Latest news with #religiousviolence
LBCI
5 hours ago
- Politics
- LBCI
EU slams 'heinous and cowardly' Damascus church attack
The EU on Monday condemned as "heinous" a deadly weekend suicide attack on a Damascus church, saying the bloc "stands in solidarity" with Syria in combatting ethnic and religious violence. "This heinous and cowardly violence against Christians is an attack against all Syrians," said a statement from EU foreign policy spokesperson Anouar El Anouni on the attack, blamed by Syrian authorities on the Islamic State group. "It is a grave reminder of the need to intensify efforts against the terrorist threat and to ensure the enduring defeat of Daesh and other terrorist organizations," El Anouni said, using an alternative name for IS. AFP
Al Arabiya
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
EU slams ‘heinous and cowardly' Damascus church attack
The EU on Monday condemned as 'heinous' a deadly weekend suicide attack on a Damascus church, saying the bloc 'stands in solidarity' with Syria in combatting ethnic and religious violence. 'This heinous and cowardly violence against Christians is an attack against all Syrians,' said a statement from EU foreign policy spokesperson Anouar El Anouni on the attack, blamed by Syrian authorities on ISIS. 'It is a grave reminder of the need to intensify efforts against the terrorist threat and to ensure the enduring defeat of Daesh and other terrorist organizations,' El Anouni said, using an alternative name for ISIS.
ABC News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
A turf war in search of a national economy: The complex realities of Syria after Assad - ABC Religion & Ethics
The greatest challenge facing Syria since the overthrow of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad last December is the ambiguous relationship between jihadist militias to the new rulers in Damascus. These militias are not just armed groups. They're on a religious mission. They see themselves as 'the army of Muhammad' ( jaysh Muhammad ), recreating Islam's earliest conquests by establishing dominion over Syria. Most disturbing is the readiness of these militias to fight and kill on the basis of religious identity. They massacred scores of Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast in March and apparently view Alawite women as spoils of conquest. (It's worth noting that Alawites have a distinct accent, making them targets throughout Syria beyond their coastal homelands.) They were, moreover, eager to kill Druze south of Damascus in early May when the rumor spread that a Druze leader had insulted Islam's prophet. President Ahmed al-Sharaa has not decisively condemned these militias, choosing instead to place the blame for the bloodshed on remnants of the former regime and even groups in Syria — including the Druze in the south and the Kurds in the north-east — who refuse to surrender their weapons to the state. But it is these jihadist militias, who are prepared to kill on the basis of religious identity, and the failure of the regime to denounce them, that make the Druze and the Kurds slow to surrender their weapons. French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa at Elysee Palace on 7 May 2025 in Paris, France. (Photo by Antoine Gyori – Corbis / Getty Images) Developments in wider Syrian society can help make sense of the jihadist outlook. Universities have been sites of sectarian tension between Sunni and Druze students: Sunnis, who are the majority, threaten Druze with revenge for collaborating with the Assad regime. (Whereas the truth is that all groups did so.) Furthermore, the military has appointed jihadist figures — some still under US sanction — as commanders in areas with pluralistic societies. It is not difficult to understand, then, why Syria's ancient communities feel the need to defend themselves with their own militias. The Druze and Kurds have made security agreements with the state, but they aren't ready to give up their autonomy or their militias. The Alawites are in a tougher position. Remnants of the former regime pretended to be their defenders, but the Alawites know it's a ruse. Some have sought refuge in Lebanon, while others look to Russia or France, which al-Sharaa recently visited, to guarantee their security if threatened with another massacre. The Christians — whose numbers are a fraction of what they were prior to the revolution — have no military of their own. For this and other reasons, they have been organising to help the new rulers shape a nation that is not defined by religious identity. A nation divided We can learn from similar cases of the recent past. After the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, sectarian violence broke out in several places across Indonesia, most dramatically in Maluku. On the surface, the violence was Muslim-Christian, and, as in Syria, jihadists raced to take part in the killing, which only greatly increased the