing front teeth, offers up fresh Kuwaiti dates from a tupperware box and rails against IS (also called ISIS or ISIL).

The commander is Iyad Shamse of the Authenticity and Development Front (ADF), a US-backed rebel group. He says he hasn’t had any defections yet, and he’s determined to remain vigilant.

With the brutal Syrian conflict about to enter its fifth year, the state of play between the myriad rebel groups on the ground is distilled Machiavellianism.

Since the beginning of the war, rebel fighters have been attracted to the strongest and richest groups. In the last six months, funding for moderate groups has slowed significantly, with private Gulf donors spooked by the uptick of anti-terrorist financing laws.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces, meanwhile, have been bolstered by Iranian, Lebanese Hezbollah and Afghan Shia militias.

For rebels, the thought of joining IS or Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, a strong, secure and well-funded operation, grows more appealing.

“It’s bad for us, the Syrians, that the funding pulls us around,” sighs Iyad.

“At the beginning of the revolution, when the funding came from the sheikhs, people grew beards. Then when the funding came from the international community, people started to shave and wear suits.”

Anti-takfiri books 

But suits or no suits, US support has also been slow, intermittent and in northern Syria, vastly ineffective.

The first Western-backed group — the Syrian Revolutionary Front, led by Jamal Maarouf — collapsed in a matter of days last autumn when seriously challenged by Jabhat al-Nusra.

Last weekend, a key base of a second US-armed group, Haraket Hazm, fell to al-Nusra, with pictures of US-supplied weapons in Al Qaeda hands posted online just hours after the US led train-and-equip program of Syrian rebels was due to start in Turkey.

The plan aims to train a force of 5,000 starting this year specifically to take on IS, although whether they will also fight Jabhat al-Nusra remains unclear.

Many observers say the US support will not be enough to challenge IS on the ground. 

The Ahl Al-Hadith Center, an Islamic institute based in Reyhanli on the Turkish-Syrian border, has made it their mission to preach against the extremists and their intolerant version of Islam espoused by Bin Laden and his takfiri legacy.

A "takfiri" is a Muslim who arbitrarily accuses another Muslim of apostasy, and the accusation of "takfir" can only be made through Islamic courts.

Funded by private donations from the Gulf, the center has shipped 1,500 cartons of anti-takfiri books into Syria to be taught in schools, mosques and Islamic institutes.

Golden calligraphy adorns the rich red and black covers of the guides aimed to instruct the “correct” way to embark on jihad, according to mainstream Salafis, the kind of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.

A quick glance at the table of contents shows topics including “Explosions and assassinations: reasons, impact and preventions; Explosions and Vandalism in Islamic Countries; Assassinations; Suicide Operations; Going against Muslim Rulers; Hijacking of Airplanes." 

The sheikh insists the texts explain why or when the tactics can’t be justified by the Koran or the Hadith, a collection of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings.

'Us and them'

It quickly becomes clear this is not the sheikh’s first rodeo. He says he met Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s before the world’s once-most-wanted terrorist gained infamy. The sheikh was preaching to Russian-fighting mujahideen in Peshawar on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Osama bin Laden "was kind-hearted and naive back then, but his mind was manipulated by [Egyptian doctor and current Al Qaeda leader] Al-Zawahiri. It was the doctor that started this dangerous ‘us and them’ mentality we see now.”

It’s the “us and them” takfiri extremism Bin Laden espoused that Al Qaeda, and now IS, use to religiously legitimize the killing of anyone they deem to be an infidel, which is basically anyone who disagrees with them.

The sheikh says he never subscribed to this kind of thinking, branding Al Qaeda and its ilk “khwarij” — a term used for Muslims who endanger Islam — more than its traditional and historical adversaries of Jews and Christians.

Abu Mohammad, the center’s manager, is from Deir ez-Zour province on Syria’s border with Iraq, where he first saw the foreign fighters arrive — ushered through Syria to fight the US in Iraq during the Iraq War. 

He ran a bookshop selling Islamic texts and preached against the intolerant takfiri ideology and says he’s been fighting this ideology since 2003.

“The scenario in Iraq is very similar to what happened in Syria,” he says. “In Iraq there were also national groups. Then afterwards Al Qaeda appeared and they said whoever is not with us is against us, which is where we are now in Syria.”

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Among the first groups to fight IS was Iyad Shamse’s group, the ADF, after they were attacked in the oil-rich province of Deir ez-Zor. He claims the proof that their teachings work is in the pudding — they lost the battle and had to withdraw, but their fighters stayed loyal, while other groups collapsed or split to join IS.

“Our fighters have daily lessons and teachings and advice — the scholars and teachers live and fight with them. When they are away from the front, fighters attend courses that last for ten days or two weeks taught by Syrian and Saudi Arabian scholars.”

All the men concede they aren’t doing enough — the book-sets and leaflets they send to Syria are long, dense and heavy, and rely on the teachers and imams to preach to the youth.

The strategy is antiquated compared to the slickly produced videos and waves of online recruiters heavily laden with propaganda aimed at kids who have spent the last four years surrounded by blood, bombing and hunger.

The center has a Facebook page, and uses Twitter occasionally. But as with the fight on the battlefield, lack of funding is hampering their efforts. 

"It's difficult," they concede. "We know of our failings, but what can we do with so little resources?"