The initial offensive to defeat Assad's regime was led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - which was set up in 2012 under a different name, al-Nusra Front, and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda the following year.
HTS publicly broke ranks with al-Qaeda in 2016 but is still designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, Turkey and other countries.
The US has named the group's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, as a specially designated global terrorist and offered a $10m reward for information that leads to his capture.
Jawlani told CNN on Friday that "the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime" and that he planned to create a government based on institutions and a "council chosen by the people".
Frank Gardner’s distinction between Islam and Islamism is shockingly inaccurate. He says the difference between Islam and Islamism is that Islamists do not believe in the separation of politics and religion. This is NONSENSE! Islam itself doesn’t believe in the separation of politics and religion! In fact, no good Muslim should. It is basic to Islam that there be no separation between the spiritual and the temporal. Islam is one indivisible, coherent, organic whole.
These politically correct people working for organisations such as the BBC do their best to confuse people and to obfuscate the truth. But they lie! No good Muslim can believe, is allowed to believe, in the separation of mosque and state.
Christianity allows for a separation of the spiritual and the temporal, the separation of Church and state. Islam adheres to no such concept.
What an Islamist really is, is a person who adheres STRICTLY to the tenets of his faith. He is a fundamentalist Muslim – a Muslim who wishes to re-create an Islamic state that resembles the ideal that the Prophet Muhammad admonished his followers to do. They stray in no way from the tenets of their faith.
The myth of a moderate devout Muslim is just that: a myth! Yes, there are moderate Muslims. But moderate Muslims are Muslims that have strayed from, or are straying from, their faith. Never forget this: Prophet Muhammad is considered the ‘the perfect man’ (al-Insān al-Kāmil [الإنسان الكامل]). This is why many Muslim men try to emulate the Prophet’s behaviour, mannerisms, way of dressing, and facial hair, and so on and so forth. But this is not just for so-called ‘Islamists’. It is also for all Muslim men who revere their religion.
It is high time that Westerners learn the true nature of Islam, and the way of living its adherents are expected to follow. – © Mark Alexander
