LEGAL FRAMEWORK ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND ACTUAL APPLICATION
According to Article 3 of Syria’s constitution, approved by a referendum in 2012, “The religion of the President of the Republic is Islam; Islamic jurisprudence shall be a major source of legislation; the State shall respect all religions, and ensure the freedom to perform all the rituals that do not prejudice public order; the personal status of religious communities shall be protected and respected.” Article 8 forbids, “Carrying out any political activity or forming any political parties or groupings on the basis of religious, sectarian, tribal, regional, class-based, professional, or on discrimination based on gender, origin, race or colour”. Article 33 states: “Citizens shall be equal in rights and duties without discrimination among them on grounds of sex, origin, language, religion or creed.” Article 42 says: “Freedom of belief shall be protected in accordance with the law.”
The government restricts proselytising and conversions. It prohibits the conversion of Muslims to other religions. Although conversion from Islam to Christianity is not allowed, the government recognises Christian conversions to Islam. The penal code prohibits “causing tension between religious communities”. Article 462 of Syria’s Penal Code provides that anyone who publicly defames religious practices is punishable with up two years’ imprisonment.
The entire political environment, including the application of Justice, remains defined by the events following the “Arab Spring”. In March 2011, following anti-government demonstrations, protesters were attacked by the security forces of President Bashar Al-Assad’s government. By the summer, the violence had spiraled into a full-blown civil war and the opposition had begun to arm. In addition, with the intervention of Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, among others, as well as the United States and Russia, the conflict became, according to many observers, a proxy war. Today President Assad’s government has kept or regained control over most parts of the country although there are still areas where other groups, supported by foreign interests from various origins, have established control.
Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Alawites (or Alawis), Christians and Druze are also part of the country’s traditional religious mosaic. Kurds are the most important non-Arab ethnic group. Most Kurds follow Sunni Islam and live in the north of the country.
President Assad belongs to the Alawite community. Under Assad’s father, President Hafez Al-Assad, Shia scholar Musa Al-Sadr issued a fatwa in 1974 recognizing the Alawites as a branch of Shia Islam. Alawites are held in contempt by a number of majority Sunnis, many of whom see them as heretics.
In December 2020 Syrian President Bashar al Assad gave a speech to an assemblage of Sunni Muslim scholars. “Some people believe that one of the requirements of secularism, or the essence of secularism, is separating religion from the state,” Assad said. “This is wrong: there is no relation between secularism and separating religion from the state.”
Incidents and developments
In November 2020, a Turkish-backed armed opposition group was accused of looting the Syriac Orthodox Mar Touma Church in Ras al-Ayn. In July 2021 the Turkish Ministry of Defense announced its repairs to the church and to other religious structures affected by its 2019 operation in the area. Critics accused Turkey of seeking only to burnish its international image.
In December 2020, Voice of America reported that Yazidi community members in Northwest Syria were in a state of fear after Turkish-backed Islamist rebels in control of the area launched a weeklong blockade and arrest campaign against the religious minority in Afrin.
In February 2021, Turkish airstrikes and continued attacks by Turkish-backed extremist groups near Aleppo affected thousands of Yazidis who fled to the region from Afrin in 2018 when Turkey invaded Northern Syria. According to estimates around 160,000 Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities had been ethnically cleansed at that time.
In February 2021, the Syrian Justice Ministry ruled that Islamic personal status laws apply to members of the Yazidi community. Activists said that the decision was tantamount to religious persecution, and it was wrong to consider the Yazidi faith a part of Islam. According to estimates there are now fewer than 5,000 Yazidis in Syria, down from 80,000 before the war.
In March 2021, a Foreign Policy article alleged that Iran was trying to increase the numbers of Shiites in Syria. According to the article, foreign Shia militia fighters brought their families to Syria to settle there. The article further stated that Iran also tries to make Sunnis convert to Shiism by handing out material incentives.
