Image by Alex Shuper.
The Syrian regime’s brutal response to protests with bullets set this grim reality in motion: from the very beginning of the Syrian uprising (March 2011) mourning halls and visitation rooms were opened across Syria. Syrians gathered in these spaces as if they were the only social horizon left for their existence. These gatherings evolved from spaces of grief into arenas for the exchange of ideas, mobilization, and recruitment in a country increasingly torn apart by war. As deaths occurred daily, society -fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines -experienced mourning that was sharply divided, with each sect grieving independently.
On March 11, 2025, a video circulated on social media showing a mother standing between the bodies of her two sons and her grandson. Meanwhile, the killer, an operative of the current transitional government, placed his boot on the head of one of the victims and hurled insults at her, accusing “her people” (the Alawites) of betrayal. In response, she uttered a single word in the Syrian dialect that would come to symbolize defiance against the genocide: Fasharto (“You lie!”). The word quickly went viral across social media, resonating as a powerful rejection of brutality. This video brings to mind another widely circulated clip from 2013, which showed Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers stomping on detainees forced to lie face down on the ground in the city of Baniyas in the coastal region. The scene reflected the regime’s brutality, which resulted in the mass killing of civilians in the city during the early days of its systematic crackdown against protests. Between these two videos, the values and slogans of the Syrian revolution, once envisioned as transcending sectarianism, were shattered after 14 years of bloody conflict.
One of the most prominent and insightful Arab intellectuals to recognize and speak out about the sectarian turn of the Syrian revolution in 2014, was the late Syria-Palestinian Marxist writer and activist, Salameh Kaileh. His sharp understanding of the situation made him one of the first to address this critical issue. In an article published in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on August 6, 2015, titled “Sunni Grievances in Syria,” Kaileh argued that after four years, the struggle was no longer a revolution against a corrupt, authoritarian regime, it had become a matter of “Sunni grievances.”
Kaileh criticized both the elites and individuals who had “hijacked the revolution,” including the late Syrian Marxist philosopher and writer Sadik Jalal al-Azm, who, according to Kaileh, wanted people to accept as an undeniable truth that the conflict was about the “natural right of the Sunni majority” to rule, given that the “Alawite minority” had monopolized power.
In the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall on December 8, 2024, a phrase began circulating on social media that captured the spirit of the new order: “Bilad al-Sham (Syria) has returned to its people – Umayyad, Umayyad, despite the spiteful.” However, in this context, “the people of Bilad al-Sham” did not refer to Syrians – the individuals who had been promised a civil and democratic state after decades of oppression, despair, exile, and systematic destruction. Instead, it specifically referred to the long-oppressed Sunni majority, and even then, only to a select elite among them.
This sentiment was reinforced by Mohsen Ghosn, the cleric Mujahid, who identifies himself as a fighter in the ranks of the Syrian revolution. He delivered a sermon at the Zain al-Abidin mosque in Damascus, titled “Beware the Wrath of the People of Bilad al-Sham.” The speech, dated March 7 on YouTube, called for Syria to be “purified of filth” so that only the elite Sunni vanguard would remain, as the country was destined to become a land of resurrection and gathering for the chosen pure race. He proclaimed without hesitation: “Bilad- al-Sham will not remain as it is while filth still defiles our land.” In his view, Syria had to be “pure and clean, chosen by God for the best of His creation.” He went on, “Can you imagine living in the Levant with these impure people among us?” During his sermon, he declared, “No sect will ever disrupt our peace. Syria is Sunni and will remain Sunni.” Then, in a menacing tone, he added, “We yearn for murder.” This supremacist, religiously exclusive ideology was embraced by some jihadist factions across Syria, which then united under the leadership of Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. In this coalition, al-Jolani was declared Syria’s new president, taking on the name Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Yet in his first speech after the genocide in the coastal region, Ahmad al-Sharaa himself said the bloodshed was nothing more than retaliation for the past grievances. The rhetoric only shifted under international pressure. In response, the interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa promised to form a committee to investigate the genocide. But even as these political maneuvers and public statements unfolded, the killings continued. There was no serious call to halt the bloodshed, nor any effort to withdraw the death squads.
For years, fundamentalists now serving in Sharaa’s Ministry of Defense had vowed to make the Alawites drink from the same bitter cup that Sunnis had endured. They saw the entire Alawite community as a monolithic bloc, equally guilty, equally deserving of punishment. It mattered little that many Alawites had opposed Assad’s rule. The forces that had hijacked the Syrian revolution, cloaking it in religious garb and growing a beard on its once-civil face, continued the former regime’s mission in crushing the revolution’s original civil and democratic spirit. And so, between massacres, ones carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s regime over more than a decade of slaughter, and the ones now unleashed by Ahmad al-Sharaa’s forces, Syria’s mourning continued, draped in sectarian colors.
