Syrian insurgent group seeks to move away from Al-Qaida

The leader of an insurgent group that rules much of northwest Syria rose to notoriety over the past decade by claiming deadly bombings, threatening revenge against Western “crusader” forces and dispatching Islamist religious police to crack down on women deemed to be immodestly dressed.
Today the man known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani is trying hard to distance his group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, known as HTS, from its al-Qaida origins, spreading a message of pluralism and religious tolerance.As part of the rebranding, he has cracked down on extremist factions and dissolved the notorious religious police. For the first time in more than a decade, a Mass was performed recently at a long-shuttered church in Idlib province. Al-Golani told a recent gathering of religious and local officials that Islamic law should not be imposed by force. “We don’t want the society to become hypocritical so that they pray when they see us and don’t once we leave,” al-Golani said, pointing to Saudi Arabia, which has relaxed its social controls in recent years after decades of strict Islamic rule. The pivot comes at a time when al-Golani’s group is increasingly isolated. Countries that had once backed insurgents in Syria’s uprising-turned-civil-war are restoring relations with Syrian President Bashar Assad.