“Blood Soaked Keys to Jerusalem”: Why We Must Stand With The People of Syria | Blog

Today, most Muslims around the world are celebrating the liberation of the people of Syria, simultaneously horrified by the news of old men who were thrown into Assad’s dungeons as teenagers nearly half a century ago, children born in the darkest of prison cells who had never seen the sun or a tree, and women who went through unspeakable torture. Celebrating their liberation is a sign of faith and a mark of humanity, even as we remain deeply concerned about what it means for Palestine and prayerful for the long, arduous journey that lies ahead for the Syrian people.

Still, there is much discord, mudslinging, and disagreement surrounding the Syrian issue. When confronting multiple and complex conflicts, it is sometimes tempting to set aside Islamic morality and embrace a popular or merely utilitarian position. However, this is a serious error. Real life is always complex, and if we do not use knowledge and wisdom to sustain Islamic morality in complex situations, we will fall into the arms of fashionable prejudices, opening ourselves up to sectarianism, bigotry, and loss of meaningful faith. 

How do we reconcile the perception, if not fact, that some of those standing up to the settler-colonial state of Israel have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Syrians on their hands, not to mention the displacement and untold misery of millions? What of those who stood up to the tyranny in Syria but who also have a checkered past? Muslims will inevitably disagree in their political analysis of the facts on the ground, but what are the Islamic moral principles that provide us with guidance in these challenging times? 

First and foremost, it is crucial to recognize that as new situations arise, people have access to varying sets of facts, shaped by their different networks and social media echo chambers. Hindsight is 20/20, but it is foresight that requires faith, wisdom, and moral principle. We must, therefore, proceed with caution and forgiveness for fellow Muslims. 

That being said, many seem to have bought into the fallacy that supporting the oppressed Muslims of Syria compromises the Palestinian cause. Yet the intolerable tyranny under which the Syrians have lived for the last half a century—peppered with massacres and a draconian security apparatus, and the devastating effect this has had on life, society, ethics, and even ideas—are facts beyond a shadow of a doubt. Moreover, the genocide in Gaza and occupation of the Holy Land would be inconceivable if the Muslim states were ruled by those accountable to their populations. 

Those who justify and even cheer on the tyranny in Syria offer a different rationale. Some are ideologically committed to a version of borrowed, washed-up, radical Western, atheistic, and/or ethno-nationalist ideologies, like Ba'athism. Others believe that a cause that they identify as anti-colonial can justify or overlook any evil. The similarity with the Zionists is uncanny, for they too justify killing off an entire population to save their favored ethnic group. And there are yet others who are blinded by sectarianism.

The first reminder we need to navigate these complex narratives is to attend to facts truthfully, regardless of the inevitable differences of interpretation. In the absence of this, meaningful moral assessment is impossible. People endlessly dispute whether ISIS is a CIA conspiracy, a deviant and misguided terrorist organization, or something else. Nevertheless, no one should doubt their depravity from the perspective of Islamic morality. There is no doubt that what ISIS did and stood for by murdering innocent Sunni and Shiʿa Muslims, as well as non-Muslim minorities, was truly heinous. It is also true that the Syrian people suffered tremendously under Assad’s regime, and that his forces, backed by Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, have killed many, many times more innocent people than ISIS ever did (the ratio is over 10X). Equating all Syrian resistance with ISIS or an imperialist plot is no different from Israel justifying its pre-planned genocide by pointing to the attack on October 7th. Both are attempts to manipulate the narrative to justify violence and oppression. 

We may further ask, if the US is complicit or even directly responsible for the genocide in Gaza, why aren’t Hezbollah and Iran similarly responsible for the atrocities in Syria? Hezbollah was founded in response to the Israeli invasion of and massacres in Lebanon in 1982. Today, one of Hezbollah’s three founders and the only one still alive, Ṣubḥī al-Ṭufaylī sternly denounces Hezbollah’s role in Syria and its subservience to Iran’s political interests. The Iran apologists, it seems, have given in to the same depraved reasoning that the Zionist apologists use against Palestinians; they dehumanize Syrians and deem all resistance to be ISIS terrorism. Like any other nation-state, Iran is driven by realpolitik—its perception of what it needs for survival at any cost. Just as the diabolical (former) US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared that the death of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying for some imagined US foreign policy goals, Iran apologists seem to imply that the death of half a million Syrians, along with their permanent state of terror and misery under one of the worst tyrannies—even by contemporary Middle Eastern standards—are similarly worth the price. To point out Iran’s and Hezbollah’s horrendous actions in Syria, driven in part by sectarian hatred, is not to single them out as uniquely nefarious actions in a deeply troubled region. The brutal war on Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, waged by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has claimed the lives of half a million people, with up to 60% of them dying due to indirect causes. This conflict is also driven by nation-state logic, with sectarian prejudice clearly playing some role. Similarly, the Saudi-US backed Iraqi aggression on Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a war that raged on for nearly a decade and claimed nearly a million lives on each side, was predominantly fueled by political self-interest and fed on sectarian fears. Also, still ongoing are the UAE-backed mass atrocities by the rebel forces in Sudan. 

When looking for answers to complex questions facing us today, it is a tempting but demonstrably false belief that the cause is always a given group that is inherently evil, irredeemable, and the source of the ummah’s failure and misery. 

