Top Jabhat al-Nusrah shar'i attacks Jeish al-Islam, highlights broader jihadist anxieties

Below we see Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusrah’s top shari’ah official Sami al-Oreidi issue an unusually direct attack on top leadership in Jeish al-Islam, the most powerful rebel faction in Damascus’s East Ghouta suburbs. Al-Oreidi’s tweets (translated below) make clear that members of Nusrah’s top leadership share and endorse hardline jihadists’ hostility to Jeish al-Islam and its leader, Zahran Alloush. They also speak to broader anxieties among Syria’s jihadists as they attempt to coexist, often uncomfortably, with other political and ideological trends within the Syrian opposition…