From al-Nusra’s sharia official to the Presidency’s religious adviser: who is Abdul Rahim Atoun?

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• 28 March 2025: Decree No. 8 creates the Supreme Fatwa Council, on the day Osama al-Rifai is appointed Grand Mufti. Free Press Network lists Atoun among its members, alongside scholars such as Rateb al-Nabulsi and Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais. ^{6 2}
• 18 May 2025: Decree No. 28 appoints him head of the Religious Affairs Advisory Office at the Presidency; the appointment became public at the end of May. ^{1 2}
• Early June 2025: according to Syria TV, he chaired a panel, including the Minister of Higher Education, that interviewed candidates to head Syrian universities, which the outlet saw as a sign of his reach. ³
• The Manhom directory of public figures lists him under his Presidency title. ⁷

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Syria TV dates his joining Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch then led by al-Sharaa under the name Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, to 2012, when he took the name Abu Abdullah al-Shami. ^{3 4} Free Press Network says he had first led local armed groups in Idlib, including the Islamic Fajr Movement. ²

• He wrote several of al-Nusra’s doctrinal books; the best known, «In the Shade of the Tree of Jihad», was taught in the group’s induction courses. ³
• During the 2013–2014 rift between al-Nusra and the Islamic State group, he was among al-Nusra’s leading religious voices against IS. In his book he recounts a meeting with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at which, he says, al-Baghdadi accepted that al-Nusra could link directly with al-Qaeda’s leadership, a promise Atoun says was later broken. ²
• He first appeared in public in July 2016, when al-Nusra announced it was cutting its ties with al-Qaeda and renaming itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, a move he supported. ²
• He then became one of the main religious authorities of HTS, formed in 2017 under al-Sharaa’s leadership. ^{2 5}
• In 2024, according to Syria TV, he was HTS’s “General Follow-up Official”, an important executive post, and head of its Supreme Council for Fatwa. ³
• In December 2024 Türkiye Today described him as head of the HTS sharia council, a close confidant of al-Jolani who frequently received visits from him, and a strategist of the group’s turn from transnational jihad to local governance. ⁸

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From 2023 HTS detained hundreds of civilians, fighters and senior members on suspicion of working for Damascus or foreign governments, without informing their families. A detainee’s death under torture in 2024 set off rare protests in Idlib; al-Jolani called the protesters’ demands “mostly justified” and announced a restructuring of the security force running the prisons, and HTS told AFP it was “seriously examining” the demands. ⁹

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In 2021, at a lecture organised in Idlib, he presented the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan as a model for combining military and political action. Türkiye Today and Free Press Network read this as part of HTS’s effort to be seen as a local movement seeking international legitimacy. ^{8 2}

In “Engravings on the Wall of the Stage” he described HTS’s “project” as a “revolutionary, jihadist, institutional Sunni entity” resting on sharia as the reference for all laws and on military, security, political, economic, religious and administrative pillars, the last embodied by the Salvation Government. After the fall of the Assad government he wrote that the goal had widened to building Syria along four paths: preaching, developing society, strengthening and defending Syria, and relief. ^{3 10}