Christians in Syria are once again facing violent attacks at the hands of their new Islamic regime. These attacks began around mid-March: churches were desecrated, Christian women targeted for abductions, Christian cemeteries attacked and Christian-owned businesses subjected to armed assaults and burglaries.
Armed Islamic groups were filmed on motorbikes while they were bragging about storming the Christian town of Al-Suqaylabiyah. They greeted the passing General Security vehicles, who did nothing to intervene, according to a 27 March post by the X account @GrecoLevantines.
See another video here showing Islamic mobs loyal to Syria’s new regime attacking Christian properties in Al-Suqaylabiyah.
This is the latest outbreak of deadly jihadist violence in the country following al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS)-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces overthrew Syria’s Assad regime in December 2024 with the help of Turkey.
The new Islamic regime of Syria, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani), the former head of the Syrian al-Qaeda, has since systematically led the targeting, abduction, and massacring of Druze, Christians, Alawites, and other ethnoreligious minorities.
The Islamic violence conducted against these communities by HTS military units and affiliated militias has resulted in the deaths or enforced disappearances of thousands of people.
Abu Mohammed al-Julani previously rose through the ranks of ISIS (Islamic State). In 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the then head of ISIS, sent al-Julani into Syria. There Julani founded an al-Qaeda affiliate: Jabhat al-Nusra. HTS was, until recently, listed as a terrorist group by the US. Julani had fought US troops in Iraq and was jailed by the Americans for several years.
HTS is still designated as terrorists by the UN, EU, and the UK because of its ties with ISIS and al-Qaeda.
On 22 March 2026, EALA (the Ethnikos Association of Latakia-Antaradus) issued an urgent briefing regarding the escalating attacks and threats against Christians in Western and coastal Syria.
The organization said that the Christians in Kfarbo, Mhardeh, Al-Suqaylabiyah, Wadi al-Nasara (Valey of Christians), and surrounding areas were assaulted by armed groups affiliated with the new “Ministry of Defense” of Syria:
“The armed Bedouin groups, operating alongside or under the effective control of government-affiliated forces, have entered the Christian towns of Kfarbo, Mhardeh, [and] Al-Suqaylabiyah, where they are actively carrying out armed robberies, destruction of Christian cultural and religious symbols, as well as vandalism and desecration of cemeteries across all three towns.”
EALA noted that “the Church of the Holy Martyrs has been converted into a military site, and Christian religious symbols have been deliberately destroyed. Armed Bedouins are consistently harassing, threatening, and terrorizing Christian residents, including issuing explicit threats. Multiple attempted abductions of Christian girls have been reported. These attempts were only prevented by the intervention of local civilians. A Christian family in Kharbeh was robbed at gunpoint inside their home. Armed perpetrators held the family at gunpoint while looting the house.”
EALA called for “immediate withdrawal and removal of all irregular and affiliated armed elements from the vicinity of churches, Christian towns, and civilian areas in Mhardeh, Kfarbo, and Al-Suqaylabiyah; full demilitarization of the Church of the Holy Martyrs, the Shrine of Saint George and all surrounding compounds, with their immediate return to civilian and religious use; and deployment of neutral forces or locally recruited community-based civilian protection structures.”
The “Greco-Syrian Nation,” an online platform that advocates for the human rights of the Greeks and other indigenous peoples of Syria, has called the attack against Al-Suqaylabiyah “a crime against our people, our faith, and our right to exist”:
“What transpired in Al-Suqaylabiyah was not a spontaneous disturbance, but a coordinated and deeply alarming act of hate. Armed groups from the neighboring Sunni villages of Qalaat al-Madiq (Ἀπάμεια) and Al-Asharinah— operating with the shameful complicity or outright protection of the so-called ‘General Security Service’ - descended on Al-Suqaylabiyah in organized waves, unleashing chaos and terror.
