To his credit, this article by Neil MacFarquhar is the first article in the Times to draw a negative cast about the rebels--who are cheered daily from Beirut by Anne Barnard and her March 14 assistants. "A Shariah Board — as the religious courts are called — recently ordered a
secular critic lashed. In mosques, Islamists have pushed moderate
clerics off the pulpit — at least once in mid-sermon — replacing them
with speakers who harangue worshipers on topics like the evils of hair
gel. In one Islamic school, first graders were urged to grow up to
become jihadist fighters, said Azzam Khanji, head of education for
Aleppo’s Revolutionary Transitional Council, a sort of government in exile for liberated portions of the city.
The court system serves as a prime example of the contest for a postwar
Syria. As crime has proliferated after government control vanished in
many areas, Syrians clamored for security. Rebel leaders, particularly
Islamists, responded by opening dozens of courts.
“It is almost the fashion to have your own courthouse now,” complained
Mazen Jumaa of the lawyers association, which monitors the new courts.
The association was formed in 2011 to defend young people whose first
peaceful antigovernment protests led to the uprising.
The group found that in many cases, fighters lacking training in
Shariah, or Islamic law, not to mention civil law, handed down death
sentences to government supporters with little or no defense. Commanders
of the more secular Free Syrian Army were not much better, the group discovered."
