Does Rebranding Overwrite the Past?

Imagine, for a second, that you were a degenerate, an addict spending so much time at the bottom of a bottle that you can’t tell day from night. One day, wiping your hands after urinating on the pavement, you break into a house, kill the nice couple living there, kidnap their kids, sell their organs on the black market, and use the resulting cash flow to score some grade-A cocaine. You snort the cocaine off a naked prostitute whose car you then steal. In the ensuing police, your car skids into worshippers exiting Friday prayers. Leaving the car, your eyes lock with the imam’s, and you punch the daylights out of him. You then suddenly fall to your knees, turn to the heavens, and declare, "There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His messenger."

The imam, ready to call for your blood moments ago, would be forced to help you seek forgiveness; he cannot determine whether your sudden change of heart is sincere, and is religiously obligated to forgive you. God, after all, might have inspired you to repent and join Islam, a faith that wipes the slate clean.

But the law enforcement officers who failed to stop your rampage will not be so lenient; they’re not concerned with your repentance or newfound faith. They deal with what you’ve done, not what you intend to do tomorrow. Your rampage is meticulously documented in security footage, eyewitness accounts, and case files. Short of burning down the evidence room—or a substantial bribe—it is unerasable.

Think, now, on rebranding in politics.

Suppose you joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq and became one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s closest associates. Later, you grew close to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Eventually, you fell out with him, founded Jabhat al-Nusra, and in this time killed, enslaved, forcibly disappeared, kidnapped, tortured, and bombed. You spilled the blood of innocents. Then one day, you announced, “I repent. I was young and reckless. A man in his twenties isn’t the same as he is in his thirties or forties. I am no longer part of Jabhat al-Nusra; I am now Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. I am a state, a civil authority.”

Does this erase what you did before? Well, it depends on which sources you reference:

God: Your rebranding does not involve pronouncing the shahada and converting. Everything you did was based on your religious logic; in your faith, God is already pleased with your actions. What, then, are you repenting for? To whom? Is there a flaw in your faith that you seek to amend? Do you repent within the framework of religion itself? Or are you mocking us all?

Your dilemma is profound. What’s the solution? Is it possible to rebrand the rebrand? Should you first apostasies, then revert to Islam? No; that would render you an apostate, risking your execution by fanatic before you could repent. It seems the problem lies in the very idea of rebranding: the more you cling to it, the deeper your descent into hell. 

But what if you went to Saudi Arabia? Maybe you can view its scattered shrines in awe: Aramco, The Line, and Neom. Perform your rituals and glorify God. All your past sins will be erased, and you’ll emerge cleansed anew.

This solution spares you the need for rebranding and grants you periodic opportunities to commit fresh sins and erase them anew.

Citizens: If only all obstacles could be overcome so easily. The citizen has endured every imaginable regime: Canaanites, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Umayyads, Abbasids, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Mongols, Ottomans, French, Baathists. Every new era wipes away the one before. To win the approval of the citizen, show him a couple of TikTok videos and a captivating YouTube interview with an influencer to convince the citizen that things are looking up. Eliminate taxes on smartphones, make fuel affordable, and the citizen will frolic in the new, free Syria, wild.

Of course, you may encounter individual cases of resistance. These can be dealt with: Wipe them out.

Foreign Powers: The most challenging and exhausting to deal with. They control intelligence, satellites, computing, AI. They are ever-watchful; a leaf could not fall without their knowledge. They know what you conceal and what you state; they are a paranoid’s fantasy, cognisant of your deepest intentions. To earn their approval, you must genuinely align with their interests and adopt their ways. But you’ll face a timing issue. Had you decided to change two centuries ago, you could have fallen in step with them, changed your faith to earn their favour. 

Making matters worse, they behave as though they are God, the nation, the citizen, and the government combined. They have invented branding and rebranding; your suit, tie, and double-buckled shoes will not fool them. They may overlook you and forgive your past transgressions…but only until it’s time to wipe the next rebranded sinner’s slate clean.