In an interview, Mr. Gorbachev shrugged off the fact that 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he remains among the most reviled men in Russia. “It is freedom of expression,” he said. Yet the official line denigrating traditional democracy, combined with the very idea that he should face trial, obviously irks him, so he churns out articles, essays and books about the need to enhance freedom in Russia. – New York Times
“Here and elsewhere, Ahrar has made clear that it attempts to draw on the legacy of not just figures like Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, but also Abdullah Azzam, founder of modern transnational jihadism, and the symbols of the Chechen jihad against Russia. In his lecture, [Ahrar al-Sham deputy leader Ali] al-Omar says jihad will continue to the Day of Reckoning, even if it might take different forms beyond military action -- political or evangelical struggle, for example. And in his defense of Ahrar’s political engagement, al-Omar references Ahrar’s ‘ceiling’ -- the limits of its ability to compromise. It seems safe to say that Ahrar’s ceiling is lower than others’; Ahrar has historically refused to compromise its ‘thawabit’ (fixed principles) in the service of expediency. In many ways, Ahrar al-Sham has fused a specifically Syrian revolutionary character with a Sunni-sectarian pan-Islamism. In much of northern Syria, it is Ahrar that defends journalists, activists, and civil society against predatory jihadists, and over the past several years Ahrar has made serious efforts to integrate itself with the revolutionary political mainstream. Yet while Ahrar al-Sham’s ambitions are Syrian, al-Omar makes clear that Ahrar also views itself as the greater Sunni nation’s bulwark against a Shi’ite onslaught.”