Attack on church in Syria

Following the devastating attack on the Mar Elias Church in the Syrian capital Damascus, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) reiterated its warning of an imminent escalation of violence against minority groups in Syria. “The new Syrian leaders are not willing to protect minority groups from attacks. In fact, the Kurds, Druze, Alawites, and Shiites are among their main enemies. However, IS is able to operate freely in regions controlled by al-Sharaa,” stated Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East consultant, in Göttingen today.

“When I spoke to Kurdish general Mazlum Abdi in the north-east of Syria at the end of April this year, he warned of the presence of IS fighters in regions controlled by the so-called transitional government – and several members of religious minorities in these areas confirmed this. According to their reports, they are living in constant fear of attacks,” reported the human rights activist, who visited several places in Syria in April, including Damascus.  

The so-called “Islamic State” (IS) is said to be responsible for the attack on the Mar Elias Church in Damascus on Sunday (June 22). At the same time, the STP received reports of serious threats against Christians in other parts of Syria. In the province of Hama, the message “Your turn will come” was written on several churches. The Mar Elias Church in Damascus is a Greek Orthodox Church located in the Tabbalah neighborhood, near the district of Al-Duwaila. It was built in 1990.

The STP once again called on German politicians and the media not to downplay the new Islamist rulers and the Syrian militias who took power in Damascus at the end of 2024. “The Sunni militias now in power in Syria hardly differ from IS – which is why these militias have not shown interest in fighting IS since the beginning of the civil war in Syria,” the Middle East expert explained. “A policy of appeasement towards the Sunni Islamists in Syria will not help to stabilize the country, but will rather encourage those in power to continue their current policies. The new Islamist leader in Damascus does not believe in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society in Syria. He is aiming for a conformist Sunni-Islamist state,” Sido said. Al-Sharaa relies on superficial changes and nice rhetoric to improve his image.

Before the outbreak of the revolt in 2011, Syria had the largest Christian minority in the Middle East after Egypt – with two to three million believers. Today, their number is estimated at around 300,000, which corresponds to approximately two percent of the total population. The Christian communities in Syria are very diverse in terms of their denominations. The largest group among the Christians – in Damascus, but also in the rest of the country – are the Rum Orthodox, who see themselves as representatives of an Arab Christianity. Their liturgy is held exclusively in Arabic.

“If the violence against the Christians continues, this will ultimately lead to a merely symbolic presence of Christianity in Syria. The few remaining Christians will then be declared strangers in what was once their predominantly Christian homeland. The new leaders in Damascus bear responsibility for the violence: They are not willing to stop hate speech against Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities, but deliberately continue to fuel it on a daily basis,” the Middle East expert said. Further, he warned that this scenario could repeat itself in Iraq. “After the fall of the Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Christian churches and civil society organization of the Assyrians/Aramaeans/Chaldeans throughout Iraq were attacked – mainly by Sunni Islamists. Back then, today’s ruler of Syria, al-Sharaa, fought as a Jihadist in the ranks of the Sunni militias against the United States, the Kurds, the Yazidis, and the Christians.”