The plight of Christians in Syria

Syria, formerly an epicenter of ancient Christianity, is now a graveyard where hundreds of Christians and other minorities have been massacred in targeted attacks. According to news reports, March 6 marked the beginning of 48 hours of Syria’s deadliest phase since the ousting of Bashar al-Assad three months ago. The massacre of over a thousand civilians and fighters occurred in the Mediterranean coastal region where Christian and Alawite Muslim minorities have lived and flourished for decades in what used to be the Assads’ most secure regional stronghold.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the attacks, identifying them as perpetrated by “radical Islamist terrorists” and specifying their targets as “Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.” Rubio’s statement is strong and accurate.

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Syria came under an Islamist regime with unambiguous roots in al-Qaeda and ISIS. In its official statement, the Islamist government claimed that the fight that began on March 6 erupted between soldiers of the new forces and the pro-Assad forces. While this claim might be plausible, many eyewitnesses captured gruesome and graphic videos of Islamist warriors targeting, beating, and killing non-Sunni minorities, mainly Christians and Alawites, in the two coastal cities of Latakia and Baniyas.

The videos are heartbreaking to watch, as many civilians appear brutally snatched from their homes and piled in trucks, before being beaten and, in some cases, shot dead. In response to the carnage, the patriarchs of Syria’s three main traditional churches (Greek, Syriac, and Melkite) issued a joint statement condemning the violence and “massacres targeting innocent civilians.” The religious leaders avoided specifying Christians as victims but called for “an immediate end to these horrific acts, which stand in stark opposition to all human and moral values.”

What is happening in Syria, and why is it concerning for Christians?

Back in November, the Sunni Islamist group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—until now a designated terrorist organization by the United States—toppled the decades-long rule of al-Assad. That was a time for celebration, with the toppling of the murderous Assad regime. Many nations welcomed—albeit for the most part reluctantly—rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader and the nation’s interim president. Jolani was an al-Qaeda solider in the 2000s and fought against U.S. troops in Iraq before leading the al-Nusra Front (also terrorist), which rebranded itself in 2017 as HTS.

Many labeled HTS a “liberation” force, but for Christians and other minorities, this may be the beginning of a long nightmare.

Yes, Jolani rebranded himself to cultivate a “moderate” and less militaristic image. And, yes, he avoids his nom de guerre adopted during his tenure with al-Qaeda and ISIS, and returned to using his real name, Ahmed al-Shar’a. But the reality should be clear: An Islamist terrorist, responsible for thousands of deaths in the past two decades, is now the interim president of Syria and will most likely become its next president.

Bluntly, this recent massacre in Syria is a direct result of the new Islamist regime and its unambiguous acts against religious minorities. It was premature—and to an extent naïve—for many in the international community to welcome a former ISIS fighter as leader of a country with such a deep religious heritage and complexity.

An Islamist regime doesn’t view all humans as equal. An Islamist leader will deny basic democratic principles and will not affirm that all humans have equal rights that should be cherished and defended. In an Islamist framework, only an Islamist—particularly a Sunni Muslim—has value. Other non-Sunni Muslims are at best misguided heretics who should be chastised to repent or, at worst, religious infidels who deserve death with no mercy. As for Christians and Jews, they are at the bottom of the list of humans: misguided infidels who twisted their original religions and should be fought as Allah’s enemies.

While indeed there are complex, evil, and militant forces at play currently in Syria, it would be fanciful to think that the terrorist Jolani—who until recently fought against Western troops and helped to establish an Islamic State in Idlib in Syria—has suddenly transformed into a modern Western-style leader and abandoned his life-long religious commitments. While many in Western societies have celebrated the overthrow of al-Assad and clearly hoped for the militant Jolani to transform himself, the reality is that the Jolani of HTS is likely no different from the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS, Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda, or even Yahya Sinwar of Hamas.

The sad reality is that all solutions are now bad in Syria. The rise of Jolani and the fall of Assad may eventually bring back ISIS—perhaps under a different brand—to a severely destabilized region. As for Christians and minorities now in Syria, a huge responsibility lays on the shoulders of the international community to exert pressure on the current regime to ensure their safety, before entire minority communities get annihilated in ISIS-style campaigns.