Local media reports stated that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) embarked on a systematic initiative to increase the number of Shia shrines and religious sites in Deir Ezzor province by both co-opting existing ones and building new ones. The alleged aim is to enable Iran to claim political power on the behalf of Syrian Shiites and to justify its presence to protect the shrines. (Major Shiite shrines in Syria often have a strong Iranian security presence).
In June 2021, three Orthodox Christian men were detained in their village outside the northern Syrian town of Ras al-Ain. Later they were deported to Turkey where a court sentenced them to prison for life on charges of terrorism. Both the verdict and the abduction were criticized as illegal.
In August 2021, Turkish planes damaged houses in Tell Tawil (Bnay Roumta), a now mostly uninhabited Christian village in Al-Hasakah Governorate. According to reports Turkish planes have also hit other Christian towns – Qamishli, Tal Gerebet and Ain Issa – in the Assyrian Christian region along the banks of the Khabur River. Voice of America cites Syrian Christian leaders expressing concerns over escalating Turkish attacks in northeast Syria, saying the recent military activity has driven many Christians and members of other minority groups from their homes. Christians in Al-Hasakah Governorate complain that the military disturbances between Turkish and Kurdish militias, in addition to putting them in the line of fire, has displaced a large number of Kurds who have now resettled illegally in Christian homes.
In November 2021, Syrian President Assad abolished the position of Grand Mufti thus dismissing Ahmad Hassoun, the highest Islamic authority in Syria. The Mufti’s Power was redistributed to a jurisprudential council, the Majlis al-Ilmi al-Fikhi.
In January 2022, the NGO Syrian Network for Human Rights published figures that Syrian government forces were responsible for 14 attacks on places of worship in 2021. In January 2022, Turkish bombardment damaged the Assyrian Mar Sawa al-Hakim church in Tel Tamr in Northeastern Syria. The church had already been targeted by the Islamic State in 2015.
In January 2022, an interreligious conference of Muslim, Christian, Yazidi and Alawite scholars took place in Amudah, a city in the so-called Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria, which is ruled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Organizing committee member, Abdul Rahman Badrakhan, stated, “the conference participants discussed the decisions that need to be made in order to walk the path of peaceful coexistence. And they discussed the contribution that faith communities can make to the processes necessary to secure peace and to consolidate the principles of democracy and peaceful coexistence in society”
In March 2022, Regina Lynch, ACN’s International Director of Projects said that in a situation where 90 percent live below the poverty line “despair is common among Syria’s Christians”. But she added that the Church and its commitment to providing emergency support meant that although “many Christians are short of hope, any hope they do find is in the initiatives of the Church.”
In June 2022, the Deir Mar Musa Al Habashi Monastery founded by Jesuit Father Paolo Dall` Oglio reopened for pilgrims after being closed for years due to war and the pandemic. The monastery is a place of interreligious encounter.
In July 2022, reports emerged about the illegal expropriation of Christian landowners in the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria. Cases of expropriation and fraudulent sale of properties belonging to Christian citizens - according to the AINA Agency - were registered in the urban centers of Qamishli, Hassakè, Derek and Tal Tamr.
In July 2022, the Greek Orthodox Saint Sophia church in al-Suqaylabiyah village near the city of Hama was attacked with rockets launched by unknown assailants during the inauguration ceremony. Two people were killed and 12 were injured. The construction of the church was supported by Russia. As indicated in the news report, the “Syrian ‘mini-Hagia Sophia’, was presented by sources close to the government of Damascus, as a sort of Russian - Syrian response to the Turkish choice to re-open Hagia Sophia to Islamic worship”.
In August 2022, the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – an Al Qaeda offshoot - allowed the reopening of the Armenian Apostolic Saint Anna’s Church that had been closed for ten years in Yacoubia in the region of Idlib. The opening followed a meeting of HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani with the Christian community in the area in what, according to the Al Monitor, many see as a bid to brand himself a moderate and gain outside support. The move drew criticism from other Islamist groups. Accounts suggest that HTS impels minorities under its control like Christians and Druze to consider emigration or displacement by banning religious practices or seizing property. There are also reports that Christian property has been converted into mosques.
