There is not much that can be said in favor of the Assad regime in Syria, but it did generally protect the rights of Christians, Alawites, and others who were not Sunni Muslims. Those days, however, are gone forever. In recent weeks, every day brings new evidence of the violent persecution of Alawites and Christians in Syria, and there is no end in sight. And now the country’s interim president, former (and possibly current) jihad leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, has signed a provisional constitution that could seal the second-class status of religious minorities in Syria, as it establishes the country as an Islamic state.
The Associated Press reported Friday that al-Sharaa “on Thursday signed a temporary constitution that leaves the country under Islamist rule while promising to protect the rights of all Syrians for five years during a transitional phase.” Promising the protect the rights of religious minorities is not the same thing as granting them equality of rights under the law. If al-Sharaa did grant equal rights to Alawites and Christians, he would be contravening the Sharia that he just enshrined as the highest law in Syria.
The Qur’an commands Muslims to fight against the “people of the book,” a term that refers primarily to Jews and Christians, until they “pay the jizya,” a poll tax, “with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). Islamic law contains a large variety of humiliating and discriminatory regulations that are designed to ensure that the “people of the book” do indeed “feel themselves subdued” under the hegemony of Islamic law. After decades of relatively secular rule, this looks to be the future of Syria.
AP stated that “while many were happy to see an end to the Assad family’s dictatorial rule of more than 50 years in the war-torn country, religious and ethnic minorities have been skeptical of the new Islamist leaders and reluctant to allow Damascus under its new authorities to assert control of their areas.” Their skepticism is understandable, as they know very well what Islamic rule will mean for their position in Syrian society. And Abdulhamid Al-Awak, one of the people who drafted the provisional constitution, made it clear: the new document includes “the stipulation that the head of state has to be a Muslim and Islamic law is the main source of jurisprudence.”
Al-Awak also claimed that “the temporary constitution includes provisions that enshrine freedom of expression and the media,” but Islamic law is not enthusiastic about the freedom of expression if that expression is considered to be insulting to Islam (remember the fatwa on Salman Rushdie), and so these assurances were likely to prove to be as empty as the new regime’s assurances that it would protect the country’s religious minorities, just days before unleashing furiously violent attacks upon them.
At least one Trump administration official saw this coming. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said this about the situation in Syria at the time: “I have no love for Assad or any dictator. I just hate al-Qaeda. I hate that our leaders cozy up to Islamist extremists, calling them ‘rebels,’ as Jake Sullivan said to Hillary Clinton, ‘al Qaeda is on our side in Syria.’ Syria is now controlled by al-Qaeda offshoot HTS, led by an Islamist jihadist who danced in the streets on 9/11, and who was responsible for the killing of many American soldiers.” Jake Sullivan was Old Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, and a longtime Obama/Biden apparatchik.
Fox News reported last week that Gabbard’s “warning of a terrorist takeover in Syria looks to be coming true amid reports that al Qaeda-linked terror forces aligned with Syria’s interim new president—a former al Qaeda terrorist—are being accused of massacring Alawites as well as members of the country’s dwindling Christian community.”
Related: What is Happening in Syria Is Just What Obama and Biden Wanted
An Alawite woman recounted that the jihadis said that “Alawites are pigs, and they have to execute all of them and the small children before the elderly people.” She also “confirmed reports that the Islamist forces murdered the prominent Alawite 86-year-old cleric Shaaban Mansour and his son Hussein Shaaban.” She added that in the Alawite towns of Nahr al-Bared and Deir Shamil, the jihadis were ” entering houses and killing people and stealing everything. They are covering their faces.” She said: “I feel there is no safety. There is no homeland. There is nowhere to escape to, and no one to defend us. I feel fear and horrifying feelings.”
Now that Islamic law has become the highest law of the land in Syria, the precarious (at best) situation for religious minorities there has been normalized and rendered permanent. The bitter fruit of the Obama/Biden jihad-enabling foreign policy will be manifest in that unhappy land for years to come.
