Syria: Secularism with clean-shaven specifications

It seems that Ahmad al-Sharaa, the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, missed the opportunity that the “educated” – not to mention the secular Arabs – were waiting for. He made them lose the opportunity to write articles, conduct studies on diverse topics, or write under attractive titles such as: “A dark future after the Taliban take control of Syria” or “The existential threat to Syria’s minorities after the ISIS takeover” or news titles such as: “ISIS in Syria blows up churches in Aleppo” or the desired title: “Hundreds killed and wounded in an attack launched by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham forces on Alawite areas in Latakia.” All of these articles and titles, al-Sharaa seems to have closed their market, despite all attempts to reopen some shops in this large bazaar called the Middle East.

Sharaa has appeared on more than one occasion, scoring multiple goals that no one expected, just as no one expected his forces to control Damascus, since his first meeting with CNN, an interview in which he did not try to deny his past, but rather shed light on the fact that this past was part of a series of transformations that a person goes through in his life, during his long journey towards maturity and balance.

On the BBC, Al-Sharaa was asked about a girl who asked him to take a picture with her, and he asked her to cover her head. He replied, “I did not force her, this is my personal freedom, I like to be photographed in a way that suits me.” He stated in the interview that he did not want to turn Syria into “a copy of Afghanistan.” On several occasions, he continued to emphasize that Syria would not pose a threat to any country, in what seemed to be a policy through which he wanted to build balanced foreign relations, even with countries that supported the Bashar al-Assad regime, while simultaneously sending internal messages to all segments, classes, and sects of Syrian society that Syria is for everyone, and that the vision of one component cannot be imposed on the entire people. This is a speech that we rarely find the likes of from the tongue of a “fighter” who has not yet emerged from the “dust of battle.”

This discourse and this policy did not please a significant number of those who wore secular clothing, to hide the truth of their sectarian, ethnic, or ideological orientation, which is why they are hostile to the Syrian revolution, on the basis that it is not a “secular, modern, liberal” revolution, but rather the revolution of a group of people with long “black beards” with whom Syria will enter a dark era of reactionism, backwardness, and religious extremism.

Since Sharia’s policy did not meet the desire of those educated people to open a market to sell their goods based on the existence of religious extremism, and on groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda, since the matter is different this time, and since Ahmad Sharia’s winds did not bring what these “very secular” people desired, they must conduct an “intentions examination” and not be satisfied with that, but they must also fabricate video clips and pump out a large amount of misleading information, for the purpose of confusion and distortion, which is what made them exaggerate in expressing their pessimism regarding the new Syrian regime.

Here, the “battalion of writers” went into great detail about the passing of the era of personal freedoms, and women’s freedom in particular, and they began to talk about beards, their length, size, and color, and they used artificial intelligence and Photoshop techniques to compose and pump out countless images and clips indicating that Syria had entered the “Stone Age.”

Discussing the future of “alcohol” in the new Syria has become more important than the future of Syria itself, and more important than the fate of its people. Syria, with all its history, present and future, with all its momentum, richness, symbolism, weight and position, has become crammed into a “whiskey bottle” that the “Arab secularist” wants to be reassured about its fate, before issuing his final judgment on the regime of the “black bearded ones.”

Instead of raising questions about the form of the state and the distribution of powers within the new political system, instead of addressing the economic situation in a country destroyed by a “secular regime,” and instead of writing about the necessary solutions to the crises facing the country at all levels, those who are cloaked in the garb of secularism want to be reassured about the future of the new Syria, and even about the future of the bottle of whiskey and the women’s fashion that the wife of the President represented.

This is a strange and bizarre secularism. Anything can be said about it except that it is secularism, because it represents a group of sectarian hatreds, opportunistic tendencies, damaged consciences, disguised instincts, and ideological blindness. All of this is presented to the Arab peoples as the secularism that represents - in its Arab version - the solutions to all the problems in this geographical area whose problems and issues never end.

The interesting thing is that a group of “Arab secularists” held a mourning for the “modern secular regime” that ruled Syria, and the wife of the president of that regime participated in the public space, with her beautifully styled hair, elegant clothes, and civilized appearance, as a symbol of modern Syria, which was a fortress of secularism, modernity, and women’s rights that were of exaggerated interest to “Arab secularists.” These rights, in any case, did not include the female detainees who were found with their children in the prisons of Sednaya and other prisons of the “secular Assad regime” that was overthrown by the “Black Beard Revolution” with its “reactionary tendencies,” or let’s say the “revolutionary resistance regime” that was overthrown by “agents of America and Israel.”

Everyone has the right to be reassured about the future of Syria with the presence of a new regime, as the new brings with it apprehension and fears among different segments, but the huge amount of writings being pumped out today has gone beyond the issue of legitimate fears, and even gone beyond “trializing intentions” to a kind of blatant fabrications and fabrications that have taken a pre-emptive stance against the Syrian revolution, a stance based on a “dogmatic ideology” that has ready-made judgments based on preconceived notions against anyone who disagrees with it, and these judgments and notions belong to ideological contexts that in turn belong to distant periods of time, from whose dictionaries “Arab secularism” is still drawing, ignoring that much water has flowed under the bridge, and that what it is doing belongs to a kind of “framed secularism” or “ideological secularism” that seeks to deny the other, and not that secularism that believes in the rights of everyone, and recognizes the other as a basic partner in construction, no matter the degree of disagreement with him.

Today we are faced with secularists who see the difference between secular and religious regimes as embodied in the nature of the difference between Bashar al-Assad’s clean-shaven beard and Ahmed al-Sharaa’s bearded beard. Therefore, they can side with Assad, the “clean-shaven dictator,” against al-Sharaa, the “bearded revolutionary,” based on superficial assessments that focus on the presence or absence of facial hair, assessments that inspire a great deal of sorrow and mockery at the same time.

*Quoted from Al-Quds Al-Arabi