ABU AZZAM is a Santa Claus of a man: rotund and stocky, with fat, smiling lips, a twinkle in his eye and a jolly manner. Since the former student became a rebel commander with the Farouq Brigade, one of the rebels' most effective, he has sported a fluffy black beard. He strokes it thoughtfully from top to bottom as he speaks, sometimes running a comb through it.
Almost all the rebel fighters sport similar facial hair. This has tagged them as “-ists” of one kind or another: Islamists, Salafists, jihadists, terrorists. It is an image Abu Azzam's fighters joke about. “We're on our way to making an emirate!” says one. “All terrorists!” says another, gesturing at fighters milling around the school serving as a base in a village in Raqqa province.
Some beards do indeed signify religiosity, especially the bushy Salafist type with only the shadow of a moustache, a style believed by followers to have been favoured by the Prophet Muhammad. When the uprising started, the regime sought to portray the protesters as Sunni extremists. They weren't, but as the bloodshed spread, religiosity among the fighters has indeed grown and extremists have proliferated.
In Atmeh, a town on the border with Turkey where rebel groups like to consort, a Salafist group called Suqur al-Sham, an Idleb-based brigade, parades itself. “Kill kufar [non-believers]” is scrawled on the wall of another school that has been turned into a base. Three men from the unit greet a man with a beard but refuse to look at me or to shake the hand of my clean-shaven male companion.
Yet many fighters, like Abu Azzam, have beards for other reasons: to seem more devout so as to attract cash from rich conservative donors; to appear more authoritative; to satisfy a personal taste; or simply because their wives like it. “We have no time to shave!” laughs a skinny fighter, bringing up the topic spontaneously.
Despite such jokes, moderate fighters worry that beards may give Westerners a bad impression. Abu Adnan, who leads a small band of fighters in the hills above Latakia, the Assads' homeland, refuses to be interviewed until he has shaved. Abu Samer, who runs a local revolutionary police station, agrees to meet only after checking that I work for a newspaper rather than a television station. “I know people will interpret my beard the wrong way,” he says. “It's a bad image to give the revolution.”
I suggested to Abu Azzam that he and his brigade go clean-shaven for a month to see if it gets them better Western coverage from those watching their videos on YouTube. Raising an eyebrow, Abu Azzam puts a protective hand on his beard, as if to stop it being touched. “I can't shave it off,” he says, taking out a photograph of himself as a smooth-skinned student. “The main reason is that I look handsome with a beard.
Correction: This post originally refered to a slogan in Atmeh as saying "Kill kufr" [non-believers]. That was a mis-transliteration (as pointed out by one of our commenters). It should be "Kill kufar"; this has been corrected in the text.
Source: economist
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