“These savages — self-styled followers of al-Julani — stormed our streets like vandals from the darkest ages. Armed men roamed freely, firing into the air, issuing threats, and filming their crimes—all while so-called ‘security forces’ stood by, either unwilling or unable to intervene. They smashed our shops and cafés, burned our homes, and beat innocent civilians in the open. They even desecrated a statue of the Holy Virgin Mary, a symbol of our Christian faith. What began as the harassment of our daughters and young men on Al-Meshwar Street exploded into a coordinated pogrom designed to terrorize, loot, and break the will of a peaceful Rûm (Ρωμαϊκή) city.
“Let us be clear: this is ethnoreligious targeting. This is an existential threat. The events in Al-Suqaylabiyah are part of a broader pattern aimed at uprooting the Christian presence from its ancestral homeland through fear, violence, and forced displacement. The message being sent is unmistakable: leave, submit, or face annihilation.”
Reports from the country confirm that Syria’s jihadist regime and affiliated groups are escalating their campaign of persecution and violence against Christians. This follows previous massacres committed by Julani’s forces towards the Alawites and Druze.
In March 2025, regime forces attacked the Alawite-dominated coastal areas of Syria, massacring hundreds, abducting women, and turning them into sex slaves. According to Reuters, a photo from Sonobar, confirmed by two surviving Alawites from the town, showed a message scrawled on the wall of one home: “You were a minority, and now you are a rarity.”
In July 2025, the Druze towns in southern Syria were attacked by Islamic groups led by Julani. The violence erupted in the predominantly Druze city in the province of Suwayda (also known as Sweida) on 12 July, two days after a Druze merchant was reportedly abducted on the highway to Damascus. Large numbers of civilians (mainly the Druze), as well as children, were massacred by Muslims. Many cases were filmed and posted by perpetrators on social media. Hundreds of Druze women and children were abducted. Today, many remain missing.
In September 2025, Father Tony Al Boutros of St. Philip Greek Catholic Church announced the destruction which the Julani regime had inflicted upon the 36 villages in his hometown of Suweyda. He said those villages were attacked by Julani’s forces and Bedouin tribes, violating the Druze and Christians, destroying homes, burning churches, terrorizing the whole population, and forcibly displacing them.
“They did not leave a house in any area they reached without stealing, burning, destroying and violating human dignity by assaulting women, the elderly, and children,” the bishop said in his open letter:
“All residents of these 36 villages, both Christians and Druze, were displaced and moved to schools, homes, churches, clubs, and public parks, where they remain refugees to this day. More than 1,500-2,000 civilians were killed in this aggression. Many citizens were also executed in the field simply because they belonged to a different sect or religion. Women, children, and the elderly were attacked in a barbaric manner unprecedented in human history.”
The situation of the St. Michael’s Church in As-Sawara al-Kubra, one of six churches vandalized during the regime’s assault on the province, was documented by Father Boutros. He confirmed that “even the graves weren’t spared, a disgrace to humanity.”
Benedict Kiely, a Priest of the Ordinariate and founder of the Nasarean organization, told IDI,
“It is incomprehensible why western Christians are silent in the face of the ongoing persecution of Syrian Christians. I often think of the words of Jan Figel, for EU Commissioner for Religious Freedom, that ‘ignorance and indifference are allies of evil.’ Perhaps many are ignorant, far worse if they are indifferent.
“Rather than greeting Al Julani warmly and spraying him with perfume, the Trump administration should make any aid contingent upon the freedom and protection for all religious minorities. The current U.S. Ambassador to Syria should also be replaced.”
Kostas A. Lavdas, a Professor of European and Comparative Politics, told IDI that the support that Julani’s regime obtains from several governments should be understood in the wider context:
“It could only come as a surprise to those who took at face value the declarations regarding a ‘rules-based order’ that was supposed to provide the normative framework regulating international interactions. In fact, what we have today is the à la carte intensification of aspects of international behavior that were always in supply by security providers, the east and the west. Julani’s role at this moment is seen as instrumental in two ways, one dealing with present stability and another with US interests, until a better option presents itself. First, maintaining the basic border scheme and the general spirit of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. Neither the US nor Europe are ready for the breakup of Syria at this moment. Second, the perception in Washington is that the Julani regime will be positive regarding US plans to take part in further exploiting the oil and gas sector in Syria. Months ago, Reuters reported that American firms were working on an ‘energy master plan’ on Syria.”
