The Umayyads of Damascus introduced the mosque pulpit, adding to the three steps established by the Prophet so that the preacher could rise above the congregation, project his voice, and look out over the assembled crowd as it listened.
Ascending the pulpit is not a requirement for delivering a sermon. Anyone wishing to address the congregation may speak from the mihrab. Yet in Syria, following the fall of the Assad regime, both the pulpit and the mihrab have become platforms for the executive branch. The minister of justice has “preached” from them, as have the ministers of communications, culture, defense, and interior, as well as the former governor of the Central Bank of Syria. And, of course, Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al Sharaa, has done the same. All have addressed the public from inside mosques, creating a spatial encounter between executive authority and a gathering of citizens and worshippers.
When appointed ministers take to mosque pulpits and turn the work of government into sermon-like discourse, the mosque itself, already under the authority of the executive branch through the Ministry of Religious Endowments, becomes an even more overtly political space. Its pulpit is occupied by the “holder of authority,” reviving a mode of negotiating power that predates the “modern state,” which supposedly governs its relationship with “citizens” through formal bureaucratic structures.
Instead, we find ourselves before “subjects” who humble themselves before the “holder of authority,” a figure who is also one of them, joining them in worship and contemplation and, at times, discussing matters of governance from the mosque’s mihrab. Politics thus returns to its most literal linguistic meaning in Arabic: sāsa al qawm, to lead or govern the people.
Since 2011, politics has become increasingly concentrated in the mosque. The competing forces offered different interpretations of why people gathered there. The Assad regime, which dominated public space and forms of assembly, made the mosque the “only place” where Syrians could gather. Questioning this interpretation risks placing one in the camp of those hostile to the revolution, whose crowds poured out of mosques in their thousands against Assad and his forces. Regime propaganda cast these gatherings as religious rather than revolutionary. One phrase became particularly famous: the people of Midan had left the mosque “to thank God for the blessing of rain.”
Today, being present in the mosque signals belonging to the “community” and conformity with its norms and positions, in contrast to those “secularists” who frequent streets over which the names of God do not rise. By presence, we do not mean prayer alone, but physical presence beneath the mosque’s dome. More importantly, it reflects a relationship with authority as a power that governs not only through law, but also through ideology. Even Nawar Najmeh, a Christian member of the Syrian People’s Assembly, attended Friday prayers, while the Druze figure Laith al Balous even led worshippers in prayer. Here, the boundaries between “obedience to God” and “obedience to the state” begin to blur, and the “performance” itself becomes a display of loyalty on its designated “stage.”
The mosque has become a space for the “performance of obedience” and for gaining political recognition from the “audience of power.” We use the term “audience” because they are consumers and producers of content rather than political actors. Loyalty is measured by the image captured on camera, not by political value. The mosque’s space thus shapes the political imaginary between individuals and authority, while being present there signals belonging to the ruling community and to the “revolution” itself in its Islamic iteration.
Yet not everyone who prays in a mosque is a “supporter of the state.” The presence of “men of state,” however, goes beyond religion and enters the realm of politics as a performance before those who watch. The emphasis here is on men, because the only woman holding a position of executive authority is Christian.
After 2011, the Assad regime waged war on mosques in opposition-controlled areas, while treating those in territories under its control with caution and regulating them through the Ministry of Religious Endowments. It relentlessly bombed mosques, killed people inside and around them, and planted informants. Bashar al Assad himself even mocked the construction of mosques in a video leaked after he fled the country.
According to the minister of religious endowments, after the fall of the regime, Syria had more than 16,000 mosques, 1,500 of which had been completely or partially destroyed by the regime. A few months later, speaking at the Damascus International Fair, the minister said the number of mosques had risen to more than 18,000. In the Citizens’ Budget, one of the Ministry of Religious Endowments’ objectives for 2026 is the “reconstruction of damaged mosques.”
Houses of God are rebuilt across the land, and minarets rise. There is no room for jurisprudential debate over whether a neighborhood already has a mosque or whether existing mosques are full. Instead, what prevails is the maneuvering made possible by religious endowments on the one hand and by donors’ wishes on the other. At times, this even turns into a confrontation with residents, as in the controversy over a mosque planned in the middle of a park in Deir ez Zor.