bloodshed. The real issue, however, was displacement anxiety. The former regime had accustomed all communities to look to it for their security and welfare. With its fall, these communities, unaccustomed to engaging one another apart from the state, took up weapons to defend their territories, battling one another in a religiously inflected turf war. It took nearly a decade for communal harmony to be restored. Syria's journey to national harmony may take longer, even once the state has rid itself of its jihadist associates and all groups can trust it to guarantee their security. For one, the nation's infrastructure is in shambles, most notably its educational system. This situation gives groups reason to look to regional powers to provide for their basic needs — particularly Türkiye, which continues to support jihadists, and Israel, which, partly because of its concerns over a jihadist-tainted regime on its northern doorstep, has sought to draw the Druze of Syria into its orbit. Iran no longer has credibility due to its support of the former Assad regime. Its proxies in Syria are greatly weakened, but it still wields influence over Shi'i groups in nearby Iraq and Lebanon. Displaced Syrian families form a return convoy to their destroyed village. Thousands of displaced families began returning to the countryside of Hama, Aleppo and Idlib, and building tents over the rubble of their homes since the fall of the Syrian regime. (Photo by Moawia Atrash / picture alliance via Getty Images) It is no wonder some think Syria will end up divided into autonomous regions, if not into independent nations: the Druze in the south backed by Israel; the Kurds in the north-east backed by the United States; the Alawites on the coast with no clear backer; and the rest of the nation — from Idlib in the north-west through Aleppo and Homs to Damascus — under Sunni dominion and backed by Türkiye. That said, division is unlikely because the government in Damascus seeks integration — nationally, regionally and globally. Nationally, the new regime has reintegrated the key northern city of Afrin into the national fold, thereby freeing it from Turkish-backed militias which had inflicted horrific atrocities on its inhabitants. Regionally, the new regime says that it is ready to establish diplomatic relations with Israel along the lines of the Abraham Accords. The economy of Sunnism Thus, though they are rightly suspect for their ongoing ties to jihadist elements, Syria's new rulers are working for national unity and integration into the regional and global economy. In a recent speech at the UN, Syria's foreign minister Asaad al-Shaybani called for sanctions to be lifted or at least lightened. Syria needs to rebuild its economy, devasted under the former regime, and the inability to restore a nation-wide prosperity, the minister emphasised, encourages communal separatism and extremism. But al-Shaybani failed to address a key issue. How will the nation's economy be positioned in relation to that of Türkiye, whose sultan-like yet aging president Recep Tayyib Erdoğan sees his southern neighbour as the gateway to his expansionist ambitions? Türkiye is a pragmatic player, but its economy has, since Erdoğan came to power in 2002, been attuned to what I call the economy of Sunnism, whereby pious businessmen became the leading economic force in the nation by forging trade networks held together by shared religious convictions. The combination of piety and business with political effect is hardly unique to Sunnism. Think of the Knights of Columbus. Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdoğan (left) receives Syrian Transitional Government Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaybani at Presidential Complex in Ankara, Türkiye on 15 January 2025. (Photo by Turkish Presidency / Mustafa Kamaci / Anadolu via Getty Images) The danger for Syria, at this fragile moment, is that those with access to the economy of Sunnism, as it extends from Türkiye into Syria, will reap the benefits of economic rebuilding — the urgent need for which al-Shaybani sought to impress on the UN gathering — while those who don't have access will be left with scraps and feelings of communal resentment. In fact, economic configuration along communal lines, in line with Erdoğan's ambitions, is already happening, undercutting confidence in the idea of a shared economy. A pragmatic business-oriented Sunnism can do much to offset the jihadist Sunnism long plaguing the region. Still, Syria's religiously diverse peoples will only grow more suspect of its new rulers if they move to promote the economy of Sunnism without divesting of the jihadist elements in their own ranks. Paul L. Heck is Professor of Theology and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. His most recent books are Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion and Political Theology and Islam: From the Birth of Empire to the Modern State.
