Did al-Jolani convert on the long road to Damascus?
There are reasons to hope that the change is real, and reasons to fear it is not.
Did Abu Mohammed al-Jolani have a conversion on the long road to Damascus? The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has changed his name, shortened his beard, and lengthened his conciliatory statements.
We will see if, as in the original Damascene conversion of St Paul, the scales have fallen from his eyes, or if this is a cunning short-term strategy before the imposition of hard-line Islamist beliefs on multi-faith Syria.
What’s in a name? In al-Jolani’s case, a lot. He was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia and named Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. His Sunni Muslim family were originally from the Golan Heights but were displaced after the Six-Day War in which Israel won territory. Hence his nom de guerre al Jolani, meaning "from the Golan". His father, imprisoned by the Assad regime in the 1970s, moved to Saudi Arabia on his release before settling in Damascus in 1989.