Saraya Ansar al-Sunna: Interview

In an earlier post I noted the claim of responsibility for the Damascus church bombing issued by a group calling itself Saraya Ansar al-Sunna. For its part, the Syrian Interior Ministry is insisting that a cell ‘officially’ affiliated with Islamic State is responsible for the bombing, whereas Saraya Ansar al-Sunna is supposedly a made-up organisation and has no link to the attack (I will provide more details of the press-conference the ministry held regarding the incident and subsequent arrests of the cell’s members in another post).

One may wonder whether the denial of Saraya Ansar al-Sunna’s existence means anything given the pro-Islamic State stance of the group, but in light of the apparent origin of Saraya Ansar al-Sunna in defectors from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, it is understandable why the Syrian government might downplay and deny its existence.

For now, here is an interview I recently conducted with Dr. Abu al-Fath al-Shami, who is the general Shari‘i official [i.e. leading cleric] for Saraya Ansar al-Sunna.