Toward an Exceptional Qurʾanic Generation: How Dar al-Wahy al-Sharif Schools Shape Islam, Identity, and Power in Northwest Syria

This article explores Islamic citizenship education as the conduit through which ideological governance was articulated and enacted in rebel-governed northwestern Syria (2017–25) with a close ethnographic and textual analysis of the Dar al-Wahy al-Sharif (DWS) school network. Founded in 2017 under the patronage of Hayʾat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), DWS has grown into the region’s most expansive educational institution, blending Qurʾanic learning with nationalist Islamic pedagogy. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Idlib in 2025, the study examines how DWS cultivates an “exceptional Qurʾanic generation” while operating within, and reinforcing, a political environment structured by HTS rule, shaping patterns of loyalty and parental alignment. Situating DWS within HTS’s post-Salafi turn and broader state-building project, the article argues that the school system functions as both a site of ideological reproduction and an arena in which postconflict Islamist governance takes shape.