And thanks to Obama we’re backing these people.

(TELL RIF’AT, SYRIA) — More than 18 months into the uprising against the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, Islamist militants who favour a strict form of Sharia appear to be gaining a formidable sway in the ranks of the anti-regime forces.

In dozens of villages and towns across northern Syria, the Assad regime and local functionaries of the ruling Baath party no longer have day-to-day control.

Into the power vacuum have stepped those with guns or money, some whom are urging the establishment to adopt some form of Islamic law in a post-Assad Syria.

Already, some rebels and other opponents of Mr Assad have sought to implement their particularly harsh version of Sharia on a small scale, particularly using corporal punishment against suspected criminals and government supporters.

Rebel interrogators in this town, about 20 kilometres from the Turkish border, said they had beaten the legs of detainees with sticks.

Insurgents in nearby Mare’ threatened to amputate the hands of alleged thieves and paraded them through town in an effort to publicly shame them, residents said.

In Aleppo, where fierce fighting between insurgents and government forces has raged for weeks, one rebel leader said he had ordered lashings using rubber hoses and knotted ropes.

Abu Yaqoub, a 26-year-old Muslim cleric in rebel-held Tell Rif’at, believes Sharia would provide the best form of government for Syria in a post-Assad era.

“God willing,” Mr Yaqoub replied, when asked if Islamic law should be imposed nationwide.

At the moment, the ranks of the anti-Assad forces appear to boast a significant number of Sunni Islamist militants who support a strict form of Sharia after, they hope, the president is forced from power.

Mr Yacoub is the top cleric of Tell Rif’at’s judicial committee, formed about two months ago by the rebels’ regional revolutionary council.

The council’s leaders command the powerful Tawhid Brigade that invaded Aleppo last month. Its farmers and labourers are considered the most organised of Syria’s rebel factions, which operate loosely under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Some Tawhid units are manned entirely by Islamists, and few of its top leaders hold university degrees or have received training in Islamic law.

It was a Tawhid rebel commander who studied with Islamists in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan and now fighting in Aleppo who oversaw the public shaming of a dozen thieves in his home village of Mare’ earlier this year, according to town residents.