When calls began circulating after the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024 to reverse agrarian reform, return confiscated lands to former large landowners, and undo nationalization policies affecting factories, commercial enterprises, and banks, I initially dismissed them as marginal noise. These measures—first introduced by Gamal Abdel Nasser during the Syrian-Egyptian union (1958–1961) and later entrenched by the Baath Party after its 1963 coup—had long been part of Syria’s socioeconomic landscape.
But the fatwa issued by the Grand Mufti of the Republic, Sheikh Osama Al-Rifai, is of a different order. The Mufti’s office is an official state institution, and his religious authority carries weight among a broad segment of Syrians. For that reason, his ruling—one that has sparked intense controversy—deserves careful examination.
According to the fatwa, agrarian reform lands seized from major landowners and allocated to peasants for usufruct in 1964–1965—lands for which peasants received no ownership deeds and which remained legally state property—are “usurped property.” In the recording circulated online, Sheikh Al-Rifai describes agrarian reform as a corrupting innovation introduced by Nasser and completed by the Baathists. He declares it forbidden to buy, sell, mediate, transact in, or even enter such land. Prayer performed on it, he adds, is invalid.
He cites an example: a confiscated building in Damascus originally belonging to the Al-Qabbani family, which the government offered to Dar al-Ifta as its headquarters. Sheikh Al-Rifai refused the offer once he learned of its origins. Implicitly, he invites peasants—or their heirs—who benefited from agrarian reform to follow his example and relinquish their land so it may return to the descendants of the old landed families: Al-Azm, Al-Barazi, Al-Kikhia, Al-Atassi, Al-Yusuf, and tribal sheikhs of the Jazira such as Al-Muslat.
This article is not the place to revisit the merits or flaws of agrarian reform or nationalization as they were implemented six decades ago. Rather, the question is what this fatwa means today—and why its implications are so troubling.
- A Fatwa Detached from Today’s Realities
The fatwa is grounded in a logic that ignores the social and economic realities of contemporary Syria. The country is emerging from a fourteen-year civil war that left massive physical destruction, deep social fractures, nearly five million internally displaced people, and a similar number of refugees. The World Bank estimates reconstruction costs at around $220 billion—resources Syria simply does not have.
Meanwhile, more than sixty years have passed since agrarian reform. Land has been inherited, subdivided, sold, and resold. Families have built homes, dug wells, and established farms and small businesses. Entire communities depend on these lands for survival.
Yet the Mufti’s ruling gives no weight to these realities, nor to the catastrophic economic and social consequences that would follow if peasants were forced to return land to former owners—or buy it back from their heirs—at a time of widespread poverty and displacement.
Syria faces dozens of urgent priorities. Revisiting agrarian reform is not one of them.
- Opening the Door to Reversing Nationalization
The fatwa also opens the door to demands for reversing nationalization of factories, commercial enterprises, and banks. Some have already begun arguing that these, too, should be returned to their original owners.
But the state has invested heavily in these enterprises—building new facilities, adding production lines, and expanding operations using public funds. Restoring them to former owners would be legally and financially complex, and would burden an already bankrupt state.
Unlike agricultural land, returning factories would affect only a small number of wealthy families. Reversing agrarian reform, however, would impact millions of Syrians and destabilize rural society.
The Al-Qabbani building cited by Sheikh Al-Rifai is a special case: a single structure that has not undergone major changes—assuming the owners were not already compensated.
- A Selective Reading of Property Rights
Sheikh Al-Rifai bases his ruling on the Prophetic tradition that property taken without consent is unlawful. On this basis, he deems agrarian reform an act of usurpation and considers all who used such land to have sinned.
But he does not ask how the great landowners acquired their vast estates—often hundreds of thousands of hectares. Many obtained them through Ottoman decrees while serving as imperial officials or Janissary commanders. Some were not even Syrian.
Research by Jamal Barout on the Syrian Jazira shows that until 1920, much of the region was communal grazing land classified as state domain. Within a few years of the French Mandate, these plains were transformed into enormous private estates concentrated in the hands of a few families—often through appropriation backed by colonial authorities.
The historian Abdullah Hanna’s work on Syrian peasants and agrarian relations reaches similar conclusions.
