Jama'at Ansar al-Furqan in Bilad al Sham (; lit. "Supporters of the Criterion in the Levant") was an armed

jihadist Jihadism is a neologism for modern, armed militant Political aspects of Islam, Islamic movements that seek to Islamic state, establish states based on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief that armed confrontation ...

group that was active in Syria which was established in the fall of 2017 by former members of

Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar Liwa al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (LMA, ), Brigade of Emigrants and Supporters or literally Banner of the Emigrants and Supporters), also known as Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMA or JAMWA, , Army of Emigrants and Supporters), formerly the Muhajire ...

. The group was reportedly led by the son of al-Qaeda's founder

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...

Hamza bin Laden Hamza bin Laden (9 May 19892017/2019) was a Saudi-born key member of al-Qaeda. He was a son of Osama bin Laden. On 14 September 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation on the Durand Li ...

Background

In the group's charter it claimed to be at war with the government of

Bashar al-Assad Bashar al-Assad (born 11September 1965) is a Syrian politician, military officer and former dictator Sources characterising Assad as a dictator: who served as the president of Syria from 2000 until fall of the Assad regime, his government ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, the

Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army The Syrian National Army (SNA; ), also known as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), is a coalition of armed Syrian opposition groups that participate in the Syrian civil war. Comprising various rebel factions that emerged at the sta ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Shias Shia Islam is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib () as both his political successor (caliph) and as the spiritual leader of the Muslim community (imam). However, his right is understood to ...

and

atheists Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

. The charter also outlined the group's opposition to both democratic and

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

governments and opposition to the various current Arab governments, most of whom are

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin , or or ), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. The origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself. The concept was fleshed out through Christian hi ...

. The group had called upon various jihadist factions to unite and focus on fighting common enemies and had recruited many veteran jihadist fighters from such groups in Syria. The group also reportedly had a large number of veteran al-Qaeda fighters from the

Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

and

South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...

. After the group's formation,

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was a Sunni Islamist political organisation and paramilitary group involved in the Syrian civil war. It was formed on 28January 2017 as a merger between several armed groups: Jaysh al-Ahrar (an Ahrar al-Sham facti ...

(HTS) arrested the group's leadership in November 2017, as well as

Sami al-Oraydi Sami Mahmud Mohammed al-Oraydi or Abu Mahmoud al-Shami (also: ''al-Uraydi''; ; born 1973) is a senior sharia official for the al-Qaeda affiliated Hurras al-Din who was the chief religious authority for al-Nusra Front and the group's former secon ...

, who left HTS and was formerly al-Nusra's top Sharia official. After the arrests, Ansar al-Furqan and HTS agreed not to weaken or compete with each other, until the later establishment of

Hurras al-Din Tanzim Hurras al-Din (), sometimes referred to as Al-Qaeda in Syria, was a Salafi Jihadist organization that fought in the Syrian civil war. The group's former head, Abu Humam al-Shami, was the general military commander of the defunct Al-Nusr ...

led by several HTS defectors and al-Qaeda loyalists including al-Oraydi.

References

Jihadist groups in Syria Anti-Assad factions of the Syrian civil war 2017 establishments in Syria {{paramilitary-org-stub

Background

See also

References