The New Dark Age

Tuesday, 11 March 2025 — Al Mayadeen English

 Robert Inlakesh examines the rise of Sunni Nationalism in Syria, comparing it to Zionism and exposing its role in fueling sectarian violence and Western-backed destabilization.

The horrifying civilian massacres carried out across the Syrian coast are stupefyingly awful, on a scale reminiscent of the height of the ISIS insurgency in Iraq. Yet, there are still countless people identifying as Muslims who are trying to defend these actions. Their predominant ideology is not that of “Sunni Islam”, but rather of a nationalist identity rooted in a theological justification, in other words, a Muslims Zionism.

As a disclaimer, I write this as a practicing Sunni Muslim who is appalled at the way my faith has been weaponized to justify the very atrocities that Allah (SWT) tells us to fight against and prevent at all costs.

The Division of Syria

It has long been the agenda of the Zionist Entity to divide Syria into a number of weakened and defenseless Statelets, many of which it seeks to establish ties with and also of which justify its existence as a self-described “Jewish State”.

While the Zionist regime’s alliance with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has long been known, the Israelis doubled down on throwing their weight behind the group that controls Syria’s north-east on December 8, 2024. Simultaneously, the Zionists occupied the entirety of the Golan Heights and carried out their largest ever air campaign to destroy Syria’s military capabilities.

For years, the Zionist regime provided material and financial support, in addition to medical aid, to at least a dozen Syrian opposition groups, including Al-Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda in Syria). Al-Nusra would of course later become Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which now rules over Damascus with an iron fist. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who now prefers to go by Ahmed al-Sharaa, was originally an MI6 (British intelligence) project and was a former commander of ISIS.

The Zionists understood that the groups they were backing, including what would later become “HTS”, were led by foreign intelligence operatives, but that their rank and file were fanatical militants. This worked well for the Israelis in two ways: while the leadership of the group can be manipulated, the fanatical takfiris who actually believe in their group’s ideology are left to commit atrocities against civilians that will drive them towards federalization.

Although this history is largely forgotten, significant portions of Syria’s minority groups were in support of the movement to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, yet what changed their minds and made them rally around the former Syrian leader was the behavior of the sectarian death squads who ended up leading the Syrian opposition.

However, after 2018, as the Syrian economy went into steep decline and the civil war became a frozen conflict, the vision that many Syrians had adopted for their future had faded. The US and EU sanctions strangled the country and plunged the people of Syria into poverty.

By the time al-Jolani came to launch his assault on Aleppo, the entire State ended up crumbling and this occurred without any major fighting. On top of this, it appeared briefly as if the HTS militants were not going to carry out the kinds of massacres many had long feared they would.

Yet, after two months, the sectarian field executions did not stop, the Israelis were essentially at the gates of Damascus and the new government was still incapable of getting its affairs in order. The real question here is whether Jolani is part of a conspiracy to commit civilian massacres with the aim of dividing Syria, or if he is just a useful idiot that is behaving as a murderous dictator.

When the rebellion occurred on the Syrian coast, the instant response was the mass deployment of paramilitary forces and security services, while sectarian demonstrators chanted for the blood of the Alawites. The official justification for the massacres that followed – including civilians who had even been opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s rule – was that “remnants of the regime” were to be hunted down.

What followed was the largest gift to the Israelis that could ever have been given, sectarian gangsters burst into civilian homes and murdered men, women, and children. Even babies were not spared from the brutality of the new regime. Elderly men were tossed around, humiliated and shot in the streets, teenagers taken into the open and executed. When their Sunni neighbours tried to intervene to stop the massacres, they were murdered too.

It is clear that these actions were carried out with genocidal intent, and no reasonable person can deny the mass slaughter of innocent civilians. On a personal note, it is so bad that Sunni Syrian contacts of mine in Hama and Homs have told me that they are too scared to share their opinions on social media for fear of being targeted.

While it is certainly the malicious agenda of the Zionists to divide Syria, the blame cannot now be placed upon the reactions of the minority communities who seek to preserve their own livelihoods, but instead on the new administration in Damascus that has committed the atrocities. If the country continues on its current trajectory, there won’t be a country called Syria any more and this is the fault of the sectarian death squads who worked to divide the country.

The Israelis are now grinning, waiting for the opportunity to seize more territory and use collaborators to carve out a series of regimes that will work in their favour. Meanwhile, not a single bullet from Jolani’s men has been directed at the occupying entity.