- Inequality and the Moral Question of Wealth
There is no need to rehearse the argument that extreme disparities in wealth are inherently unjust. Entire libraries explore distributive justice, exploitation, and the legitimacy of wealth derived from capital rather than labor.
Arab intellectual heritage contains its own expressions of this truth. Imam Ali is reported to have said: “No rich man becomes wealthy except through the poverty of another.” Whether or not the attribution is authentic, the moral insight is clear. Abu Dharr al-Ghafari is said to have marveled at the man who cannot find his daily bread yet does not rise with his sword.
- Misrepresenting the Impact of Agrarian Reform
Sheikh Al-Rifai claims that landowners suffered no harm and that peasants derived no benefit, since much of the land now lies fallow. This is simply untrue.
Peasants’ incomes improved significantly. Their lives changed as the state expanded into rural areas—building schools, clinics, hospitals, extending electricity, and constructing roads. Agricultural support policies broadened consumption, stimulated rural development, expanded the domestic market, and enabled social mobility. Many rural children became university graduates and civil servants.
Landowners, meanwhile, experienced a decline in wealth and social standing. Many emigrated. This, too, was a loss for the country—but it does not negate the gains for millions of rural Syrians.
- Agrarian Reform Is Not a Socialist Invention
Sheikh Al-Rifai portrays agrarian reform as an inherently socialist policy, but history tells a very different story. Long before socialism emerged, capitalist countries undertook sweeping agrarian reforms as part of their own political and economic transformations. France implemented land redistribution after the 1789 Revolution. Denmark carried out successive reforms between 1786 and 1813. Following the revolutions of 1848, Germany, Italy, and Spain all enacted similar measures. Russia abolished serfdom in 1861, Mexico pursued agrarian reform from 1915 to 1945, Japan did so in 1946, Italy again in 1950, Chile in 1965, and Costa Rica in 1961. None of these countries adopted socialism as their governing system.
In the Arab world, agrarian reform was likewise not a socialist invention. Egypt introduced it in 1952, Syria in 1958, Iraq in 1958, Algeria in 1962, and South Yemen in 1968. The forms varied, but the principle was the same: breaking up large estates and redistributing land to peasants under different arrangements, sometimes with compensation and sometimes without. The historical record makes clear that agrarian reform is not tied to any single ideology; it has been a tool used across political systems to address entrenched rural inequality.
- A Story from the 1960s
In the mid-1960s, Jarab Al-Tali, the mukhtar of Al-Jarnieh near my hometown of Al-Sqeilbiyah, told my father a story. Agrarian reform had just reached the village, distributing the fertile lands of Najib Agha Al-Barazi—150 dunums per farmer.
A delegation of clerics from Hama arrived, declaring agrarian reform unlawful. They asked for land to build a mosque but insisted it could not be built on land that had belonged to Al-Barazi.
Mukhtar Jarab replied, “By God, Sheikh, this is the only land we have, and it is ours—lawful and pure.”
When the cleric said they could not eat the sheep slaughtered for lunch if they had grazed on former Al-Barazi land, Jarab stood up and said:
“Listen, Sheikhs. This land is ours, and the sheep are ours. You are welcome as guests—otherwise, the road to Hama is open.”
- A Fatwa Aligned with Power, Not Justice
Ultimately, the fatwa reflects a familiar posture of the official religious establishment—aligning with rulers and wealthy elites at the expense of the poor majority. It passes sweeping moral judgment on hundreds of thousands of impoverished peasants who received only modest plots they had long cultivated for absentee landlords.
It declares that they and their descendants have lived in sin for sixty years simply by working the land, building homes, and feeding their families. Even their prayers, according to the fatwa, are invalid.
Conclusion: Syria Cannot Afford This Debate
I do not believe the Syrian government will attempt to reverse agrarian reform—not because of the immense practical obstacles alone, nor because of competing national priorities, but because of the explosive reaction such a move would provoke among millions of rural Syrians.
Even raising the issue risks stirring deep resentment. Syria does not need new sources of social upheaval.
I am reminded of the confrontation between the Assad regime and the Fighting Vanguard in the late 1970s. The countryside did not rally to the insurgents, partly because many feared that their victory would restore the old feudal order. Rural neutrality was, in its own quiet way, an expression of historical memory.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
