My view was always that if you scratch a Muslim willing to kill, you’ll find a murderous Islamist underneath. The heyday of Arab nationalism is over. As literacy has ramped up in the Muslim world, nationalism has receded and religion has become primary rallying cry of Sunnis and Shias alike to the exclusion of minority Muslim and non-Muslim sects.
The bombing of ISIS and not the thug Assad’s Alawite military and paramilitaries was bound to push his opponents into alliances with ISIS. Naturally the Guardian cherry-picks and claims that the bombing of ISIS is seen as an attack on all of Islam, which is similar to the blame-the-victim horse crap that happened after 9/11, and happens every day to Israel.
Jihadists are jihadists. Factions align with other factions, fight and kill factions from their own sects as easily as they fight and kill factions from other sects.