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Syria's new authorities are using Islamic teachings to train a fledgling police force, a move officers say aims to instil a sense of morality as they race to fill a security vacuum after dismantling ousted president Bashar al-Assad's notoriously corrupt and brutal security forces.
Police they brought into Damascus from their former rebel enclave in the northwestern region of Idlib are asking applicants about their beliefs and focusing on Islamic sharia law in the brief training they offer recruits, according to five senior officers and application forms seen by Reuters.
Ensuring stability and winning the trust of people across Syria will be crucial for the Sunni Muslim Islamists to cement their rule. But the move to put religion at the centre of policing risks seeding new rifts in a diverse country awash with guns after 13 years of civil war and alienating foreign governments they have been trying to woo, regional analysts warn.
"There are many Syrians who will find this concerning," said Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, a Middle East-focused think tank, when asked about Reuters' findings. "Not just minorities - Christians, Alawites, Druze - but also quite a lot of Sunni Muslims in places like Damascus and Aleppo, where you have a fairly large secular, cosmopolitan population that's not interested in religious law."
Police they brought into Damascus from their former rebel enclave in the northwestern region of Idlib are asking applicants about their beliefs and focusing on Islamic sharia law in the brief training they offer recruits, according to five senior officers and application forms seen by Reuters.
Ensuring stability and winning the trust of people across Syria will be crucial for the Sunni Muslim Islamists to cement their rule. But the move to put religion at the centre of policing risks seeding new rifts in a diverse country awash with guns after 13 years of civil war and alienating foreign governments they have been trying to woo, regional analysts warn.
"There are many Syrians who will find this concerning," said Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, a Middle East-focused think tank, when asked about Reuters' findings. "Not just minorities - Christians, Alawites, Druze - but also quite a lot of Sunni Muslims in places like Damascus and Aleppo, where you have a fairly large secular, cosmopolitan population that's not interested in religious law."
