Since Paul the apostle first encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, Syria has been one of the cradles of Christianity. Today, Syria is closer to a graveyard for Christians, as violence and oppression-fueled emigration threaten the virtual extinction of Christianity in Syria. Before the Syrian Civil War, Christians made up roughly 10% of the population, between 1.5 and 2 million people. Only an estimated 300,000 remain today. While their dwindling number is due in large part to the instability in the region, the new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has escalated the oppression of Christians. The current state of religious minorities in Syria, along with the posture and structure of the Syrian Constitution and Parliament, effectively restricts positive change.
After al-Sharaa led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) sudden overthrow of the Assad regime, thousands of Syrians rejoiced in the streets with the possibility of freedom. While members of the international community wanted to trust in al-Sharaa’s promises to expand freedoms and political participation, the government’s religious extremist roots necessarily inhibits improvement for religious minorities. Following years of fighting for al-Qaeda and capture by American forces, al-Sharaa formed an al-Qaeda branch in Syria to fight President al-Assad, eventually breaking off al-Qaeda to form to form Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS has long been a U.S.-designated Entity of Particular Concern (EPC) for its egregious violations of religious freedom during the civil war.
While al-Sharaa promised to make a nation for all Syrians, religious and ethnic minorities in the region do not trust him owing to continued terrorism carried out by his fighters and related groups. The Open Doors’ World Watch List reported the largest single-year jump in Christian persecution in 2025, moving from 18th to 6th. In March of 2026, violence against Syria’s oldest Christian towns by Islamist militants forced the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox patriarchs to issue a joint statement saying that Easter celebrations would be “limited exclusively to prayers within the churches.” Since 2024, Islamic extremists have destroyed Christian crosses, cars, churches, homes, and businesses, kidnapped and tortured religious minorities, and brainwashed Syrian children with Jihadist messages. Similar attacks, including massacres, have been perpetrated against other religious and ethnic minorities, like the Druze, Alawites, and Kurds. Many suspect that Christians have faced less open hostility than these other communities due to the greater sensitivity in Western countries to the persecution of Christians, but their treatment of other religious and ethnic minorities reveals the dangers that threaten all who do not share the religious extremism of HTS.
Since al-Sharaa’s government took power in late 2024, the Druze minority has faced systematic violence. In July of 2025, armed tribal groups committed large-scale attacks on villages and blockaded the main roads leading into Swaida, a city in southern Syria with many Druze. As government forces “intervened to restore order,” they and allied tribal fighters began violent raids on Druze-majority villages. The conflict resulted in 1,700 deaths, over 155,000 displaced civilians, and the destruction or burning of 36 villages. According to the UN Commission, some members of the Transitional Authority’s forces removed their military uniforms and dressed as tribal fighters before continuing their attacks against civilians and intentionally humiliated members of the Druze community. As a result of constant targeting and oppression, many in Swaida argue that this long train of abuse by the government gives them the right to self-determination.
A few months earlier, in March of 2025, a reported attack on Syrian Ministry of Defense personnel by heavily armed fighters loyal to the ousted Bashar al-Assad resulted in a massacre against the Alawite community, the ethnic minority to which the Assad family belonged. Thousands of militia men joined al-Sharaa’s government forces to attack thousands of Alawite civilians in Syria’s coastal region, killing an estimated 1,500 people. Many Muslim leaders supported this attack online and in their mosques, saying that they were “waging jihad” on the non-Sunni group. According to U.S. intelligence, the attackers “probably operated outside the direct control of the authorities.” While al-Sharaa openly condemned the attack and formed an investigation, many doubt the credibility of the investigation, and even more conclude that al-Sharaa does not have complete control over his own men. Sectarian kidnapping and murders also have increased in frequency since the new government took power. The March 2026 UN General Assembly report found that in 2025, dozens of Alawite women were kidnapped, often in broad daylight, and sexually abused. The security officials tasked with responding often failed to properly investigate or actively discouraged and threatened families to deter them from investigating or publicizing the case. In two cases they documented, Syrian officials arrested the victims themselves after securing their release and investigated them for morality-related causes.
The largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, make up roughly 10% of the total Syrian population and established a semi-autonomous region called Rojava in northeast Syria. In the past, the United States has supported their autonomy and relied upon their military, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as its local partner in the mission to permanently defeat ISIS, providing between $2.5 and $3 billion in aid between 2017 and 2026. Since January of 2026, the SDF has lost 80% of its previously autonomous territory and was forced to sign a 14-point capitulation agreement with the Syrian government as the U.S. completely withdrew its troops in April 2026. In this agreement, the autonomous administration (DAANES) is being dismantled, control of borders, dams, and oil fields is transferred to the central government, and the SDF fighters must integrate into the national Syrian army as individuals. The peril of this situation and that facing other religious minorities was deepened by the establishment of the new Syrian Constitution the year before. Since the March 2025 negotiations with the new government, Rojava has called for a constitution that represents all Syrians and spells out their rights clearly. On March 10 of 2025, President al-Sharaa signed an agreement with the Kurdish community recognizing the Kurds as an indigenous community in the Syrian state, allowing them citizenship and all constitutional rights in Syria. Three days later, al-Sharaa issued a new constitution.
Although President al-Sharaa has promised to make Syria a more inclusive country for all Syrians, the new Constitution bases the structure of the Syrian polis squarely within the Islamic tradition. The new government is titled “The Syrian Arab Republic,” a label which alienates Syria’s large non-Arab population, like the Kurds, Turkmens, Syriacs (including Assyrians and Chaldeans), Armenians, and Circassians. Furthermore, in Article 3 of Chapter 1, Syria’s president and law are directly tied to Islamic theocracy. By embedding Islam into the presidency and jurisprudence, Syria becomes another theocratic nation rather than a non-sectarian state equally respectful of Syria’s diverse population. In the Constitution of the Assad regime, Islamic law was only a source of law. In the new regime, it has become the only source of Syrian jurisprudence. For religious minorities, constitutional language matters because it defines whether citizenship is based primarily on equal civic status or religious identity.
In addition to the Constitution, many minorities are concerned about the new Syrian parliament. Before Syria held elections in October 2025, al-Sharaa issued a decree dissolving all political parties, including the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party and historic leftist and nationalist parties, a similar move to President Assad when he took power and dismantled opposing parties. One-third of Syria’s population, living in the areas around Sweida (National Guard-controlled), Hassakah (SDF-controlled), and Raqqa (SDF-controlled), was excluded from forming local electoral committees at the outset. The ones who had a “say” did not have get to choose their own representatives, but were given options “representative” of their minority communities by the government. To make matters worse, there was no direct voting by Syria’s 23 million citizens, an unprecedented move in the region, even following the Assad regime. An 11-member Supreme Committee formed subcommittees in Syria’s 14 governorates, which in turn selected 30- to 50-member electoral bodies who voted for registered candidates. Only 7,000 people got to vote at all, and most of them were approved community leaders, academics, and technocrats. These electoral bodies appointed 140 seats of the lawmakers, while al-Sharaa appointed 70, one-third of parliament, with the new parliament having 50 fewer members than the Assad-era parliament. The resulting parliament is overwhelmingly male and Sunni Muslim. After al-Sharaa’s appointments, there were only 21 female and 10 religious minority seats out of 210 legislators.
When asked why Americans should care about Syria, James Jeffrey, a top diplomat in the region from 2004 to 2020, responded that “it’s not that Syria, per se, is important. It’s that what happens in Syria impacts all of the Middle East.” This thought drives much of U.S. engagement with Syria. After a meeting with al-Sharaa twelve days after Assad fled, diplomats from the Biden administration walked away impressed by al-Sharaa’s calm authority and charisma, along with his understanding of warfare, economic policy, and plans for Syria’s future. In 2026, many diplomats and members of Congress remained hesitantly supportive of him, arguing that further U.S. support must come in tandem with accountability. In order to protect religious minorities and pull Syria from its downward spiral, America and the international community must pressure the Syrian state to amend its Constitution by changing the structure of Parliament. While many members of Congress want bring Syria back into the international community, such as by ending its status as a state sponsor of terrorism (SST), their desire for Syrian growth must not come at the expense of continued political and religious repression. When President Trump agreed to waived certain sections of the Caesar Sanctions Act, it was with the understanding that the White House would follow up to ensure Syria would not backslide. To date, a review of Syria’s failure to uphold their end has not been formally reported, which has stalled U.S. pressure on Syria to improve. By formally calling out and condemning violence, Americans can use their current leverage to help protect all citizens in Syria, and help in the recovery of the Christian cradle in this spiritually-significant part of the world.