Today, Syria is a Sunni-Muslim majority country. The 2012 Syrian Constitution stipulates that the president must be Muslim and Islamic law is a major source of legislation. This provides a constitutional basis for discriminatory treatment of non-Muslims.
However, indigenous Christians (of Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian descent) have lived in Syria for thousands of years. Most of Syria’s Christians belong to historical churches (mainly Orthodox and Catholic, plus some traditional Protestant congregations).
Syria was a majority-Christian country and was part of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire before Muslim Arabs invaded in the seventh century. After the Muslim conquest of this region in 634 AD, Christians and other non-Muslims lived for centuries as oppressed, beleaguered “dhimmis” who were allowed to retain their religion in exchange for a high poll tax, also known as “jizya.”
Today, while religious and ethnic communities in Syria are facing an actual genocide at the hands of the Julani regime, Julani is received by Western heads of state who ignore the fact that he is a jihadist terrorist.
While Julani was addressing the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York on 24 September 2025, his regime in Syria was burning Christian-owned homes, villages, and forests in what is known as the Valley of Christians.
In their recent statement, the “Greco-Syrian Nation” announced that they “call upon Greece — as our ethnic and civilizational kin — to take an unequivocal stand. We urge Greek political leadership to raise this issue at the highest international levels, to demand accountability and concrete measures to shield Al-Suqaylabiyah and every Rûm [Greek] village from further barbarism.
“We also call upon the international community and all civilized nations that claim to uphold human rights to condemn this attack in the clearest terms. Silence in the face of such violence is complicity. Immediate measures must be taken to protect civilians in Al-Suqaylabiyah and across Syria, to hold perpetrators accountable, and to guarantee that the Rûm and all indigenous communities can live in safety and dignity in their own homeland.
“History is watching. The world must decide whether it will stand by as another ancient Christian community is driven to extinction—or whether it will act, decisively and without delay.”
Uzay Bulut is a fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute.
What Is IDI ?
The most trusted source of information on the Middle East, Islam, and the ideological threats facing the West.
Subject-matter experts, former Muslims, Arab Christians, and Western thought leaders, coming together to equip policymakers to prevent destructive foreign ideas from being translated into law, restore confidence in the biblical principles that built the West by empowering the Church to reengage the public square, and provide the public with solid analysis to combat the confusion that is making the West vulnerable.
The documentation here is thorough and the witnesses are credible. What is harder to find, and what the Western policy response consistently lacks, is the structural explanation for why this keeps happening in the same pattern, across different countries, different decades, different regimes.
The answer is not that these men are uniquely cruel. It is that they are operating inside a system that has a specific, traceable logic. The dhimmi framework IDI references at the end of this piece is not ancient history. It is the operating system. Churches converted to military sites, cemeteries desecrated, girls targeted for abduction, security forces standing aside while the cameras roll. These are not the actions of a movement that has lost control of its fringe. They are the visible expressions of a hierarchy being asserted. The system does not need to issue orders for this to happen. It only needs to establish who governs and who must yield.
The message scrawled on the wall in Sonobar after the Alawite massacres said it plainly: "You were a minority, and now you are a rarity." That is not rage. That is administration. Someone wrote that sentence because they understood exactly what was being accomplished and wanted it on record.
Western governments receiving Julani at the UN while his forces burn the Valley of Christians are not making a mistake born of ignorance. They are making a calculation. The calculation will keep producing the same result until someone is willing to name what the calculation costs, and who pays it.
Its 638 all over again.😮💨