Societies coming out of wars and authoritarian breakdowns often reconstruct their political discourse through tools of exclusion. In Syria today, this phenomenon manifests in what can be called “ideologized exclusion.” This refers to the creation of systematic narratives designed to strip secular, liberal, and critical cultural thought of legitimacy, portraying them as alien to Syrian identity, or as disruptive forces seeking to undermine the transitional stage. In this sense, the struggle is over the right to exist within Syria’s political and cultural sphere.
The issue in Syria is no longer confined to the traditional divide between religiosity and secularism, or between conservatism and liberalism. What is unfolding today is a deliberate transformation of the concept of takfir from its traditional theological meaning into a political and cultural mechanism targeting anyone who steps outside the value framework imposed by the ruling authority.
This mechanism establishes a complete system for excluding intellectuals and civil society actors from the public sphere by keeping alive the possibility of accusing them of treason or hostility toward shared values. The phenomenon goes beyond religious classification that labels the other as “kafir.” It extends into a political and social mechanism that delegitimizes opponents by employing moral and religious language against all forms of difference.
Takfir and exclusion here function as deliberate tools of denial, aiming to reengineer Syria’s public sphere in line with the transitional authority’s image, confining legitimacy strictly within its own narrative.
Political history shows that delegitimization or labeling others as kafirs has never been merely a moral tactic. In many cases, it became a tool to eliminate rivals and redefine political identity. In our context, it serves as a political instrument that strips opponents of legitimacy by casting independent intellectuals as outsiders, justifying their exclusion from influence. In this way, intellectual freedom becomes a charge, and dissent from authority is recast as a threat to society.
Read also: Divided Syrian Elites in the Face of Sectarian Violence
This form of exclusion does not emerge in a vacuum. It relies on reshaping society into a closed arena governed by a binary of loyalty or enmity. Here we see a practical application of what Antonio Gramsci described as “cultural hegemony,” where authority imposes its narrative of national identity as the sole possible truth while rejecting all alternatives as deviant or dangerous.
Art and culture are among the most vulnerable fields to ideological exclusion. A clear example is the recent ban on academic sculpting of the human body at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University. This move served as a prototype for redrawing the boundaries of cultural expression under narrow ideological terms. Pierre Bourdieu called this type of control “symbolic violence”: the use of soft power to enforce a particular vision of beauty and legitimacy, turning any deviation into a cultural crime. Institutions of art and culture thus become instruments of control rather than spaces for creativity and plurality.
Ideologized exclusion can also create a suffocating atmosphere that extends beyond formal censorship. Some intellectuals, fearing accusations of betrayal or moral deviance, may eventually choose silence over critique. This is what Jürgen Habermas describes as a “crisis of the public sphere,” where rational, open dialogue erodes and is replaced by a dominant, self-replicating discourse. The deeper danger lies in producing a fragile society incapable of managing difference, leaving the door open to physical violence when symbolic repression fails to silence dissenting voices.
What is taking place in Syria goes beyond a clash of ideas. It is a deliberate political construction of the “internal enemy.” Instead of addressing economic challenges, improving governance, or pursuing transitional justice, the conflict is redirected toward the independent thinker, writer, or intellectual. In this sense, declaring modernity as heresy becomes part of a security architecture designed to keep society mobilized against a so-called internal threat.
This also redefines nationalism in narrow terms. The nationalist is now the one who parrots the authority’s rhetoric, while those who call, for example, for the separation of religion and politics are recast as outsiders to the nation. This produces a national identity crisis, where citizenship as an inclusive concept retreats and is replaced by an exclusionary identity measured by ideological loyalty. Here lies the danger of unraveling the very fabric of national cohesion.
After the fall of the previous regime, many expected Syria’s public sphere to open up to pluralism. Instead, the transitional authority found itself facing a crisis of electoral and popular legitimacy. It borrowed the logic of ideological exclusion as a mechanism of control, thereby reproducing the old Syrian equation of power that claimed to defend “values” while monopolizing political and cultural truth. The outcome has been the marginalization of liberal and secular currents, stripped of legitimacy and recast as “the other” with no place in the new state project.
Even if the takfirization of modernity does not always translate into direct physical violence, it perpetually leaves violence as an open possibility. Simply branding the dissenter as an enemy of values places them at risk, offering justification for extremists to unleash all forms of aggression against them. Symbolic intimidation here intertwines with the potential for material violence, creating an oppressive environment for cultural and civic life.
Ideologized exclusion is not unique to Syria. After 1979, Iran employed the same strategy against the left and secularists under the banner of “protecting the revolution.” The political opponent was redefined not by party affiliation or policy positions, but by being branded an enemy of values and the nation. In Iran, the rhetoric of “cultural arrogance” was used to criminalize intellectuals, artists, and anyone who dared critique the new religious order. This discourse contributed to sidelining an entire generation of thinkers and artists, establishing a closed cultural system built on loyalty rather than creativity.
In essence, ideologized exclusion is the true face of power that refuses to acknowledge difference. It is not merely a battle over ideas but a battle over existence itself. When the nation is reduced to a single narrative, and alternative intellectual currents are dismissed as alien, what emerges is a dangerous process that reproduces authoritarianism in a new language.
