“I find it hard to see Al-Joulani breaking Sharia law”

What legal order in the new Syria? This question is essential for the future of the country. A specialist in Arab countries, researcher Fabrice Balanche describes the transition between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the Islamists of HTS from the angle of law, particularly that applying to women.

Fabrice Balanche is a lecturer at the University of Lyon 2. He is the author of Lessons from the Syrian crisis (Odile Jacob, 2024). He lived in Syria for six years in the 1990s. In this interview with watsonhe compares the legal situation under Bashar al-Assad with that which could arise in a predominantly Sunni and religious Syria, now led by Islamists.

Under the Assad era, if we ignore the dictatorial nature of the regime, what is the law, what is the law that formally applied?
Fabrice Balanche: We usually say that the exception proves the rule. In Syria, it was quite the opposite. The rule was the exception.

But there was indeed a right with its articles of law?
Obviously. There was a penal code and a civil code 90% inspired by French law, since the Damascus law unit was founded under the French mandate, in force from 1920 to 1946 in Syria and Lebanon. But there was religious law which was also imposed in matters of management of private, so-called family, affairs, i.e. everything relating to marriage and inheritance, among others.

What did this mean in concrete terms?
For example, a Christian could not marry a Muslim woman unless he converted to Islam, under Muslim law. Still in Muslim law, and this still applies, children take the religion of the father. In the event of repudiation, the children, from 7 years old for boys, 9 years old for girls, join the father and not the mother. In inheritance, among Christians, women and men have the same share, but among Muslims, the woman has half the share of a man. The millet system, a survival of the Ottoman Empire, applied in Assad’s Syria, as in other Arab-Muslim countries with non-Muslim minorities.

What does millet mean?
It is a term that refers to communities. Each religious community was governed, with regard to family affairs, by its own law. In Syria there was a millet – or a millah, in Arabic – for the Christians, another for the Jews, with differences between Maronites and Orthodox among the Christians. On the other hand, there was only one millah for Muslims, the same for Sunnis and Shiites.

Did the Druze and Alawites – the Assad minority – also have their own rights?
It was a bit unusual for them, because Druze and Alawites were not recognized as Muslims until 1932. They really lived on the margins. Under the Syrian Republic, they were recognized as Muslims. Which means that Muslim law applied to them too, but with local case law.

Was Islam, also in Syria, an important driving force of Arab nationalism?
Yes of course. But we have to put things in context.

We must remember that in 1963, it was Baathist Sunnis who took power. It was not until 1966 that they were excluded in favor of the Alawites, Druzes and Ismailis. The Alawites then eject the Druze and the Ismailis, according to the salami tactic. So at the time we had a power that was, if not atheistic, at least completely secular.

What about the rest of Syrian society in the 1960s?
At that time as today, the majority Syrian society is steeped in Islam. The Baathist power must come to terms with it.

Hafez al-Assad is forced to add an article to the constitution saying that the president of the republic must be Muslim. The Alawites in power still had to take into account the immense Sunni community, two thirds of the population, which did not prevent Hafez al-Assad from committing a massacre in Hama in 1982 to put down a rebellion by the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni Islamists. There will be at least 10,000 deaths among residents.

Do you think that the legal structure based on community bases will continue in the new Syria led by the Islamists of HTS, who have claimed to want to guarantee the rights of minorities?
Yes, automatically. In any case, with the ideology of the people in power today in Damascus, ultra-conservative Sunnis, Christians will benefit from protection as dhimmis, dhimmis meaning the protected, but also the inferior in the eyes of Sharia law. But in the previous system, that of the Assads, in court, the voice of a Christian witness was worth as much as the voice of a Muslim witness. Whereas, in Muslim law, it takes two Christian votes to make one Muslim vote.

Could this unequal system be introduced?
It’s very possible. Christians will be protected, but we must expect them to be second-class citizens. I find it hard to see Syria’s new strongman, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Chara, breaking Sharia law.

Recent video shows Abu Mohammed al-Joulani asking a teenage girl to cover her head. In another, a young Syrian actress says she was called to order by Islamist rebels, who told her: “You are too free, we are now in an Islamic state. Women cannot go out alone without a guardian, their brother or their husband.” On this, the new managers wanted to reassure the actress. How could the rest happen? Will Christian women, to name just a few, be required to veil themselves?
Absolutely, no. In their village or in their neighborhood, they will not wear the veil. But as soon as they come out, and all the women elsewhere are veiled, they will risk having problems or remarks if they do not wear it.

Are we moving towards a tightening of Sharia law for Sunnis?
Yes, this will happen gradually. Al-Joulani is anything but a fanciful person. He knows what he’s doing. He is very intelligent. I have studied him since 2012, 2013, when he was the head of Al-Nusra, then, later, of the HTS. I clearly saw his way of doing things, of hiding, of taking possession of Idlib, quietly, by eliminating his adversaries.

Let us not forget that he needs the support of the international community. The Europeans think that by pouring billions into him, they will have leverage over him. Yes, but limited and provisional leverage.

Is the veiling of Muslim women essential in the Islamist ideology promoted by the HTS?

Could there not be a compromise on the question of the veil in the new Syria, with a veil which sometimes reveals part of the hair, as in Iran sometimes?
Syrian society is not Iranian society. In Iran, we have a secular society led by a theocratic minority. Whereas in Syria, the society is very religious and does not seek to free itself from Islam.

The view must be critical in the face of the new Islamist power in Syria. However, does this allow us to challenge the legitimacy of this new power which put an end to 50 years of a particularly ferocious dictatorship?

In any case, the leader of HTS is in tune with a majority of the population, since they are Arab, Sunni and conservative.

During the Cold War, during the occupation of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union, the United States made Afghan jihadists, some of whom would form al-Qaeda, their allies against Moscow. All things being equal, are we seeing a similar scenario in Syria?
Yes, this is the theory of Brzezinski, former security adviser to the United States in the 70s and 80s. I talk about it in my book Lessons from the Syrian crisis. Between a few bearded men and the fall of the USSR, the fall of the USSR was still more important in the eyes of the United States.

Whose fall is that?
It is the fall of the Iranian axis, of which Bashar al-Assad’s Syria was a part. And behind the Iranian axis, it is also a deep cut in the Eurasian Russia-China-Iran axis.

And it is a Türkiye, currently supporting the HTS and which we feared would tip over to the Eurasian side, which mechanically is moving closer to the West. Because Russia and Iran will harbor a certain hostility towards it.

Update on the situation in Syria