The minister of religious endowments himself said that residents told him, “We don’t want mosques!” His response was, “That won’t do. He is coming to build the mosque, and he will build the park too.” The minister confirmed that he told the donor, “Come and build the mosque.”
Mosques rise as “monuments to victory,” standing as witnesses to Assad’s fall and as an extension of the “community” and the authority of the “ruling power” over the land. They also serve to regulate public space and the crowds that gather around them. This is evident in the mosque built in the middle of Damascus University and another in the university residence complex. The mosque becomes a protected and “pure” space for gathering and assembly, while dividing those within the university into those who enter the mosque and those who do not.
The mosque courtyard contains the “crowd” within an enclosed space, where people gather in a controlled and protected setting. It is governed not only by the law that applies to “everyone,” but also by executive authority and by the power of the One who “knows what you conceal and what you reveal.” Some mosques even play a role in containing violence and reinforcing a model of mediation based on notables, dialogue, “kissing mustaches,” apologies, and choosing “that which is better.” The reconciliation meeting held after the “incidents” in Jdeidet Artouz, for example, took place at Al Rahman Mosque. Politics here unfolds not beneath the dome of parliament or inside the courtroom, but in the mosque.
The crowd inside the mosque is considered “revolutionary,” while the crowd in the street is met with criticism, suspicion, and accusation. The mosque crowd and its loyalty are beyond question, brought together in a space of tranquility, accommodation, and conciliation. When a minister descends into the street, it is to calm tensions. In the mosque, however, the purpose is “dialogue,” safe, friendly, intimate, and free from the formalities of authority, where the force of law fades before the tranquility of the mihrab.
The “Mall”: The “Civil” Counterpart
Hani Dahab, known as “Sheikh al Dhahabi,” who launched the campaign to distribute niqabs, and his supporters both on the ground and on social media, defend their right to “proselytize” and to “forbid wrongdoing.” Terms such as “freedom of expression” and “lack of coercion” feature prominently in the defense of their activities in public spaces, including universities, mosques, hospitals, and streets. What is striking, however, is that the only place where the “campaign” was prohibited was a shopping center, the mall. According to al Dhahabi, the Ministry of Religious Endowments itself barred him from carrying out the campaign at Cham City Center. This raises a question about the mall’s apparent “immunity” from religious campaigns.
The question is indeed intriguing. The same mall, Cham City Center, hosted an influencer who drew crowds of boys and girls. They cheered with him and “spent their leisure time” together in a mixed gender gathering. Yet al Dhahabi’s campaign was prohibited in this particular space, a decision that sparked surprise. This, along with the mall’s relationship with the current authorities, makes it something of a counterpart to the mosque, a space protected even from politics and religious proselytizing. It serves as the “state’s” showcase of its openness to the “outside world,” a commercial and consumer platform governed by the rules of consumption within an enclosed, air-conditioned space.
This relationship with the mall as a monument to obedience becomes particularly clear in the “Idlib experience,” where malls are widespread. The clearest example is Al Hamra Mall in the city of Dana in Idlib. It is not merely a commercial showcase, but a space that attempts to free itself from the “outside” and the way it is governed. In 2023, when the mall held its first festival, it faced criticism over “gender mixing,” “music,” and “immodest dress,” even as battles against the regime were taking place. Reinforcements were sent to protect the mall, provoking the anger of one woman. The mall’s management subsequently apologized for what it described, literally, as an “individual mistake,” while stressing that the mall had not been closed and the festival had not been suspended. It continued for ten days.
The mall in Idlib, and now across Syria, is a consumer space with an ideological function that can be summed up as “undoing extremism.” It is a protected space, removed from politics, where the grip of ideology can be loosened. Gathering inside the mall, a building of glass facades, also regulates performance. If the mosque is founded on reverence and humility, the mall is founded on creating desire and spectacle. Both are enclosed spaces, and the crowds they contain spill into the street only as individuals.
Obedience in the mosque is ritual and political. In the mall, it is transactional. Consume more, and you align yourself with the state’s vision of “managing diversity.” Here, obedience is reflected in a lifestyle practiced inside a commercial building protected from the outside world. This consumer obedience becomes visible only through the crowd, the images of it that circulate, and its collective adherence to consumption norms.
