My Favorite Jihadist Ever!

15 Kislev 5785 (16 Dec 2024)

Emir Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (he/him) the Reformed, Sword of YIMBYism, Conqueror of al-Shams in the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful has, with the strength of Allah, the power of the US State Department, the stupidity of the Axis of Detergent, and the secret hermetic knowledge contained within Why Nations Fail by overrated (coincidentally) Turkish economist and Nobel Prize laureate Daron Acemoglu (rumoured to be second to the Qur’an in wisdom), is now, at least according to CNN and other serious people, the guy in “charge” of “Syria.”

Al-Jolani, to put it lightly, has a colorful history. As has been widely reported in the press, he had past affiliations with al-Qaeda and ISIS. In fact, he was one of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s closest allies, and the two worked together closely in establishing the al-Nusra Front, a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. The two later had a falling out over a Soviet-style ideological dispute, with al-Baghdadi taking the (cringe, losing, pickaxe-to-the-head) Trotskyite global revolution approach to Islamism while al-Jolani the Soon-To-Be-Reformed promoted a more (based, winning, absolute power for life) Stalinist national revolution approach. Clearly he was using his head, because al-Jolani now runs Syria with the full support of The Power That Be while al-Baghdadi, according to one reliable source, “died like a dog.”

Just a couple weeks ago, al-Jolani the Reformed appeared on CNN where he explained that he is not the same man who used to run around beheading people and blowing up schools. As Syria’s new enlightened despot explained, that was simply youthful indiscretion. Who among us hasn’t set up an al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq in preparation for the inevitable chaos that would follow the toppling of Saddam Hussein? This, of course, is normal behavior for a man in his 20s. You probably can’t relate because you live a sterile comfortable middle class lifestyle and the most based thing you’ve done this week is like a LEZM meme on Instagram, but if you check in on one of those Israeli settlers who burned a baby alive 20 years down the line they could probably find al-Jolani’s journey pretty relatable.

The point is, al-Jolani is leaving Radical Islamic Terrorism behind in favor of a new ideology: Radical Islamic Centrism. Instead of slaughtering Christians, al-Jolani plans to slaughter traffic, setting up bus routes across his country to better facilitate transportation. Instead of forcing people to memorize the Qur’an, Alhamdullilah he will lower taxes to attract international investment and rebuild his country. Instead of beheading Shi’ites, he utters the Wahhabi-Trudeauist motto “diversity is our strength.”! He even trimmed his beard and dressed up as Zelenskyy when he showed up for the interview and, even though he still looks like a terrorist, one can’t help but admire the effort. 

Photo of a Syrian girl taking a souvenir picture with Mohammad al-Jolani. The girl exclaimed that he has brought freedom to Syria.

It seems like al-Jolani can’t even muster excitement about liberating the Golan Heights these days, a cause which was once so dear to him that he renamed himself after it (his real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa). As he was going on and on about how he was going to build strong government institutions in Syria to facilitate development, the interviewer asked him what he planned to do about Israel, which at the time of their conversation was actively eliminating the only real “institution” the modern Syria ever had from the sky. Al-Jolani didn’t seem bothered about it, and went on some more about how building institutions is his primary focus right now. The fact that Israel just invaded Syria and seized the demarcation zone didn’t seem to bother him much either.

While I can’t say I spent a great deal of time following the Syrian Civil War over the years, the Arab Spring it emerged from was actually the catalyst that got me interested in politics in the first place. Over the years, I watched many “moderate rebels” enter the scene, only for them to be revealed that the “moderate rebels” did not, in fact, have the 13 Keys to the White House. In Egypt, the democrats were quickly swept away by the Muslim Brotherhood until they were overthrown a few years later by the military, bringing Egypt back full circle with a status quo which continues to this day. In Libya and Yemen, it appears nobody had the keys to the White House, and the countries have been neo-Somalias ever since. Tunisia seemed to be doing okay for a bit, but is now back to being a dictatorship. And aside from Assad’s Syria, the Arab Spring failed to topple governments anywhere else.

With all these events of the past decade in mind, it’s reasonable to be skeptical about the new “moderate rebels” who have taken control of Syria, especially given the youthful indiscretions of Mr. al-Jolani. Yet despite the absurdity of a former al-Qaeda leader moving on to build medium-density homes because Matthew Yglesias told him to, the evidence from the past few years suggests that he’s serious about his Jihadi-neoliberal ideology, at least if we judge him by the results he’s achieved in and around Idlib, which al-Jolani has effectively governed for a few years. Satellite footage shows that, in the past few years of the Civil War, the amount of light pollution emanating from regime-controlled regions of Syria declined by 50% while in Idlib light pollution grew by 900%. Despite constant bombardment from the Assad regime, the population of Idlib has grown much faster than the rest of Syria as unemployed Syrians move there to find work. 

Of course, while al-Jolani does appear to be serious about his ideological shifts, that doesn’t mean Syria will be on a smooth course towards development. Al-Jolani could always be overthrown, for example, or be forced to succumb to the various Islamist factions who make up much of his support base. Perhaps the country could once again fracture under the weight of its ethnic diversity. But if he is capable of consolidating power while moving forward with the moderate agenda he seems to be implementing on the ground, it’s possible that Syria could end up looking less like Iraq and more like Oman, which would probably be making the most out of its potential.

That’s why I think we should be optimistic. Maybe replacing an overly cautious secular dictator with a YIMBY-Al Qaedaist “reformed” Islamist promising to build 15-Minute Medinahs will prove to be a bad idea as it plays out but, at the end of the day, a society that doesn’t risk moving backwards cannot move forwards. The Assad regime was depraved, ruled by a despot as comically corrupt as Idi Amin and propped up with prisons as grotesquely inhumane as Auschwitz. The contrast between the lavish mansions Assad and his criminal associates were living in compared to the piles of dead bodies in his mouldy underground prison cells tells the whole story. We’re yet to see what the full fruits of al-Jolani’s ideological journey will be, but it would need to go to great lengths to be worse than what the Assadists had to offer their people, and the world.

Scenes from inside Assad’s torture prison Sedanya.

In other words, glory to Emir Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani (he/him) the Reformed, Sword of YIMBYism, Conqueror of al-Sham in the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, the most Merciful! Long may he reign over all of al-Sham, sans the Jolani Heights, of course.

- Beau Chasse