On December 26, at least eight people, who were part of the Friday congregation prayers, were killed and 18 were injured in a bombing at a mosque in Alawite-dominated Wadi al-Dhahab in the Syrian city of Homs. The attack was claimed by the Sunni jihadist group Saraya Ansar al-Sunna. The attack on the Alawite Mosque, while being sectarian in nature, is an organisational signalling more concerned with delegitimising and undermining the Syrian regime’s efforts and narratives of “new Syria,” which groups like Saraya Ansar al-Sunna (SAS) see as abandoning “ideas” for an “Islamic state”.
Saraya Ansar al-Sunna (SAS) first emerged as a distinct threat following its schism from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in early 2025. This fracture was rooted in a fundamental rejection of the current leadership’s transition from an insurgency group into a governing body, with accusations that President Ahmed al-Shara was diluting their foundational Islamist mission. The SAS framed Damascus for going soft on the “Nusairi and Rafidite”, which primarily refers to the Alawites and Shi’a community in the country. However, SAS’s first major attack came against the Christians in June last year when a bomb attack in a Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus’s outskirts claimed 25 lives while injuring 63 individuals.
The attack on the congregation in both cases resembles the modus operandi of ISIS, seeking maximum casualties at the worship spots. This apparent divergence underscores a strategic logic consistent with the Islamic State’s playbook: prioritising violence against religious congregations to maximise fear, polarisation, and visibility rather than adhering narrowly to sectarian hierarchies. By moving from a church in Damascus to a mosque in Homs, SAS is executing a deliberate strategy to dismantle the "New Syria" from the inside out.
The targeting of that particular mosque, named “Imam Ali bin Abi Talib Mosque”, is a telltale in itself. This mosque, in the predominantly Alawite enclave Wadi al-Dhahab, represents a grey zone where sectarian lines were blurring. The imam (one who leads prayers) mentioned that Sunni neighbours, though in small numbers, regularly attended Friday prayers at this mosque and that it was open to Muslims of other sects as well. Jihadist strategy (often called "Eliminating the Gray Zone") relies on forced polarisation. If Sunnis and Alawites pray together, the jihadi groups like SAS lose their narrative that they are irreconcilable enemies.
Broadly, the attack on the Alawite Mosque also signals an attempt to jeopardise the efforts of the religious leaders of the minority community to become aligned with Twelver Shi’ism, which in turn brings Alawites inside the mainstream Islamic denomination. In the conventional understanding, Alawite doctrine is secretive and historically esoteric, with core rituals only revealed to a chosen few initiates.
Traditionally, Alawites prayed at home or visited sacred shrines, which served as central markers of their community identity, rather than gathering in mosques for regular public prayers as is common in orthodox Sunni or Shi’i Islam. However, the contemporary unfolding of the Alawite revivalist movement stresses the Islamic religious knowledge and obligations that seek to create Alawite identity rooted not in ethno-cultural grounds but in a religious one. In a similar vein, the move towards building mosques has largely been a modern political and social development aimed at integrating the community into a broader Islamic identity and countering accusations of heresy. The official statement released by SAS on the mosque attack refers to the latter as “temple,” which in a way exhibits SAS’s hardline, telling Alawites that they cannot assimilate; they are either with the old regime or they are targets.
One of the potential fallouts of this incident is the reaction that it provokes not only among the Alawites but also from the Syrian regime. Just two days after the bombing in Homs, violence erupted during protests in Latakia on 28 December. Demonstrators demanding “political federalism and international protection” clashed with authorities, leaving four dead and over 100 injured. This is the strategic spark and retaliatory cycle that organisations like SAS look forward to inducing, thereby increasing the risk of sectarian strife. If a similar situation persists or worsens, the formation of Alawite militia groups or the resurfacing of old groups should not come as a surprise. President al-Sharaa, who has already turned down demands for “political federalism”, citing it would risk “Balkanisation” of the country, is well aware of these dangers. His uneasiness over these issues is evident when one sees the latest reconciliation initiative, which seeks to win Alawite cooperation by offering amnesty, jobs, medical services, and modest financial aid to those who had suffered during a violent crackdown by government-affiliated forces in March that resulted in over 1,500 deaths and thousands of displacements.
For SAS and like-minded militant groups, the current domestic instability provides the ideal vacuum to advance their core ideological objective. Most telling, however, was the group’s official claim of responsibility for the Homs bombing, which boasted of “cooperation with mujahidin from other groups.” This indicates that SAS is not merely a lone actor, but is actively forging a tactical alliance of disparate radical cells, unifying them under a shared rejection of the Damascus administration’s perceived moderation. The bottom line is that these groups remain the primary spoilers of Syrian reconstruction.
Mohammed Shoaib Raza is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi