Reimagining Democracy through Syria’s Wartime Sharia Committees

Abstract

This article examines Syrians’ narratives about the network of Sharia Committees (Hay’āt al-Sharia) that emerged as the most pervasive and popular legal project during the ongoing civil war. Many Syrians formerly excluded from political power, especially working-class Sunnis, envision the Sharia Committees as a revolutionary space for realising self-determination, where sharia is articulated as a democratic legal process embedded in its ostensibly inherent pluralism, flexibility, anti-authoritarianism and conception of justice as reconciliation and public good. By reviving a historically recurrent vision of sharia as radical democratic practice, Syrians attempt to extricate sharia from its entanglements with efforts to govern. The Sharia Committees thus represent a creative effort to reclaim democracy from state control while challenging rigid, rule-oriented understandings of sharia.