By all accounts, Sunni Islamists are leading the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and are on track to become the paramount political force in Damascus after he's gone. The mainstream Syrian Muslim Brotherhood dominates the Syrian National Council, the opposition's primary political umbrella and diaspora fundraising arm, while more militant Salafi-jihadist groups are assuming a steadily greater role in fighting regime forces on the ground. Even the supposedly secular Free Syrian Army (FSA) is exhibiting an Islamist character, with one leading commander recently exhorting Syrians to "go for jihad" and "gain an afterlife and heaven." Many outside observers find the Islamist character of the revolt disconcerting, with some even counseling indirect U.S. military intervention as a means of suppressing it.
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More... Unfortunately, there's not much the United States can do about it. Islamist political ascendancy is inevitable in a majority Sunni Muslim country brutalized for more than four decades by a secular minoritarian dictatorship.