Since 2012 (and even earlier), Quran reciters have chanted verses mourning the martyrs, assuring them that they are alive in the presence of their Lord, receiving sustenance, while warning the infidels of their destined fate in hell, as the Quran dictates in Surah Al- Imran (3: 196): “And never think of those who have been killed in the cause of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision.”
Yet, this very Quran – so frequently recited at funerals – lies at the heart of the problem. To this day, no Arab thinker has dared to critically examine it in its historical context, analyze it, or treat it as a product of its time, out of fear for their lives. One of the rare thinkers to critically engage with the Quran and challenge its revered status was Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al-Rawandi (827–911). This controversial philosopher, born to a Jewish father and raised as a Muslim, lived during the Abbasid era. His manuscripts were systematically destroyed, and only fragments of his ideas have survived, preserved in the writings of others. Al-Rawandi rejected Muhammad’s prophecy and questioned the Quran’s divine origins and argued against the theological arguments that positioned the Quran as a unique, unmatchable revelation. Another figure who openly defied the Quran, albeit in a far more provocative manner, was the Umayyad caliph al-Walid ibn Yazid (709-744). A renowned poet, he belonged to the dynasty of Umayyad caliphs that the extremist Islamic groups who seized power in Damascus claim to be reviving.
According to both Arab secular and Islamic sources, the story unfolds as follows: The caliph, known for his love of music, poetry, women, and refined living, once opened the Quran, and his eyes fell upon the verse: “And they requested victory from Allah, and disappointed [therefore] was every obstinate tyrant” (Quran 14:15). Enraged by what he read, he cast the Quran on the floor and began shooting arrows at it, tearing its pages while reciting his now-infamous poem:
“Do you threaten every obstinate tyrant?
Well, here I stand – an obstinate tyrant.
When you meet your Lord on Judgment Day,
Tell Him: al-Walid was the one who tore me apart.”
The Quran has been described as multivalent, meaning that it is subject to interpretation and cannot be confined to a single, definitive meaning due to its highly figurative language in many verses. However, Islamic extremist fundamentalist movements, drawing from the Wahhabi tradition, have adopted a literalist Salafi reading of the Quranic text. In this view, if a reader perceives contradictions in the Quran, the fault lies not in the text but in the reader’s intellect. This approach eliminates critical reasoning, granting the Quran absolute and unquestionable authority while disregarding its historical context.
In the ongoing Syrian conflict, religious sects that follow alternative and Sufi interpretations of the Quran, particularly the Alawites, are seen as heretical, misguided, and outside the fold of Islam. In an interview with Al Jazeera’s journalist and host Ahmed Mansour on May 27, 2015, the current Syrian president Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, at the time identified as Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, stated: “For us, the Alawites are a sect that has strayed from the religion of Almighty God, according to scholars and jurists. They are not considered part of the Islamic community; rather, they are outside the religion of God and Islam.” Al-Jolani and his followers view every Alawite as complicit, making their murder not just permissible but righteous. Al-Jolani stated, “We are now in the stage of repelling the attackers” (Daf’ al-Saa’il). In Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), “repelling the attackers” refers to the principle that allows a person to defend themselves, their property, or others from unjust aggression. This stance was supported by the Quranic verse: “Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you but do not transgress, for Allah does not love transgressors. (2:191) This principle was realized on December 8, 2024, when al-Assad’s regime fell. Repelling the attackers’ stage has ended with the advance of jihadist death squads toward the Syrian coast, targeting Alawite towns, villages, and cities, beginning on March 7. This followed an ambush on March 6 by what are referred to as the “remnants of al-Assad’s regime,” which resulted in heavy casualties among Ahmed al-Sharaa’s security forces. In retaliation, the extremist Islamic militias, which had flooded into the coastal region in response to the call for jihad, carried out fifty eight massacres involving ethnic cleansing and mass executions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The victims included children, women, the elderly, and young men, among them well-known Alawite dissidents who had opposed Assad’s rule.
Amidst the atrocities committed by both sides of the conflict, the patterns of mourning in Syria echo Judith Butler’s observation about the Israeli experience, where the deaths of Israelis are mourned, while the deaths of Palestinians remain invisible. In Syria, death itself becomes a symbolic battleground, a struggle between believers and infidels, where the very existence of the infidel is denied. This mirrors the dynamics of settler-colonial conflict, in which one side seeks to erase the presence of the other entirely. In this context, those who are killed cease to exist, even in the aftermath of their annihilation, reducing culture and religion to mere instruments of death. This exclusionary vision of mourning partially echoes the religious notion of resurrection: the infidel goes to hell, whereas the believer continues to live in paradise, provided for by his Lord. This suggests that even the symbolic and imaginary realms of human experience are controlled by political and religious power. It seems that our dreams and visions are not exempt from the influence of hierarchy and the subtle power that navigates between reality and fantasy, between paradise and hell, between the world we live in and what lies beyond it. In Syria, we now witness the return of the victim, elevated to the throne as ruler over the kingdom of life and death, its hierarchies of affiliations and corpses – echoing the very tactics of the al-Assad regime at the height of its brutality before its downfall.