In July 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated threats to launch additional incursions into Northern Syria against Kurdish groups. Turkey also plans to repatriate displaced Syrians to a so-called “safe zone” the country is creating in the north of Syria.
In August 2022, according to reports Turkish militias intensified attacks on Kurdish held regions in Northern and Northeastern Syria thus also affecting religious minorities. Tel Tamr, where a minority of Assyrian Christians live, and its surroundings alone were attacked 25 times killing six people. Turkey claims that it is defending itself against attacks by Kurdish led forces.
In September 2022, five bodies allegedly killed by ISIS were found in a mass grave in Azaz near Aleppo.
In September 2022, the Syriac Orthodox Church elected Boutros Kassis as the Archbishop of Aleppo. He officially replaces Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim who, in 2013, was abducted together with Greek Orthodox Archbishop Boulos Yazigi. Their fate remains unknown to the present day. Archbishop Yazigi was replaced in October 2021 with the election of Metropolitan Ephraim Maalouli.
In September 2022, Israel attacked the runway of the Aleppo Airport, months after having executed a similar attack in Damascus. The attacks, which have led to casualties in the Syrian Army and among members of militias, are reputedly to stall the military activities of Iran in Syria.
In October 2022, an ISIS attack claimed the lives of three Syrian government soldiers and a militant in Dewier east of Deir ez-Zor.
In October 2022, a Yazidi girl was rescued from the al-Hol camp in Hasaka province which houses family members of Islamic State (ISIS) militants. According to press reports, the 15-year-old girl was kidnapped by ISIS when she was ten years old. Two other Yazidi women had been previously rescued from the facility. In September 2022, Kurdish security forces thwarted two planned car bomb attacks by ISIS on the camp. It followed an August anti-ISIS operation in the facility that resulted in hundreds of arrests.
Prospects for Religious freedom
More than eleven years after the start of the war in Syria, the country is still heavily affected. Although fighting has dropped significantly and ISIS has been driven out as a territorial force, Syria is regionally still significantly divided profoundly affecting religious freedom.
The government headed by President Bashar Al Assad has regained control over 70 percent of the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic. Minorities from traditional communities can worship freely if they prove themselves loyal to the regime despite its human rights abuses and authoritarian nature. Laws, and a conservative Muslim society, however, still limit evangelizing activities. For example, Christian schools can teach religion but not display crosses in classes or contain an on-site chapel. Because of the war and subsequent economic hardship, many Christians have fled the country. Before the war, Christians comprised about 10 percent of the population. According to the Apostolic Nuncio to Syria, Mario Cardinal Zenari, up to two thirds of Christians have left the country since the beginning of the war. ACN estimates that there are now between 300,000 and 500,000 Christians remaining in the country. During the period under review, the government intervened in the structure of Sunni Islam in Syria by abolishing the position of the Grand Mufti, replacing it with a government-controlled council. Also applying Islamic personal status laws to the remaining Yazidis of the country is heavily affecting the community’s religious freedom.
In the Northwestern Idlib region, different Islamist factions – especially the Al Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham - exert control, imposing their radical version of Islam on the Muslim population. The remaining Christians and other minority groups like the Druze suffer heavily from the Islamist rule.
Religious minorities are also affected in the areas that are occupied by Turkey in its attack against Kurdish forces along its border. They suffer either directly because of the Turkish occupying forces or at the hands of Turkish-supported Syrian armed opposition groups. ISIS, militarily beaten in 2019 when its last stronghold was captured by a US-led coalition, is also still very active in Syria as a terrorist group and here too religious minorities are victims of attacks.
Although crimes against religious freedom may have peaked in Syria before the period under review, religious freedom is still under pressure and Syria remains a country of concern. Given the unfavourable societal and economic circumstances, the exodus of religious minorities including Christians will probably continue, and the negative prospects for the exercise of religious freedom under various level and form of pressure, remain unchanged for those who stay.
Syria