Over the weekend, many watched in horror as reports poured out of Syria detailing the slaughter of Christians and other religious minorities under the new Islamist regime led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, now masquerading under his birth name, Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Newsweek reports that “Since Thursday, more than 1,000 people — including Christian minorities and Alawites, the sect to which Assad [the recently deposed Syrian president] belongs — have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and local reports.”
This is a man with blood on his hands, a radical Islamist with a history rooted in both ISIS and Al-Qaeda who has long despised Christians and sought their eradication. Yet, the mainstream media and even the United Nations have bent over backwards to “whitewash” his image, painting him as some sort of pragmatic reformer.
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Meanwhile, the bodies of Syrian Christians and Alawites pile up, and the West’s silence is deafening. This is not just negligence — it’s complicity, driven by a media that hates Christians and a failed neoconservative foreign policy obsessed with regime change, no matter the cost.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing
Let’s be clear about who al-Jolani is. This is no “freedom fighter” or “rebel,” as the media loves to call him. He’s the former emir of Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, and now the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Sunni Islamist group that toppled Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. His track record is a litany of atrocities: attacking Christian villages along the Khabur River, destroying churches, and orchestrating kidnappings and massacres.
Reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) confirm that since early March, over 1,000 civilians — many of them Christians and Alawites — have been butchered in revenge killings and massacres, particularly in coastal regions like Latakia and Jableh. Women and children haven’t been spared; entire families have been wiped out by HTS forces and their jihadist allies.
Al-Jolani’s hatred for Christians isn’t new. In 2015, his forces abducted over 200 Assyrians from villages near Tell Tamer, demanding ransoms of $100,000 per person. Three were executed on video, a chilling message to Syria’s dwindling Christian population. Now, as Syria’s new strongman, he’s dropped the turban for a suit and tie, issuing platitudes about “tolerance” and “diversity.” But the bloodstains don’t wash off that easily. His rebranding is a tactical ploy to win Western approval, not a genuine change of heart.
Christians in Aleppo and Homs aren’t buying it. They’re fleeing to the mountains, terrified of the jihadists now ruling their streets.
Whitewashing a terrorist butcher
You’d think this carnage would dominate headlines, but the mainstream media — CNN, BBC, The New York Times — barely whispers about it.
When they do, it’s to parrot Al-Jolani’s promises of moderation or to downplay the sectarian slaughter as “clashes” between “security forces” and “Assad loyalists.” The United Nations, ever the apologist for tyrants, has been complicit too.
On March 7, 2025, Secretary-General António Guterres issued a tepid call to “protect civilians,” but stopped short of naming HTS or Al-Jolani as the perpetrators. The reason for their cowardice is plain and simple — a refusal to confront the radical Islamist elephant in the room.
Why the silence? Because the media and the UN bought the narrative hook, line, and sinker: Assad was the bad guy (and yes, he was), so anyone who ousted him must be a “hero.” They’ve spent years hyping HTS as “rebels” fighting for “freedom,” ignoring their jihadist roots and anti-Christian agenda. Now that the mask is off and Christians are dying, they’d rather look the other way than admit they were wrong.
Assad: The devil we knew
There’s no need to sugarcoat it — Bashar al-Assad was a dictator. His regime tortured dissidents, allegedly used chemical weapons, and ruled with an iron fist. But for Syria’s Christians, he was a protector of sorts. Under Assad, many Christians — once 10 percent of Syria’s population — could worship freely, celebrate Christmas, and live without fear of jihadist mobs. Assad, an Alawite himself, positioned his regime as a bulwark against Sunni extremism, and for all his brutality, he delivered on that promise. The Christian population dwindled from 1.5 million to 300,000 during the civil war, but much of that was due to ISIS and rebel groups like HTS, not Assad’s policies.
Compare that to now. Since Assad’s fall, HTS has unleashed a wave of sectarian violence that makes his rule look like a golden age for minorities. The devil you know, as the saying goes, is better than the devil you don’t. Assad was a known quantity — a brutal secularist who kept the jihadists at bay. Al-Jolani is a wild card, a radical Islamist with a history of targeting Christians, and the West’s gamble on him has turned Syria into a killing field.
The media’s anti-Christian bias
Why isn’t this a bigger story? Because the mainstream media in the West hates Christians. It’s that simple. From Hollywood to cable news, there’s a palpable disdain for our faith — a sneering contempt for “backward” beliefs that don’t fit their progressive worldview. When Christians are slaughtered in Syria, it doesn’t fit the narrative of “Islamist rebels good, Assad bad,” so they bury it. They’d rather fawn over Al-Jolani’s “pragmatism” than report on the desecrated churches and shattered crosses littering Syria’s countryside.
This isn’t just negligence — it’s complicity. By pretending HTS would be “moderate,” the media gave cover to a regime now massacring Christians. They cheered the fall of Assad without asking what comes next, and now that the answer is clear — a genocide they’re too ashamed or too biased to care about it.
Rubio’s denouncement: A rare voice of reason
Thank God for Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On March 9, 2025, he issued a blistering statement:
“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days. The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
Rubio’s words cut through the fog of media spin, naming the perpetrators and standing with the victims. It’s a rare moment of clarity from a government too often swayed by neoconservative delusions.
The bloody legacy of failed neoconservative foreign policy
This is a textbook failure of establishment foreign policy. For decades, neocons in Washington — think tanks, pundits, and politicians — have pushed an obsessive agenda of intervention and regime change. Iraq, Libya, now Syria: topple the dictator, install “democracy,” and watch freedom bloom. Except it never works. The vacuum left by Assad didn’t birth a moderate utopia — it unleashed Hell in the form of Al-Jolani and his jihadist hordes. Christians and Alawites are paying the price for this reckless idealism, just as Iraqi Christians did after Saddam’s fall.
Assad was a monster, but he was a predictable one. Neocons ignored that wisdom, betting on untested “rebels” who turned out to be worse. Their faith in intervention blinded them to the reality that not every dictator’s fall is a victory for liberty, especially when the alternative is a radical Islamist with a bloodthirsty grudge against Christians.
A call to prayer and action
Al-Jolani’s regime is a cancer, and the West’s complicity is a sin. Let’s heed Rubio’s call, reject neoconservative folly, and stand for the persecuted.
As conservative Christians, we cannot stay silent. Our brothers and sisters in Syria are dying, and the world doesn’t care. We must pray for their protection, amplify their plight, and demand accountability from our leaders and media.
The anguished voices and blood of Syrian Christians are crying out — will we answer?
Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center.
William Wolfe is a visiting fellow with the Center for Renewing America. He served as a senior official in the Trump administration, both as a deputy assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon and a director of legislative affairs at the State Department. Prior to his service in the administration, Wolfe worked for Heritage Action for America, and as a congressional staffer for three different members of Congress, including the former Rep. Dave Brat. He has a B.A. in history from Covenant College, and is finishing his Masters of Divinity at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Follow William on Twitter at @William_E_Wolfe
