Build new institutions where the old are compromised; army-backed takeovers have worked

Summary

The Justice Council argues that where institutions are captured by the powers they're meant to check, Muslims should found new authority rather than lobby them — citing the Seerah's nusrah model and army-backed takeovers in Syria and Sudan.

What it argues

1. New authority, not lobbying

   The Council argues that where institutions are captured by the powers they check, Muslims should found new authority rather than lobby the existing ones. It points to the 622 CE second pledge of al-Aqabah, where Medina's Aws and Khazraj gave Muhammad authority over their city rather than asking Quraysh to change policy. Founding authority through outside support, not lobbying rulers, is presented as the Seerah's own model.

2. Syria's army-made rulers

   Syria's Ba'ath military committee, including Hafez al-Assad, seized power in a coup on 8 March 1963, ending the country's democratic era. Assad later took full control of the state through the army in the November 1970 Corrective Movement and held it until his death in 2000. Both the party's rule and Assad's own grip were built by the army, not by contesting the existing political system.

3. Damascus and Khartoum, decades apart

   In December 2024 Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham under Ahmed al-Sharaa captured Damascus after Turkey had sheltered its Idlib base for years and backed the offensive. In June 1989 Sudan's National Islamic Front took Khartoum through an army coup led by Omar al-Bashir, ousting the elected government. The Council cites both as cases where outside military backing, not lobbying, delivered power.

4. Sudan's regime and the ICC

   Al-Bashir's government ran clandestine 'Ghost House' detention centres and was later tied by the ICC to genocide and war crimes charges over Darfur. The same army that installed him by coup in 1989 removed him by another coup in April 2019. The force that founded the regime also ended it three decades later.

5. Assad's chemical weapons record

   UN and OPCW investigations found Assad's government responsible for chemical attacks including the 2013 Ghouta sarin strike. France issued an arrest warrant against Assad in November 2023 over the attacks, which he denied, blaming foreign powers for seeking regime change. A legal case against the Assad government built for over a decade before it fell by force.

6. HTS and Sednaya prison

   On taking Damascus on 8 December 2024, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham released prisoners from Sednaya Prison. It called the release a symbolic and strategic victory over the former government's record of abuses. The incoming authority presented the prison's opening as proof of the old government's record it displaced.