Among the earliest Muslim leaders to fight back against the Crusaders was a now-largely-forgotten scholar and Qadi of Aleppo by the name of Abū al-Faḍl ibn al-Khashshāb (d. 519/1125). At first, he tried to persuade the Fatimid-allied governor of the city to resist the Crusaders (the Fatimids, recall, were the Ismāʿīlī Shiʿa dynasty in Egypt that played a role in paving the way for the Crusaders). Unsuccessful, he traveled to secure the support of the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad in 1100, just one year after the Crusaders from Western Europe had taken the Holy Land of Jerusalem and massacred its Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Reportedly, the local ulama and Sufis of Baghdad joined his plea to the Sunni caliph, but ultimately, no aid was provided. He finally returned and, after the death of the treasonous governor, led the people of Aleppo against the Crusaders of Antioch in 1119. Although at first taunted for trying to lead an army as a man of the turbaned class, he was eventually recognized as something of a hero. Apart from Sultan Kilij Arsalan’s initial victories in Anatolia, this was the first instance of jihad against the Crusaders. Like al-Ghazali before him and Salah al-Din after him, Ibn al-Khashshāb realized that no progress was possible without Muslim unity. This unity was threatened by the Fatimids in Egypt and, even moreso, the radical branch of the Ismāʿīlī sect known as the Ḥashīshiyyūn—the Assassins. The Ḥashīshiyyūn were partly responsible for the Muslim defenselessness on the eve of the Crusades, as they had assassinated the Muslim leadership of the time only a few years before the Crusaders arrived. Their victims included the Saljuq Sultan Malikshah (d. 485/1092) and Niẓām al-Mulk of Ṭūs (d. 485/1092). The latter was the renowned Persian vizier who was the architect of the Sunni madrasa system and patron of towering scholars like al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085) and al-Ghazali. A few years later in 1125, they succeeded in assassinating Ibn al-Khashshāb as well. Many other ulama and, eventually, military leaders took up the resistance until Salah al-Din liberated Jerusalem in 1187 and the Mamluk King Baybars (d. 676/1277) expelled the last Crusaders a century later. 

The most remarkable piece of the story, however, is that Ibn al-Khashshāb was not a Sunni, but a Twelver Shiʿi scholar and leader of his religious community—a fact that was not a rare exception. For example, the Hamdanids of Syria, also Shiʿa, had defended the Syrian frontier against the Byzantines on behalf of the Sunni Abbasid caliphate. Of course, I could have pointed out how some Shiʿa scholars collaborated with the Mongols and played a role in the destruction of the caliphate of Baghdad, or how the Safavids forced Iran’s conversion to Shiʿism, and used these examples to insinuate that sectarian conflict and animosity are inevitable. But such a generalization would be an untruth, one with devastating consequences. Each side can produce lists of charges against the other, citing betrayal and transgression. This is not to suggest that theological differences are immaterial, that all doctrines are equally valid, and that concern for unity and peace must trump our concern for truth and rectitude. Rather, the point is that sectarianism not only blinds, divides, and weakens us as Muslims, but also, even in the realm of religious doctrine, diminishes the possibility of productive dialogue and convergence around truth. All the while, our real enemies bet on our utter inability to unite and act as Muslims, even in the face of a genocide unfolding in broad daylight, picking us off one by one.

The point of this snapshot from our history is simple. It is a reminder that sectarianism is not the answer, as it blinds us to the real challenges facing the ummah. Shiʿa-Sunni differences have been overcome and managed in the past, and can be again. We owe truth and fairness even to those who deny and oppose Islam, and if such unbelievers are not actively hostile to our faith, the Qur’an encourages charity and benevolence towards them (60:8-9). To Muslims, even those we deeply believe to be in error, we surely owe much more. 

Those perpetrating the genocide in Gaza counted on Muslim indifference and the utter betrayal of their rulers for impunity, and they almost won. Yet, for a moment, Gaza proved the enemies of Islam wrong. Muslims of nearly every school and stripe came together to protest against the genocidal enemy. If the spirit of Gaza dispersed the dark clouds of sectarianism, the darkness of the mass murder and prolonged tyranny in Syria now threatens to engulf us again. How shall we resist the darkness?

In these conflicts, we witness complex patterns of behavior and moral dilemmas. The rulers of many Sunni-majority states have explicitly betrayed Palestine, openly legitimated and aided the genocidal entity, and have generally waged unjust wars on Muslim populations for purely self-serving, secular political reasons. In contrast, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have stood up for the Palestinian people’s resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide, earning the admiration of many around the world, Sunnis included. Of course, they have failed to put an end to the genocide, and the true motives of some of these actors deserve scrutiny, especially since they have shown a far greater willingness to exploit religious sectarianism in their realpolitik and organized violence against Sunni populations. Where do we go from this sad state of affairs in which Muslim blood is being spilt everywhere with impunity? The truth is that a Muslim world divided into many secular statelets, each waging war on its Muslim population, is structurally hard-wired for infighting, weakness, dependence on foreign masters, and uniquely prone to what contemporary academics have called “sectarianization”. Only a bold return to the religion of Allah can solve our problems, not half-hearted shortcuts. 

In this spirit, let us remind ourselves of a few of the well-known general Islamic principles that show us the light in confusing times.

The road ahead is not easy, but one thing is clear: it would be a grave error to imagine supporting the rights of the people of Palestine and those of Syria as a zero-sum game. We must not relent in our struggle against the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing being planned for the rest of Palestine. Yet speaking out against the mass murder of the people of Syria by the regime, an absolutist totalitarian tyranny of the worst kind that has been in place for over half a century, and its allies is an equal moral necessity and an Islamic obligation. 

Let us recall the courageous wisdom of the Palestinian placard with which we opened. Even as we face dispossession, famine, and genocide at the hands of a diabolical foreign occupier and betrayal by the Muslim powers around us, and as we are willing to sacrifice everything we have and our future generations for the Holy Land, we reject any victory that comes at the cost of the blood of Syria’s children. This is the highest ideal of moral clarity and Islamic solidarity, one we can all uphold with pride for the world to see.