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Bailey Ulbricht has a M.A. in Islamic Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where she won the Doreen Hinchcliffe Prize for best overall performance in Islamic Law. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Islamic Studies at SOAS, where she is a Marshall Scholar. Interested in how Islamic Law informs political decision-making of Islamist groups, her current work focuses on the definition of apostasy among contemporary state and non-state Islamist actors, examining how the jurisprudential definition of apostasy is used to justify varied political ends. She also has a B.A. in International Relations from Carleton College, where she graduated magna cum laude. Bailey was a 2015-2016 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Turkey, a 2015 Davis Projects for Peace Fellow, and a 2013 TEDx speaker. Bailey is also the Founder and current Executive Director of Paper Airplanes (www.paper-airplanes.org), a nonprofit providing remote language and professional skills instruction to people affected by conflict in the Middle East.
Justifying Relations with an Apostate During a Jihad: A Salafi-Jihadist Group’s Relations with Turkey in Syria
This analysis explains how the Salafi-Jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has legally justified its relations with Turkey. Although HTS was careful to avoid direct military collaboration with Turkey, it welcomed the Turkish Army’s presence as an additional force against the Syrian regime and secular opposition groups. This caused a significant rift among the group’s supporters and the al-Qaeda community, who accused HTS of thwarting its own jihad by forming relations with Turkey, considered by Salafi-Jihadists to be an apostate.
