When Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, told the press last week that he is not an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, nor of al-Qaeda or ISIS, many rushed to interpret his words as a turning point. Some in the East celebrated it as the end of political Islamism. Some in the West took it as a step toward moderation from the most notorious jihadist since Osama bin Laden. Both are gravely mistaken.
What we are witnessing is not moderation but mutation. Sharaa is engineering something I call neo-jihadism: a new hybrid ideology that fuses the political tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood, the violent rigor of al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the authoritarian pragmatism of Syria’s Ba’athist socialism. Unlike the rigid dogmas of older jihadist movements, neo-jihadism is flexible, adaptive, and dangerously sustainable.
Sharaa's history
Sharaa’s personal history makes him the perfect architect of this trend. Raised under Hafez al-Assad’s Ba’athist regime, he internalized the authoritarian instinct for centralizing power and manipulating ideology. As a teenager, he joined al-Qaeda, later founded Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and fought his way through the Syrian civil war against a crowded field of Islamist militias: Turkey-backed Brotherhood groups, Iran-backed Shi’ite factions, and ISIS.
He outmaneuvered them all up to the gates of Damascus, not through pure ideology but through political flexibility, ruthless militancy, and the opportunistic promises of “social justice” inherited from Ba’athist socialism.
This is not the first time Sharaa has distanced himself from the Muslim Brotherhood. In an Al Jazeera interview in 2015, when he was the HTS leader, he mocked the Brotherhood for abandoning jihad in favor of elections. He insisted they “lost because they chose ballots over bullets.” His critique was never about the Brotherhood’s goals, only their methods. To Sharaa, political participation was weakness; violent jihad remained the surest path to power. Today, he repeats the same message, only dressed in statesman’s clothing.
The trajectory of the Muslim Brotherhood
Examining the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in power across the broader region makes the contrast clearer. In Tunisia, Rached Ghannouchi’s Ennahda Party deliberately rebranded itself as “Muslim democrats,” choosing to participate in pluralist politics.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood stuck to extremist Islamism in order not to lose control over their Salafist partners, which eventually led to alienating centrists and collapsing within a year. Both paths weakened the potential of political Islam in Arab countries.
Sharaa, however, represents a third, much darker route. While Ennahda softened Islamism and Egypt’s Brotherhood proved inflexible, Sharaa is intensifying Islamism into a hybrid model of political maneuvering, violent jihad, and authoritarian pragmatism.
Regionally, his media campaign against the Brotherhood is also a signal of shifting power. For years, Turkey bet on Brotherhood-aligned groups in Syria. When those factions collapsed, Ankara gambled on Sharaa himself, hoping he could be their man. Yet today his loyalties tilt toward Riyadh. Saudi Arabia, long intent on burying the Brotherhood as an ideological rival, is emerging as the winner. Turkey is left sidelined, while Sharaa reaps the benefits of playing both sides.
Some Arab and Western leaders are already falling for his rhetoric, mistaking his denial of Brotherhood ties for moderation. But his actions tell a different story. Since taking power, he has granted Syrian citizenship to foreign jihadists, integrated them into his army and police, and unleashed sectarian campaigns against Alawites, Druze, and Christians. This is not inclusivity. It is authoritarian Islamism with a jihadi edge.
The broader lesson should be sobering. Each time political Islam seems to collapse, it reemerges in a more adaptive form. The fall of the Brotherhood in Egypt looked decisive, but Hamas kept the Islamist project alive in Gaza. The defeat of ISIS was hailed as the end of jihadism, only for HTS to rise from Idlib to Damascus. Today, Sharaa is forging neo-jihadism – the deadliest mutation yet.
Policymakers must not mistake his rhetoric for reform. Sharaa’s rejection of the Brotherhood is not a death notice for Islamism. It is a birth announcement for its most dangerous reinvention. Unless recognized for what it is, neo-jihadism will become the Middle East’s most insidious export.
The writer is an Egyptian scholar and senior fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.