None of this means that the mall is apolitical. Cham City Center itself witnessed one manifestation of peaceful protest against the Assad regime. Shopping was disrupted as peaceful activists raised signs demanding an end to the killing before they were removed from the premises. In a sense, the mall’s “neutrality” is an extension of its nature as a space of consumer domination, a display of “civil life” within an enclosed space where neither religious proselytizing nor protest is permitted.
Most of the projects announced in Syria include “shopping centers.” Earth is moved to create spaces where displaced people cannot live, but can only wander through their “malls,” contemplating what they have missed and what remains beyond their reach. The “mall” becomes an architectural embodiment of the failure to provide housing, a place for strolling and shopping rather than settling and building a life. Within it, ideological fluidity is permitted, and the boundaries of an acceptable form of “social freedom” are redrawn, so long as that freedom remains “inside,” contained within walls.
Social classes mingle in the mall, with consumers and casual visitors occupying the same space. Crowds gather there for an “influencer” or some other attraction, in an air-conditioned environment protected by glass facades. Capital risks diluting ideology in pursuit of profit, and suddenly the rules of the market and concern for the “image presented to others” come to the fore inside a mall so clean that its exterior glass reflects the ruins of the surrounding city.
What Happens in the “Arab House”?
The mosque and the “mall” are counterparts in the hands of the authorities, used to regulate crowds outside class rules. In the language of political theory, this is a form of containment. But containment can also operate through exclusion and disregard. This can be seen in the small and cautious gatherings associated with cultural and quasi-political activities held in private spaces such as homes, cafés, galleries, and, most notably, traditional Arab houses.
In Damascus, Beit Farhi, a “civil society” organization, plays a pivotal role. It hosts a remarkably diverse range of activities, including concerts, conferences, artistic and cultural workshops, and more. It is an elegant space for gathering, where the ideas exchanged with those in attendance are contained within the meticulously maintained courtyard of the traditional Arab house.
In this way, the image of a “civil” Syria, a term used to avoid the words “secular” and “democratic,” is transformed into an “event” or “activity” confined to a space with the character of a tourist attraction. The Arab house thus reclaims its role as a heritage space. Whatever happens inside does not leave its walls or courtyard. It becomes something like a paradise in which to imagine a Syria different from the one that exists today.
The “Street” and the Politics of the Crowd
The street, the space Syrians were killed trying to reclaim as a place for gathering and protest, has become both an open and a dangerous space. The new authorities regulate gatherings there by setting the conditions under which people may assemble and by placing them under the protection of General Security. They also allow for the possibility of “one street confronting another.”
Many defend the authorities’ right to regulate demonstrations in the street, and we will not enter into that debate here. The paradox, however, is that the mall and the mosque are the only two places where people can gather in crowds without prior approval, while the street is a space where crowds can clash.
The street remains a contested space. It is filled with writings calling for “obedience to God” and religious outreach campaigns, though these do not dominate it. The street also witnesses protests and modest celebrations. It is a “dangerous” space of negotiation because it has become an arena for targeting, public shaming, and character assassination. The very visibility of the street has become a weapon against those who occupy it. Supporters of the authorities do not hunt for faces in images taken inside mosques or malls. Their attention is focused on those in the street, those who are contained by neither walls nor domes.
The danger of accusation in the street has itself produced performances of obedience and political loyalty. Everyday time, and the time of protest, is interrupted for prayer, which shifts from an act of worship into a means of affirming the “legitimacy of the gathering” by demonstrating that it is not hostile to the state. We saw this when Friday prayers were held during a protest against expropriation laws outside the parliament building. The insistence on performing the religious obligation helps ward off criticism from the authorities and secure the approval of the “audience of the new era.”
Crowds in mosques and malls are unproblematic. They are “approved.” The executive branch, through the Ministry of Interior, regulates the street. But what happens when the protest is directed against the Ministry of Interior itself? What if the ministry is the accused party, as in the case of Mohammad Ghamira, who was killed under torture? Are people expected to wait for permission from the very institution accused of enabling enforced disappearance and death under torture?
